Paper short abstract:

This paper uses a unique data set from the Project on Agrarian Relations in India to investigate patterns of land holding, distribution of ownership and operational holdings of land across regions, castes and classes, and to analyse different forms of land tenure and types of tenancy relations.

Paper long abstract:

Land is the primary prerequisite for production in agriculture and the distribution of land between households is an important indicator of their position in the system of agricultural production and in the social hierarchies of rural India.

This paper is a cross-sectional study of the ownership and distribution of operational and ownership holdings of land in rural India. The structure of ownership and distribution of land, is of course, sensitive to local conditions -- to agronomic and ecological conditions, to farming systems, to local social relations, to the history of land tenures, and to what Lenin called the "scale and type of agriculture" in different agrarian regimes. Our paper uses a unique data set to investigate patterns of land holding, and the distribution of ownership and operational holdings of land across regions, castes and classes. It argues that relatively high concentration continues to characterise land ownership in rural India, though the absolute size of large holdings varies with the scale and type of agriculture in different agrarian regimes. The paper will also describe and analyse different forms of land tenure and types of tenancy relations.

The paper will use data from village surveys conducted by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies as part of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI). PARI surveys were conducted from 2005 to 2012 in 22 villages across nine States. Together, these 22 villages cover a wide spectrum of agrarian regimes in the country.

Paper short abstract:

This paper would deal with changes in the concentration of land ownership in a set of eight villages in Maharashtra State, India. The results of the paper are drawn from a larger study of agrarian change in these eight villages between the 1950s and 2000s.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with changes in the ownership and distribution of land in eight villages in the State of Maharashtra, India between the 1950s and the 2000s. Six of the eight villages resurveyed were first surveyed by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune in the 1950s. These villages were resurveyed by a team of researchers led by the author between 2007 and 2011. The villages were chosen from different geographical and agro-climatic regions of Maharashtra. Data on the ownership of land were analysed temporally across caste groups. Data on purchase and sale of land across caste groups were also analysed for a period of 20 years preceding the latest survey to understand who were the net gainers/losers in the land market.

There was a clear increase in landlessness in 6 out of 8 villages over the period between the 1950s and the 2000s. The rise in landlessness was higher among the historically disadvantaged and marginalised social groups, such as Dalits and Adivasis. Historical forms of dominance in land ownership continued to persist, and even intensified in some villages. Land market was active in the 20 years that preceded the survey, and primarily involved transfer of land between the historically land-dominant caste groups. In some villages, new dominant landowners emerged, but not supplanting the old land-dominant caste groups. Dalits and Adivasis did not appear in the land market at all, except during the sale of land in times of distress.

Paper short abstract:

Analyzing household survey data from a Maharashtra village in 1975 and 2012, the paper examines the relationship between family composition, wealth, and status to compare various conditions mediating economic change and to recognize structural factors affecting who benefits and who suffers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyzes data from complete village household surveys conducted by the author in 1975 and 2012 in one village in Satara District, Maharashtra. It reports continuities and changes in social differentiation by considering the size, composition, and property holdings of each household in relation to the village's class, caste, and clan divisions. Specifically, the analysis seeks relationships between the size or form of domestic units and indices of wealth or status. Household attributes take into account the unit of production, consumption, co-residence and property holding, along with nuclear or joint familial structure, the number of generations, and the number and gender of siblings in each generation; relevant indices of wealth or status include the size and quality of house and land holding, household amenities, occupational activities, education, and caste and clan affiliation. Attending particularly to changes in village residential patterns (especially new house construction) and land-holding (both transfers and fragmentation/consolidation), the study tries to discover the most significant factors affecting the differential distribution of material and cultural resources. By examining effects of these factors over recent decades, it assesses the extent to which class and caste matter for contemporary village social structure. This fine-grain longitudinal research will reveal who has most benefited and most suffered over the past third of a century, and its focus on class, caste, kinship, and other conditions mediating the impact of socio-economic change will begin to explain the forces that allocate gain and loss in an agrarian community.

