Paper short abstract:

This paper interrogates the logic of the ideas and practices of 'scientific' agriculture introduced in British India over 1880s-1920s, by demonstrating how a productivist ethic critically transformed ways of understanding the categories of nature and culture, and their interrelationship.

Paper long abstract:

This paper looks at the emergence of a complex ensemble of institutions, ideas, and practices over a period of forty years (1880s-1920s) in British India, which produced 'agriculture' as an object of scientific knowledge and governance, by effecting new ways of understanding 'nature', 'culture' and their interrelationship. In tracing this vision, I take a close look at Famine Commission reports, J.A. Voelcker's Report on the Improvement of Indian Agriculture, proceedings of national conferences discussing the problems and prospects of introducing scientific agriculture to Indian society, and a number of manuals outlining ways to improve the productivity of the soil, through scientific uses of manure, seeds, and agricultural implements. Across these textual sites, I show how a new ethic of productivity got designed, predicated on a re-cognition of elements of the world of nature, and the specific social forms of existence of 'Indian' people. Instances of this re-ordering would be a tremendous obsession with manure which led to understanding everything, including human bones, as potential manure, or a systematic framing of caste(s) in terms of different dispositions towards laboring. Finally, the paper looks at interactions between the Rice Research Institute in Orissa, and the local agrarian society to understand how these strategies worked at concrete and contingent fields. A critical unpacking of these early investments in the scientific improvement of agriculture, the paper argues, will help us understand their complex legacies, especially in the discourse of planning and development in postcolonial India.