Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

In the last 20 years politics in the rural areas of north India has been transformed by the emergence of non‐Congress parties with strong support among the prosperous strata of the peasantry. Studies of these developments have placed different emphases on the importance of class and caste factors, as well as drawing attention to the existence of blocs of potential support previously alienated from the Congress. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) the defection from the Congress of peasant leader Charan Singh and the formation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in the late 1960s, has been seen as one of the most important examples of these changes in rural politics. The purpose of this article is to examine the formation and initial electoral fortunes of the BKD in one locality, and, at the same time, to assess the applicability, to a local setting, of general explanations of the emergence and success of the party.     

Dalits and politics in rural North India: The Bahujan Samaj party in Uttar Pradesh

In the last decade the Bahaujan Samaj Party has established a strong electoral presence in northern India. It has been particularly successful in Uttar Pradesh where it has participated in government three times in the 1990s. Although the party seeks to mobilise the support of the ‘bahujan’ — the non‐high caste majority of the population — it is argued here, on the basis of aggregate and survey analysis, that it has been constrained by its excessive reliance on just some sections of former untouchables (Dalits). The Bahujan Samaj Party represents a significant social and political movement of some Dalit groups but it has failed to secure the support of the wider population of the rural poor.     

Tenancy contracts during transition: A study based on fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh (India)

This article attempts to situate the nature of and changes in tenancy contracts in the context of agrarian transition in developing countries such as India. Inter‐ and intra‐village variations in tenancy contracts are examined in detail for three contrasted villages in Uttar Pradesh (India), with the aim of bringing out the systematic basis of such variations. It is argued that Marxist analysis, based on the nature of class relations, offers a more credible explanation of the nature and unevenness of change, than neo‐classical analysis. Moreover, such analysis also offers a satisfactory explanation of the impact of tenancy on several commonly studied variables.     

Gender,nationalism and the colonial jail: a study of women activists in Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

An important aspect of Indian women's political participation in the nationalist struggle against colonial rule was their imprisonment and confinement within the walls of the prison. To counter the difficulty and monotony of their prison existence, women developed strong solidarity networks which not only helped them to adjust to the temporary upheaval in their lives but also resulted in their becoming strong and determined individuals with a nationalist consciousness. These women resisted colonial rule through imprisonment and activities in the jail (such as writing poetry) just as they did through nationalist activities within the domestic sphere (such as spinning and weaving). The jail became a site where identities were continuously shaped and restructured. Feelings of pride, resentment, honour and humiliation were all experienced by women prisoners and were continuously sharpened. Women's entry into male dominated spaces dispelled the British stereotypes about Indian women as subordinate, weak and docile. Women were also aware that by endangering their womanhood on the streets and putting their bodies under risk of attack, they proved that they could share common experiences with their fellow men in the public sphere.     

The land question: special economic zones and the political economy of dispossession in India

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have become the epicenters of ‘land wars’ across India, with farmers resisting the state's forcible transfer of their land to capitalists. Based on 18 months of research focused on an SEZ in Rajasthan, this paper illuminates the role of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (ABD) in Indian capitalism today and its consequences for rural India. It argues that the existing theories of land grabs do not adequately explain why dispossession becomes necessary to accumulation at particular times and places, and seeks to reconstruct Harvey's theory of ABD to adequately account for it. It then shows the specific kind of rentier- and IT-driven accumulation that dispossession is making possible in SEZs and the non–labor-absorbing, real-estate–driven agrarian transformation this generates in the surrounding countryside. Land speculation amplifies class and caste inequalities in novel ways, marginalizes women and creates an involutionary dynamic of agrarian change that is ultimately impoverishing for the rural poor. Given the minimal benefits for rural India in this model of development, farmer resistance to land dispossession is likely to continue and pose the most serious obstacle to capitalist growth in India. The agrarian questions of labor and capital are, consequently, now rejoined in ‘the land question.’     

Food policy and politics: The political economy of the public distribution system in India

This article discusses the history and political economy of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India. This food distribution programme, which dates from 1939, is meant to increase food security both at the national and the household level. Since its emergence, it has passed through several phases, the latest one starting in 1991 when India introduced a Structural Adjustment Programme. From a social constructivist perspective, this article aims at understanding (a) the most important features of this system in the various phases of its history, (b) the social processes that led to the emergence and subsequent development of distribution policy and (c) the various functions PDS has served in the course of its history. It concludes that in the most recent era, there are two contradictory tendencies (one coming from economic rationalisation, the other from populist politics) which push and pull the PDS in different directions. The latter tendency is so strong that a drastic curtailment of the food distribution programme is unlikely, despite the pleas made by those favouring cutting down subsidies and reducing the responsibility of the state.     

