Breaking down the question
This is a thinker-based question and demands depth rather than breadth. The phrase in detail and the words major contribution tell you to concentrate on Yogendra Singh's core theoretical achievement — his framework for analysing social change in India, set out most fully in his book on the modernisation of Indian tradition — rather than cataloguing everything he ever wrote.
The examiner is testing whether you can reconstruct his conceptual apparatus. Singh's distinctive move was to reject both the view that tradition and modernity are simple opposites and the view that modernisation is merely Westernisation. He built instead a layered scheme for locating the sources and directions of change. A strong answer will lay out that scheme clearly and then evaluate it.
How to approach it
Structure the answer around Singh's key conceptual tools. First, his critique of existing approaches — the ad hoc, empiricist and culturally biased studies he sought to replace with a systematic framework. Second, his borrowing and adaptation of the little and great tradition and of orthogenetic versus heterogenetic sources of change. Third, his central distinction between the structural and cultural sources of change and between micro and macro levels. Fourth, his understanding of modernisation itself as a universal cultural process involving differentiation, rationality and expanding participation, which India adapts rather than imports wholesale.
Close with a brief evaluation — his synthetic achievement, and the criticisms that his framework remains largely descriptive. For the fuller exposition, see the note on the modernisation of Indian tradition.
Model answer
Yogendra Singh's major contribution lies in providing Indian sociology with a systematic, non-evaluative framework for analysing social change, at a time when the field was dominated by fragmentary village studies and by the assumption that modernisation simply meant Westernisation. His work on the modernisation of Indian tradition sought to bring theoretical order to the study of change.
His starting point was a critique. Singh argued that earlier studies were ad hoc and empiricist, describing particular changes without a coherent conceptual scheme, and that they often carried a cultural bias which treated Western modernity as the only measure of progress. Against this he proposed a framework that could locate any given change within a set of analytical coordinates.
The first coordinate was the level of change. Borrowing from Robert Redfield and McKim Marriott, Singh used the distinction between the little tradition of the local and folk and the great tradition of the classical and textual, allowing change to be traced as it moved between these levels. He paired this with the distinction between orthogenetic change, which develops from within a tradition's own logic, and heterogenetic change, which is introduced from outside. This let him show that Indian modernisation was neither purely indigenous nor purely imported.
The second and most influential coordinate was the source of change. Singh distinguished the structural sources — changes in social organisation, institutions and the distribution of power — from the cultural sources — changes in values, ideas and cognitive orientations. He argued that in India the two often move at different speeds and can pull against each other, so that structural modernisation may advance while cultural traditions persist or even revive. He further separated the micro level of village and community from the macro level of nation and civilisation, insisting that change at one level need not mirror change at another.
On modernisation itself, Singh took a considered position. He treated it as a universal cultural process marked by growing rationality, structural differentiation, secularisation and the widening of social participation. Crucially, he held that a society could modernise by adapting these principles to its own traditions rather than by wholesale imitation — hence his central idea that Indian tradition is itself modernised, reworked from within rather than abolished. He echoed the formula of modernisation as differentiation accompanied by integration, whereby institutions become distinct even as new principles bind them together.
The achievement of this framework is considerable. It replaced description with analysis, it freed the study of change from the assumption that modern equals Western, and it provided a common vocabulary in which structural and cultural transformations could be compared. Its recognised limitation is that the scheme remains largely classificatory — it tells us where to locate a change but says less about the causal mechanisms that drive it, and critics have found it more taxonomic than explanatory.
Even with that caveat, Singh's contribution defined how a generation of Indian sociologists approached social change, and his insistence that tradition and modernity interpenetrate rather than exclude one another remains his enduring legacy.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners distinguish scripts that merely mention Singh's book from those that reconstruct his actual conceptual scheme. The marks lie in reproducing the paired distinctions accurately — little and great tradition, orthogenetic and heterogenetic sources, and above all the structural versus cultural sources of change. A second discriminator is critical balance — the strongest answers credit the synthetic achievement while noting the framework's descriptive character. Avoid drifting into a general essay on modernisation; the question is about Singh specifically, so keep him at the centre throughout.