Since Economic production is the basic activity of a human aggregate, the mode of production (productive forces and social relations of production) plays a determining role in shaping the social structure, the psychology, and the ideology of that human aggregate. Rural society is based predominantly on agriculture. Village agriculture is sharply distinguished from urban industry by the fact that it is based on direct extraction from Nature by man. Land is the basic means of production in the countryside. Land is a part of Nature, though made arable by human labour. From land, the rural people produce, by means of technique and their labour power, such a variety of agrarian products as food, cotton, jute, tea, coffee, tobacco, and others. Urban industry only transforms the products of agriculture into industrial products. ln city factories and mills, such agricultural products as cotton, jute and sugarcane are transformed into cotton and jute cloth and sugar, respectively. This basic difference between agriculture and industry plays a significant role in shaping the social institutions, the psychology, and the ideology of the rural and urban populations. Further, the level of production and the way in which the products are distributed among the different strata of a society, determine the level of the material prosperity of the society as a whole and of the various socio-economic groups comprising it. They also, to a very large extent, mould the institutional set up of that society as well as the cultural life of its people. For instance, in India, the primitive nature of agriculture, the resultant low level of agricultural production and the specific types of land relations which determine the differing shares of agricultural products among the social groups composing the rural society, explain the general poverty of the rural people, their hierarchic gradation into a pyramidal system of socio-economic groups and, further, their distinct social institutions and cultural backwardness. They also largely fix their customs, conceptions, and social mores.