Land reform and agrarian change in India and Pakistan since 1947: II

Analysing the actual processes and patterns of agrarian change following land reforms in India and Pakistan the author shows how radical land reform ideology without a radical land‐reform programme has dual consequences — beneficial for the emerging dynamic landlord or intermediate classes and agonising and unsettling for the rural poor. The latter are deprived of the elements of paternalism and security existing even within the old exploitative system without the provision of a new framework of security.

These dual consquences have been reinforced further by recent technological changes and the impetus to commercialism from these changes. The forced shift from secure to insecure, feudalistic to commercial, tenancy or the decline of tenancy resulting from eviction of tenants and resort to self‐cultivation by landlords coupled with growing economic differentiation between rich and poor peasants denote new and more naked sources of social tension and conflict than the old. They herald especially in India a new phase of agrarian instability in which the discontent of the rural poor may grow and cumulate and may even provide the impulse for a radical agrarian programme in tune with a radical agrarian ideology.?     

Land reform and Agrarian change in India and Pakistan since 1947: 1

Analysing the class character of land reform in India and Pakistan the author makes a distinction between ideology and programme. Judged by its ideology, land reform in India is sharply anti‐landlord and pro‐peasant and is thus a mobiliser of peasant support for the ruling elite. The programme of land reform, however, serves primarily the interests of an emerging intermediate class of under‐proprietors and big peasants. This intermediate class makes a joint front with the rural poor to curb the privileges of landlords. But it makes a common cause with the landlords to thwart any prospect of agrarian radicalism turning into a pro‐poor agrarian programme. In Pakistan the conflict between the old landlords and the emerging intermediate class is not as sharply articulated as in India and land policy therefore had a more pronounced pro‐landlord bias than was the case in India. In Pakistan at best it denotes the tension between the old moribund and a new dynamic landlord class.?     

The political ecology of traditional farming practices in Thana district,Maharashtra (India)

This article attempts to discuss the traditional agricultural practices dalhi and rab, in Thana district, Maharashtra (India): in 1818, when the British took over the district; the 1880s, when the effects of the British land revenue and forest policies were visible; and the 1980s. It is suggested that the traditional system was appropriate, in the past, given the existing ecology and the level of development of technology; and that even now a well‐regulated utilisation of forest resources for rab may be sound, in the long run, from the viewpoint of preservation of soil fertility and a pollution‐free environment, especially in the absence of viable alternatives.     

The New Miss India: Popular Fiction in Contemporary India

Miss New India is the title of a 2011 novel by Indian-born (now American-based) Bharati Mukherjee, which tells the story of a young woman who leaves her small-town home and family to find work in a call centre in the information technology city of Bangalore. The call centre is emblematic of a ‘new India’, in which educated young people seize the possibilities of a global labour market. This is a generation for whom colonialism is ancient history, a generation who have grown up in the aftermath of economic liberalization in India. Chetan Bhagat refers to this generation as ‘Young India’ and has written a series of best-selling novels that feature ambitious young men in the ‘new India’. There is, however, an emerging genre of similar narratives written by women and addressed to a female readership. This article discusses a range of contemporary Indian women’s popular novels and argues that, while Bhagat and his male heroes may embrace globalization and the market, the narratives written by women are more nuanced in their celebration of economic liberalization. The novels dramatize the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and independence, and suggest that these are particularly fraught for young Indian women. These texts pick up on the discourses of contemporary journalism about ‘Young India’, within the generic form of the romance, but their resolutions are repeatedly uneasy and suggest that the ‘new India’ is not an entirely comfortable space for the new Miss India.     

Between accumulation and immiseration: The partiality of fieldwork in rural India

This article examines the dilemmas faced when pursuing fieldwork in rural India‐and, by extension, in the rural areas of any poor country ‐ in circumstances of sharp opposition between dominant and subaltern classes. Such research is all too likely to be geared to the concerns of dominant classes. The author has conducted extensive research, as a participant observer, in the Indian state of Gujarat, and has concentrated upon the poor, and especially upon agricultural labourers and rural migrant labour. He here considers the extreme difficulties associated with research which takes subordinate classes as its focus. When introductions take place via the locally powerful, such research faces formidable obstacles: both because of the mistrust of the poor and the opposition of dominant classes. The problems he himself has faced and his own research procedures are discussed in detail. From these certain general methodological lessons are drawn.     

the <Emphasis Type="Italic">conditions</Emphasis> of politics: low-caste women's political agency in contemporary north Indian society

