Agrarian Crisis and Agrarian Questions in India

Lerche, Jens

Abstract

The Indian government, academics and farmers all agree: Indian agriculture is in crisis. Annual agricultural growth rates fell to an all time low of 0.6 per cent per year during 1994/95–2004/05, usurious moneylending has made a comeback in the countryside and there has been a series of highly publicised farmer suicides. Newspaper articles, government reports and academic publications discuss the reasons for the crisis, and policy suggestions are being made demanding changes in neoliberal government policies for agriculture.
Underlying these developments are larger issues regarding agrarian change in India, issues which are under scrutiny in this article. From a political economy perspective these include: To what extent has capitalism developed in the countryside in India, including through processes of class differentiation within the peasantry? What are the obstacles for a more dynamic development? To what extent, and how, has agriculture contributed to overall capitalist accumulation and development in India? How has this changed the position of rural labour?

Citation

Lerche, J. (2011). Agrarian Crisis and Agrarian Questions in India. Journal of Agrarian Change, 11(1), 104-118. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2010.00295.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Mar 8, 2012
• Journal: Journal of Agrarian Change
• Print ISSN: 1471-0358
• Electronic ISSN: 1471-0366
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 104-118
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2010.00295.x