The Agrarian Question in Neoliberal India: Agrarian Transition Bypassed

The Agrarian Question in Neoliberal India:Agrarian Transition Bypassed?

JENS LERCHE

This paper re-interrogates the positions on the agrarian question in India, to reach freshconclusions about important agrarian policies of the Left, including that of land reforms.Internationally, the classical political economy approach to agrarian transitions has beenchallenged by positions arguing (a) that neoliberalism and the international corporate foodregime have led to a new dominant contradiction between the peasantry and multinationalagribusiness or (b) that the agrarian question for capital has been bypassed. It is shownthat most analyses of the agrarian question in India, including those of Indian Leftparties, tend to adhere either to the classical political economy approach, or their analyses areclose to the peasantry versus the corporate food regime approach. In spite of this, it is hereargued that an empirical analysis of agrarian transition in India lends credence to someaspects of the third position; that is, the argument that the agrarian question for capital hasbeen bypassed. The paper finishes with a discussion of the political implications of this.

Keywords: India, agrarian question, corporate food regime, agrarian classes, landreform

INTRODUCTION

Even though the modes of production debate in India took place in the 1970s, its influence isstill considerable. Core aspects of today’s approaches to agrarian issues in India as well as thepolitical stances of the Indian Left on agrarian issues are still rooted in the analyses of thattime. Granted, the Indian neoliberal turn a couple of decades ago and ongoing changes ofground realities have led to various adjustments that, as will be shown below, include at leastone very radical rethink. But many core characteristics of the analyses and policy perspectivesremain the same. This includes, in various guises, the characterization of the capitalist devel-opment of Indian agriculture as encompassing semi-feudal features; and a focus on landreforms as a main policy strategy to modernize agriculture and significantly strengthen thepolitical and economic position of poor peasants and agricultural workers.

That said, as pointed out by Utsa Patnaik (1986), the modes of production debate was alsoa theoretical cul-de-sac. As argued by her, it is more useful to return to the classical ‘agrarianquestions’ approach – an approach that in an Indian context goes back to at least 1949(Namboodiripad 1949). Internationally, the agrarian questions approach has regained promi-nence within agrarian political economy studies during the past 20 years. The intention hereis to outline important positions and foci of the general agrarian questions discussion andtheir application to India. Others have done so before me (e.g. Patnaik 1986; Byres 1991,

Jens Lerche, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London, Thornhaugh Street, RussellSquare, London WC1H 0XG, UK. E-mail: [email protected].

I am grateful for comments and suggestions from the participants of the workshop ‘Agrarian transformation inIndia: its significance for left politics’, Wolfson College, Oxford and from the Journal’s anonymous referees.

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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 13 No. 3, July 2013, pp. 382–404.

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

2003; Ramachandran 2011). However, with an eye to present developments, this paperre-interrogates the various positions in the present debate on agrarian questions relating toIndia, to reach fresh conclusions about important agrarian policies of the Left, including thatof land reforms.

AGRARIAN QUESTIONS

When Terry Byres reinvigorated the agrarian question literature from the 1980s onwards(Byres 1986, 1991, 1995, 1996), he argued that:

The agrarian question may be defined as the continuing existence in the countryside ofpoor countries of substantive obstacles to an unleashing of the forces capable of gener-ating economic development, both inside and outside agriculture. It represents a failureof accumulation to proceed adequately in the countryside – that impinging powerfullyupon the town; an intimately related failure of class formation in the countryside,appropriate to that accumulation; and a failure of the state to mediate successfully thosetransitions which we may encapsulate as the agrarian transition. (Byres 1995, 509)

Byres’ emphasis on the role that the transition to capitalism in agriculture would play inindustrial development was theoretically inspired by – apart from the classical Marxists –Preobrazhensky’s work on primitive socialist accumulation (Byres 1996), but it also spokeexplicitly to the Lewis Model (Byres 1995) and to the Indian political planning debate, whichargued that annual agricultural growth rates of 5 per cent were a necessity for the creation ofsurplus that could be siphoned off and invested in industrial development.