Paper short abstract:

This paper tries to address the question of caste discrimination in contemporary rural India by examining differences in a range of socio-economic variables between Dalit households and Other Caste households, based on more than 12 detailed village surveys, conducted between 2005 and 2010.

Paper long abstract:

Economists of contemporary India have not paid much attention to the persistence of caste discrimination in rural areas. In this paper, we supplement our understanding of rural classes by examining deprivation and discrimination on the basis of caste, in particular, among Scheduled Caste households.

Sukhdeo Thorat has argued that discrimination of Dalit households in rural India persists even in market-based transactions (Thorat 2010). Discrimination can be direct or active, such as when a Dalit family is prevented from buying land in a certain location. It can also be passive or indirect, as for example, if Dalit households are not preferred for tenancy contracts or unable to access banks for credit. Indirect discrimination is often not recognized as such and is attributed to other factors, such as low incomes.

This paper examines deprivation in respect of household incomes, ownership of land and other assets, and housing and basic amenities across households in 14 villages. We also examine the relation between household incomes and socio-economic class and observed deprivations in selected variables, as well as the role of public intervention in mitigating group deprivation. While broadly supporting Thorat's argument, the paper brings new information, such as on level and composition of incomes, to bear on the issue of indirect caste discrimination. To our knowledge, there is very limited empirical work on this question.

The analysis is based on household-level data from 14 villages that were surveyed between 2005 and 2010, by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how different kinds of migration, and the devaluation of older agrarian identities, has affected agrarian relations and the dominance of the Patidar caste in central Gujarat.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how different kinds of migration (rural to urban, labour and professional, national and international) influence agrarian relations, with a particular focus on the Patidar caste of central Gujarat. In Sundarana, a village that was studied by David F. Pocock in the 1950s and that I re-studied in 2012, most young Patidar today aspire to migrate abroad. The ability to acquire an education and to secure a job away from the land (ideally in a foreign country) constitute the new markers of status in an extremely hierarchical society. Most studies of the Patidars have focussed on the ways in which this caste has historically moved from being labourers and farmers to becoming entrepreneurs and international migrants. However, these instances of success have overshadowed the ways in which young Patidar at the 'lower' level of the caste struggle to find a place for themselves in the village and the world. Education and migration often fail to transform into social mobility. Considering both 'higher' and 'lower' layers of the caste, this paper explores how the devaluation of older agrarian identities has affected intra-caste relations and the the dominance of the Patidar in central Gujarat.

Paper short abstract:

This restudy of the village Bisipada in Highland Odisha, India, studied by F.G. Bailey in the 1950s, analyses qualitative and quantitative data regarding changed agrarian relations.

Paper long abstract:

F.G. Bailey conducted fieldwork in the village Bisipada in the 1950s. Sixty years later, I have been working in the same village and asking similar questions. Bailey investigated how the state influenced village life through law, tax and work. He suggested that the “administrative frontier” of the state remained, in many respects, outside of the village. Today, the situation has changed as state structures have profoundly transformed the social organisation of the village. Particular governmental schemes aimed at guaranteeing employment, boosting agriculture, improving medical and educational facilities and empowering women have found their way into the daily lives of villagers. The paper presents a quantitative survey and qualitative data in relation to the data we have from Bailey. It analyses the crucial question of how agrarian relations have been transformed by the advancing “administrative frontier” of the state.

Paper short abstract:

We examine diversification of employment, earnings and incomes among hired manual worker households in a cross-section of Indian villages. These aspects are examined in the context of the supply of labour, labour absorption in agriculture and the prevalence of different types of wage contracts.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines diversification of employment, earnings and incomes among hired manual worker households, where household is considered as unit of analysis, in a cross-section of Indian villages. The workers from the class of hired manual worker household constitute the largest single component of India's work force. The data on which this article is based come from village surveys undertaken by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies between 2006 and 2010. The villages studied cover diverse agro-economic zones of the country and allow a comparative analysis of the condition of manual workers in different agrarian regimes on the aspects mentioned above.

