Paper short abstract:

Responding to agrarian crisis, cultivators in Wayanad increasingly engage in the risky cultivation of ginger in other states of India. This paper engages the practices of and moral talk about ginger cultivation and argues that it is manifestation of post-agrarian, neoliberal agriculture.

Paper long abstract:

Responding to agrarian crisis, cultivators in Wayanad increasingly engage in the risky cultivation of ginger in other states of India. This paper ethnographically engages the practices and discourses of ginger cultivation. The practice involves the seasonal migration of cultivators and labourers as far as Goa and Maharashtra and is based on large capital investments and chemical inputs and entails the risk of total crop-loss and hence financial ruin. In this paper, I argue that ginger cultivation is a post-agrarian practice and manifestation of the increasing neoliberalisation of agriculture. Ginger cultivation is a purely profit based unsustainable enterprise that takes its toll on both on labour and nature. Wayanad's moral talk about ginger involves an awareness of the fact that ecological frontier of ginger is constantly expanding (due to the fast depletion of soil by ginger), the high degree of financial risk involved, atrocities against Adivasi labourers from Wayanad, and, most importantly, its intimate connection to agrarian crisis in the district. Ginger is not only a gamble but also a killer. Ginger is linked to the economic and ecological crisis of small holder cash-cropping and the widely reported incidences of farmers' suicides in the district. Speculative ginger cultivation has been a new avenue for accumulation to some, but an epitome of ruin an indebtedness to others. This paper deals with the role of ginger in the moral economy of agrarian crisis in which questions of globalisation, environmental justice and sustainability in India's post-liberalisation agriculture are negotiated.