Throughout his comparative studies, Byres has argued that a successful agrarian transitionled to dynamic national capitalist development, and that blocked agrarian transition did theopposite. The nature and timing of each successful (and each failed) agrarian transition mustbe understood as a result of the specific agrarian class struggle, driven by ‘the kind of landlordclass, the kind of class struggle and the kind of peasant differentiation that were integral to the[specific] agrarian transformation’ (Byres 2009, 34). As part of this, he added nuances toLenin’s suggestion of there being two paths of agrarian change – ‘from above’ and ‘frombelow’ – as these broad categories do not enable an understanding of the significant differ-ences between the existing transformations. Different types of transitions from above andbelow have occurred, as have various combinations of developments from above and below(Byres 1991, 1996). See also Bernstein (1994) for a systematic discussion.

Byres’ focus on the necessity of agrarian transformation for overall capitalist developmentalso leads to a strong view on land reforms. According to him, land reforms may be concep-tualized either from a social justice perspective or from a productivity perspective. However‘just’ they may seem in the short term, redistributive land reforms leading to very small farmsizes are counterproductive when seen from the angle of the need for an ‘unleashing of theforces capable of generating economic development’. Small farm sizes hamper the develop-ment of productive agriculture and hence are an obstacle to a proper agrarian transition. Thefarm-size discussion has deep historical roots, going back to the 1920s in the Soviet Union(Chayanov 1986), as well as to a specific Indian history relating to the Indian land-reformdiscussion of the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. Sen 1962; Khusro 1973). It is generally agreed thatunder pre-capitalist conditions, an ‘inverse relationship’ exists where yield per acre decreaseswith increasing farm size due to the ability of small peasants to resort to self-exploitation.However, Byres argues that with the economies of scale of capitalist agriculture, linked toinvestments in new technology and machinery, larger farms become more productive by far

The Agrarian Question in Neoliberal India 383


than small farms.This position that in capitalist agriculture there is no inverse relationship hasbeen backed up by several empirical studies, not least from India (Dyer 2004; Rakshit 2011).1

Byres’ view on redistributive land reforms is an optimistic view of development that seesthe transition to a high-growth capitalist economy as both historically progressive and also aspotentially leading to better conditions for the erstwhile peasants who may, eventually, find abetter future in the modern non-agricultural economy than that offered by farming miniatureplots within a stagnant, backward, agrarian economy.

However, Byres’ ‘classical’ position on agrarian change faces two serious challengers.2 Bothargue that present-day capitalist development, especially neoliberal globalization, must lead toa rethink of the agrarian question. However, they differ substantively in what such a rethinkshould entail. McMichael and others suggest that today, the main agrarian issue is the struggleby ‘the peasantry’ against the international corporate food regime, while Bernstein argues,from a position within agrarian political economy, that the ‘agrarian question of capital’ hasbeen bypassed.

The first of these challenges to the classical position has its political and organizationalexpression in groups such as Via Campesina, GRAIN and the Food Sovereignty movement. Itargues that a global ‘corporate food regime’ exists, and that this is ruining peasant householdsacross the globe, creating hunger and threatening the global environment (McMichael 2008,2009, 2010). Underlying this is the continuing industrialization of agriculture, the fact that theworld market now sets the conditions for agricultural production and marketing, and theincreasingly dominant role of ‘food empires’ such as supermarkets, trading companies andprocessing industries in the food supply chain (Van Der Ploeg 2010, 99). This gives free runto multinational agribusiness near-monopolies, supported by the WTO agreements, the liber-alization of agricultural trade and the neoliberal rolling back of the state from its prior role ofsupporting national agricultural development. The peasantry cannot compete against this andare dispossessed. The upshot of this is that the classical national, class-based agrarian questionhas been superseded by a wider – that is, not class-specific – struggle against the corporatefood regime, in which ‘the peasantry’ plays the main role. This is a transformative process,towards a new modernity that will replace the profit-driven international corporate foodregime, transcend the class and accumulation perspective of the classical agrarian question, anddevelop a socially just and environmentally friendly food regime (McMichael 2008, 210–11,217). In short, the peasantry is emerging ‘as a radical world-historical subject’ (McMichael2008, 224).