Employment and earnings, here, are examined in the context of issues of the demand and supply of labour, and different types of contracts between employers and employees. On labour use, this paper deals with the gender division of labour in employment. This paper, with help of primary data, tries to identify role of different factors on number of days of employment of workers, of the hired manual worker. It also examines wage forms and wage rates in agriculture, and gender differentials in wages.

Hired manual worker households derived income from various sources, including wage employment, crop production, animal resources, salaries, business and trade, pensions, remittances, scholarships and other sources. The major argument of this paper is that the hired manual worker households require diverse sources of income to ensure minimum level of income. The paper examines diversification of incomes of manual worker households and specific patterns of diversification across villages.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is based on a re-survey of Zanjiya village in Gondia district of Maharashtra. This paper attempts to analyse some aspects of labour and employment at the level of one village between 1957 and 2007.

Paper long abstract:

This paper deals with some aspects of labour and employment in agriculture at the level of one village in eastern Maharashtra. It is based on data collected from a re-survey of Zanjiya village in Gondia district, which was part of larger research project on agrarian change in eight villages of Maharashtra, based at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. This paper tries to address the following issues: a) changes in the distribution of work force; b) changes in labour absorption and family labour use in paddy cultivation; c) average number of days of employment in agricultural and non-agricultural activities; and d) growing sector of non-agricultural employment for daily wage labourers. Over the period of fifty years, the dependency on agriculture in terms of source of employment declined sharply. High-yielding Varieties and the modern cultivation patterns increased the average number of days of labour required for paddy cultivation in the village. However, such an increase in labour absorption did not reflect on the average number of days of agricultural employment for agricultural labourers. Outside agriculture, wage labourers from the village were pulled by two main driving forces in the nearby towns: i.e., bricks-kilns and construction work. As a result, the overall number of days of employment (in agriculture and non-agriculture) per worker in the village increased substantially.

Paper short abstract:

Survival of labour tying arrangements, its re-enforcement and embellishment, increasingly experienced by the female agricultural class, emerges from social control and power within rural societies. Have such experiences under agrarian capitalism altered labour relations in Tamil Nadu?

Paper long abstract:

Debates surrounding the agrarian question in India highlight the importance of understanding the concept of free and unfree labour. This dual understanding of labour relations needs to be replaced with the notion of varied degrees of unfreedom and tied labour arrangements. These labour tying arrangements are a result of interlocking transactions that comprise of mechanisms of social control and power within rural society. The interplay of class and power relations needs to be placed within the broader political-economic system, in order to understand the formation and re-enforcement of labour tying arrangements.

Drawing from my field work of two villages in the district of Puddukottai (Tamil Nadu), I look into how structures of power and privilege operate over land to recruit and manage labour. In Tamil Nadu, earlier work (Kapadia 1994) on the region highlights relations between the landlord and labourer to be profit oriented, working along the lines of an optimal business transaction. If such is the case, are the labourers actually in a position to negotiate with the landlords and how does this explain the growing reliance of the landlords' personal knowledge of the workers, in order to extract work? This knowledge affects the extent of migration within this region, and the greater reliance on middleman to recruit labour; however this again can be traced back to older social relations that have been maintained. This paper will look into the relations between labour and land, and how these result in the growing incidence of tied labour.

Paper short abstract:

An examination of a substantial range of data 1950-2013 on patterns of work, land holding and inter-village relations.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will present quantitative and qualitative material collected during twelve months of fieldwork in a rural village in the Malwa, Madhya Pradesh. My focus will be on changing patterns of work, land ownership and intra-village forms of collaboration and dependence. The research is part of a larger project within which I had the opportunity to collaborate with the anthropologist Adrian C. Mayer. Mayer studied the same village in the 1950s and has returned regularly ever since. He has granted me access to his field notes and census materials and visited me in the field. Together, the materials allow me to present a longitudinal account of agrarian relations over six decades. The changing meaning of categories such as urban, suburban, peri-urban and rural are of particular interest to me. I assess the heuristic value of these terms as conceptual tools for our understanding of contemporary social and economic dynamics within the village-city continuum.