Paper short abstract:

the paper seeks to analyse rural labour relations as part of the process of accumulation and diffusion of capital in rural areas. The paper further highlights that the forms of unfreedom in rural labour relation have changed over time and this unfreedom has also encroached into non-farm wage work

Paper long abstract:

In the Gang Canal region of Rajasthan, the cropping pattern changed from a labour intensive crop, cotton, to a mechanised crop, cluster beans. The shift in cropping pattern not only displaced workers from farm wage work but also brought changes in labour hiring contracts with large scale conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece-rate contracts. Drawing on a primary survey in a village from Gang Canal region, the paper examines the change in the agrarian relations in rural Rajasthan by analysing the emerging development in the rural labour relations. For piece-rate work in farm wage work in some parts of Rajasthan the wage rate is unilaterally decided by the landlords and Big capitalist farmers and is denoted as the 'village rate'. The manual workers have negligible or low power to bargain regarding the village rate. The conversion of daily wage rate contracts to piece-rate contracts has enhanced the duration of labour which involves a rise in the rate of surplus value. Access and availability of low wage labour facilitates the accumulation of capital. With the limited availability of employment in the non-farm sector (in both public and private sectors) workers are compelled to sell their labour power at wages which do not exceed the level of subsistence. The paper concludes with a brief examination of the agrarian political economy of the village .