This radical rethink of the agrarian question is based on a break with classical politicaleconomy. The vision of an alternative modernity and the identification of a unified peasantrythat will lead the struggle draws more on poststructuralist thinking than on Marxism: all socialclasses have the same enemy, namely the corporate food regime, and hence social classbecomes unimportant for the analysis. Instead of processes of peasant differentiation, it speaksof outright dispossession of the peasantry and processes of immiseration hitting all sections ofthe peasantry equally hard – again, unifying the social classes of the peasantry. Within thisframework, it makes a lot of sense that redistributive land reform is celebrated as ‘part of thecomprehensive alternative paradigm’ (Rosset 2010, 205); the issue is one of social justice for

1 In fact, the correlation between productivity and agrarian classes defined by the extent to which they hirein/hire out labour is stronger than the correlation between farm size and productivity (Rakshit 2011).2 Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Cristobal Kay list six agrarian questions that are different to the classical one.Analytically, however, in my view only two of these challenge the classical agrarian question; the four othersincluded in their list deal with issues of a different order (Akram-Lodhi and Kay 2010, 265).

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the threatened peasantry per se. The existing questions regarding the economic feasibility ofredistributive land reforms are not even discussed, as all types of peasant agriculture arebecoming uneconomical under the corporate food regime and land reforms can hardly makethis aspect worse. Instead, the main issue is to unite the peasantry (and everyone else) in thestruggle against the corporate food regime.

While one may disagree with the corporate food regime perspective’s break with politicaleconomy, it does address two issues that classical agrarian thinking are yet to deal with: first, inpointing out that small-scale agrarian production is subordinated to international capital inthe era of neoliberal globalization; and, second, in its insistence that it is necessary to think ofalternatives to economic growth based on fossil fuels.3

The second challenger also argues that with neoliberal globalization, the foundation uponwhich the classical perspective on the agrarian question was based has changed. However, thischallenge is mounted from within the political economy tradition. For the past 15 years or so,Bernstein has argued that, in today’s world, the classical agrarian question has lost its rel-evance. Bernstein distinguishes between an agrarian question of capital and an agrarian ques-tion of labour. The agrarian question of capital is the question of the transition to capitalismin which pre-capitalist agrarian classes and social formations are transformed by emergingcapitalist social relations of production; that is, the questions on which Byres has focused.Bernstein’s contention is that, by now, the agrarian question for capital has either been solvedor bypassed (Bernstein 2006, 450–1).

Bernstein’s argument is that the context to which the agrarian question(s) relates haschanged. First, the ‘agrarian question for capital’ formulation presupposes that a pre-capitalistagrarian sector exists. The transformation of this sector, and the specific characteristics of thistransformation, are seen as being of utmost importance for capitalist accumulation in general,and for the transformation of society into an industrially based society in particular. However,Bernstein argues that ‘generalized commodity production’ already ruled in agriculture acrossthe globe at the end of colonialism and, concurrently, so did ‘capitalist social relations ofproduction and reproduction’ (Bernstein 2006, 454). There are no longer any pre-capitalistagrarian classes to be the carriers of a transformation; pre-capitalist peasant and landlordclasses have, by now, been almost universally transformed into capitalist farmers, petty com-modity producers and ‘classes of labour’, all existing within capitalist social relations (Bernstein1996, 42–3).