In this article I analyse the structural and cultural conditions of low-caste women's political agency in urban north India. Whereas in Western feminist political theory, the sexual division of labour is considered to be a key constraint for women's political participation, I show how this has a secondary relevance in the context analysed. I argue that issues concerning the division of labour are intertwined with and subject to those of male consent and support for women's activities. I illustrate how it is often the supposedly ‘oppressive’ household boundaries rather than alternative outer spaces that, under a series of enabling circumstances, initiate women's political activities. Against this backdrop, I show how Indian women activists’ political agency is shaped by men's role, and how agency's relational nature is embedded in women's lifecycles, everyday practices and cultural expectations; in essence, in overall gendered agency. Comparative analyses between Western and non-Western models of political participation and discourse have only just begun. In this respect, I contribute to this nascent field in the following directions: not only do the arguments I present in this article challenge the individualistic Western subject of political action, but they also complicate the idea of the resulting empowerment as a culturally constructed process whose understanding arises from the dialectics between insider and outsider values.     

The Uniform Civil Code: The Politics of the Universal in Postcolonial India

This article speaks of a debate in contemporary India: that surrounding the validity of enacting a civil code that applies uniformly to all communities and religions in the state. In certain feminist arguments, such a code is seen as possibly providing a sphere of rights to Indian women that is alternative to the rights – or wrongs – given to them by the plural religious laws, which form the basis of the civil law in India. India, however, is a heterogeneous polity, encompassing a diversity of cultures and religions, some dominant and others forming minorities. Given these differences, some critics see the feminist call for a Uniform Civil Code as an essentialist move that prioritises gender over other agendas and politics. They argue that the site of the ‚universal’ in this feminist move is a liberal site that inherently excludes marginalised Others and benefits the dominant subjects in India. In my article, I contest this critique and question whether the site of the universal and its authorial subject in postcolonial India is, in fact, an exclusionary liberal ruse of power. I draw insights from the history of the formation of the postcolonial nation-state in India to posit an experience of the state and the universal within it, which is alternative to the Western liberal model. The aim of this article is, therefore, not so much to debate the in/validity of a Uniform Civil Code, as to address certain contemporary post-structuralist critiques of the site of the universal in postcolonial India and posit a departure from them, based on perspectives drawn from history.     

Agriculture and the state: An inquiry into agricultural differentiation and political alliances: The case of Turkey

The following is a study of the changes in Turkish agriculture and peasantry preceding the industrialisation of the country. This ‘stylised’ history of the Turkish economy between 1923–50 will illustrate our analysis of the dynamics of transformation and the non‐transformation of traditional agriculture. Although the discussion is specific to the historical facts of Turkish agriculture, we hope that its theoretical content will point toward a methodology for the analysis of the reciprocity between the policies of the state and class structure.     

The political and social basis of regional variation in land occupations in Brazil

Land occupations led by Brazil's most dynamic social movement the Landless Workers Movement (MST) began as a regional phenomenon. The south‐east and the north‐east regions were initially the centres of land occupations. The successful occupations in these areas were influenced by the origins of the movement, their proximity to urban areas with sympathetic support networks, concentrations of landless workers and the availability of vast areas of uncultivated land. Initial land settlements led to successful occupations in adjoining areas. Conditions which led to successful organising were later systematised by the MST leaders into a national strategy. Subsequently this strategy directed social intervention in other regions and created the basis for the extension of land occupations in regions beyond their original areas of strength. The extension of successful land occupations to new areas has been based on the ‘transplantation’ of leaders and the recruitment of local cadres who have assimilated the lessons of earlier experience. The MST has been transformed from a regional to a national movement. In the process, the MST has moved from a sectoral ‘agrarian reform’ social movement to a political movement with a national political agenda.     

Migration in colonial India: The articulation of feudalism and capitalism by the Colonial State

In this article a particular factual model of the way in which imperialism worked with respect to the Indian economy, which is widely accepted, is contested. The model in question assumes that though imperialism acts to transform agriculture—disintegrating and dissolving the traditional village structure—because it also thwarted industrialisation, backwardness in agriculture and dependence were maintained: the transformation of agrarian relations of production is contrasted with the stagnation of industrial growth, and the latter is held to be the causal factor. Against this it is argued that an examination of colonial migration reveals both the specific characteristics of the colonial working class it produced and the continuing existence of feudal ties of dependence in agriculture. The situation is best conceptualised in terms of the existence within the Indian social formation of feudal (agrarian) and proto‐capitalist (mines, plantations, factories) modes of production, articulated in such a way that the main costs of reproduction of labour power that was sold in the capitalist sector were borne in the non‐capitalist agrarian sector. The article concentrates on the period from the 1880s to the 1930s.