Paper short abstract:

Against arguments of an overarching crisis for farmers under liberalisation, this paper unpacks the processes sustaining and exacerbating agrarian inequalities in northwest. It shows that capitalist farmers continue to accumulate and this poses challenges for progressive agrarian politics.

Paper long abstract:

Even as the mainstream discourse of the Left in India, and to some extent globally, is of farmers in crisis under neoliberal globalisation, there is growing evidence that the crisis does not extend across all classes of farmers. Rooted in agrarian political economy and based on research on capitalist farmers in northwest India, this paper argues that capital accumulation is ongoing but is also exacerbating socio-economic inequalities in the countryside. Drawing on a year of doctoral fieldwork conducted in 2014-15 in one major market town and surrounding villages in Punjab, India, the paper will unpack the processes through which agrarian inequality is sustained and increased. It will focus on the production and marketing dynamics of multiple commodities, the relations between farmers and traders (including corporate agri-businesses), and land and credit relations. It will show how these relations and processes are resulting in growing inequalities and class differentiation not only between large and small farmers, but also within the rural elite, i.e. between large farmers and agricultural traders. I will combine this with an analysis of how caste dynamics, in particular the relations between and within agrarian and mercantile castes, can work to obfuscate or reinforce class hierarchies. Finally, given the focus of mainstream political and policy discourse on small farmers, this paper will reflect on the challenges for progressive agrarian politics.