Second, in order for agrarian transition to contribute to the accumulation necessary forindustrialization, national intersectoral linkages must exist between agriculture and industry.These are linkages between agrarian capital and industrial capital (often mediated by thestate), which enable transfer of surplus generated within agriculture, towards industrial devel-opment; and commodity market linkages, creating dynamic interrelations between industrialand agricultural growth, including a home market for industrial products. However, suchlinkages no longer exist, at least not to any significant extent. Globalization means that circuitsof capital and commodities are no longer national, but are ‘mediated by the effects of thecircuits of international capital and world markets, for each sector in any capitalist economy(central or peripheral)’ (Bernstein 1996, 42–3). In addition, it may be argued that withneoliberal globalization, governments do not have the power to implement policies enablingnational capital accumulation from agriculture to feed into industrial development. Moreover,most ruling classes would not even want to pursue such national intersectoral strategies, as

3 Regarding environmental issues, it is probably more correct to say that classical political economy has onlyjust begun to take them seriously. See, for example, Bernstein (2010) and Moore (2010).



their patterns of accumulation are also globalized, both for agriculture and industry, asopposed to what is assumed by the classical agrarian question model. Industrial developmentin the South today depends more on relations between Southern states and capital on the onehand, and international finance and global product markets (including commodity chains) onthe other, than it does on the interlinkages between national agriculture and national industry.Hence, accumulation within agriculture has been bypassed as an issue of importance fornational/industrial capital in the South.

The agrarian question of labour has, classically, been linked to the struggle for productiveland reforms against feudal lords, which would benefit parts of the peasantry, and to thedevelopment of non-agricultural sectors creating employment for dispossessed peasants.However, it follows from the above that land reform is no longer an attainable goal that canunite capital and peasants in a quest to create peasant-based growth and accumulation frombelow. Moreover, it is not only due to the disinterest from national capital that land reformsare off the policy agenda today. Bernstein argues that the agrarian question ‘from below’ hasbeen replaced by the general question of the relationship between capital and labour.With thetransformation – and thus obliteration – of the pre-capitalist agrarian classes that has alreadytaken place, new ‘classes of labour’ operating within a world dominated entirely by capitalistsocial relations have been formed. The release of these ‘classes of labour’ from pre-capitalistsocial relations has meant the formation of a modern, fragmented, reserve army of labour.Contemporary capitalism does not provide a ‘generalized living wage’ for these classes oflabour. Petty commodity production, be it rural or urban, signals the distress of the labouringclasses.

For all classes of labour, irrespective of whether or not they have a foothold in the ruraleconomy, the main perspective is to engage in struggles for improved conditions as footlooselabour. As part of this, land reforms might help towards subsistence by way of providingminiature subsistence farm plots for such labour (Bernstein 2006, 455–8; Bernstein 2007),even if this might be politically difficult to achieve. However, what is noteworthy, since theagrarian question for capital has been bypassed and hence the quest for the formation of ahighly productive agrarian sector is no longer on the cards, is that the objection to landreforms on grounds of reduced productivity is void and the social justice argument for landreforms dominates.

THE POSITIONS OF THE INDIAN LEFT

Today’s academic and political positions on India’s agrarian transition fall mainly within thefirst two views sketched above. This section will outline the main views held by academicsand left-wing parties in India, and their policy implications. Most of these views have theirroots back in the modes of production debate. As part of this analysis, programmes and policydocuments of left-wing parties will be discussed. Communist party programmes are not oftenamended; for example, the latest programme of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)(CPI(M)), from the year 2000, replaced a programme from 1964, while the 2004 partyprogramme of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI(Maoist)) replaced the 1970 partyprogramme of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) People’s War (CPI(ML)PW)and the 1969 document of its other constituent, MCCI (Maoist Communist Centre India).Here, such documents will be seen as expressing the dominant view within the respectiveparties at the time they were approved by the party. More recent views might be gleanedfrom later party resolutions and debates in party-related journals.

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In her analysis of the modes of production debate, Alice Thorner stated that while it wasgenerally agreed ‘that capitalism today dominates Indian agriculture’, the more disputed ques-tion was how to characterize the kind of capitalist development taking place (Thorner 1982,2063).

