Agrarian Questions or Labour Questions? The Agrarian Question and its Irrelevance for Rural Labour in a Neo-Liberal India

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Jens Lerche
Publishing Year 2012 Issue 2012/128
Language Italian Pages 30 P. 76-105 File size 362 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2012-128006
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Classic political economists such as Terry Byres argues that a successful agrarian transition leads to dynamic national capitalist development and that such transitions are a result of specific agrarian class struggles. Decades of neo-liberal development has led to various challenges to this, including the view that today the struggle is between the "international food regime" and a "unified" peasantry. Another position is that of Henry Bernstein who argues that national-level agrarian transition is no longer necessary nor possible for capital. Here, this is investigated in relation to India, through an analysis of both the agrarian political economy debate in India and of the agrarian development in the country at present. It is concluded that while capitalist development does take place in India agriculture, this does not add up to a successful agrarian transition which had indeed been bypassed in most parts of the country, at least in the foreseeable future.

Keywords: Rarian question, international food regime, agrarian classes, peasantry, India, CPI (M)

Jens Lerche, Questioni agrarie o questioni del lavoro? La questione agraria e la sua irrilevanza per il lavoro rurale nell’India neo-liberista in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 128/2012, pp 76-105, DOI: 10.3280/SL2012-128006