Utsa Patnaik explicitly positioned herself within the agrarian questions framework. Sheinitially argued that the most rapidly developing region of India in the 1970s, the Punjab,experienced the development of ‘peasant capitalism’ (Patnaik 1972, 5) and she developed amodel based on using labour exploitation to study capitalist development and class differen-tiation within the peasantry (Patnaik 1987). However, she later specified that this peasantcapitalism took place within a capitalist path dominated by ‘landlord capitalism’ with a ‘semi-feudal structure’ (Patnaik 1986, 791). By this she meant two things. First, she argued that theex-landlord class dominated agriculture and that this represented a ‘built-in depressor’ onagrarian development, as they would only invest in agricultural improvements when theprofits from these exceeded what they could earn from (a) absolute ground rent by way ofleasing out the land, plus (b) income from investing their surplus outside of agriculture.Second, she argued that pre-capitalist, caste-based, non-economic means of oppression werean integral part of the way in which surplus was appropriated.This meant that Indian agrariancapitalism was unable to deliver the kind of growth necessary to lift the rural masses out ofpoverty; its social base was too narrow and its growth rates, while not unimpressive, werenowhere good enough (ibid., 782, 786).

A similar kind of analysis seems to lie behind the way in which the biggest of the Leftparties in India, the CPI(M), views the agrarian question. Its programme from 2000 statesunequivocally that the ruling class is the big bourgeoisie, allied to ‘landlordism’, and that, inaddition, the ruling class protects and facilitates foreign monopoly capital (CPI(M) 2000, 34).

It is not entirely clear what ‘landlordism’ refers to. In most parts of India it appears that thereference is to capitalist landlords; that is, the kind of village-based, relatively small,ex-landlords that Patnaik referred to, who still own sizable amounts of land locally. Accordingto the CPI(M), these (ex-)landlords are now actively investing in agriculture, contributing tothe rapid progress of capitalist development in the Indian countryside. The characteristics ofthis modern rural capitalism and the role played by the different classes are clear:

the proletarianization of large sections of the rural working masses and a huge increasein the number of agricultural workers as a proportion of the rural population; theaccelerated differentiation of the peasantry; production for the market; the large-scaleeviction of tenants holding traditional leases; and increased levels of re-investment ofcapital in agriculture and agriculture-related activity by the rural rich, particularly land-lords, laying the basis for the reproduction of capital on a scale that did not hithertoexist. (ibid., 14)

However, at the same time, caste and gender oppression and exploitation by usuriousmoneylenders and merchant capital continue across the country. Most areas are dominated by‘a powerful nexus of landlords–rich-peasants–contractors–big traders who constitute the ruralrich’ and who most often, it seems, invest their ill-gotten gains elsewhere than productively, inagriculture (ibid., 14–15). It is unclear from the CPI(M) programme how important suchunproductive activities of landlords – and, in fact, also of rich peasants – actually are. Finally,capitalism is developing unevenly: some regions are still dominated by ‘old forms of landlord-ism’ (i.e. landlords who have not transformed themselves into capitalist landlords) and labourservitude (ibid., 14). It is unclear how the CPI(M) would label the development occurring insuch areas, and to which areas the programme refers.



What is clear is that this overall dynamic capitalist development has furthered peasantdifferentiation and created a sharp divide between the rural rich: ‘the landlords, capitalistfarmers, rich peasants and their allies’ and ‘the mass of the peasantry, mainly agriculturalworkers, poor peasants and the artisans’, leading to mass poverty amongst the latter (ibid., 16).This development has been exacerbated by the liberalization in agriculture since 1991 and theentry of multinational corporations (MNCs) into agricultural commodity trading in thecountryside (ibid., 15–16). The impact of neoliberalism on the agrarian classes was exploredfurther at the 2008 CPI(M) congress.This followed the unprecedented agrarian crisis in Indiafrom 1997 to 2003, following liberalization and a fall in world market prices of cash crops inparticular, leading to near-zero growth in agriculture and a much-publicized increase infarmer suicides. The 2008 congress listed many of the, by then, documented or at leastpartially documented developments: that in many cases cultivation was no longer financiallyviable; that land ceiling laws were being undermined; that landlessness had increased dramati-cally since the inception of reforms; privatization and cutbacks in procurements had under-mined the public distribution system and hence caused food insecurity; and that excessiveland acquisitions were taking place for sometimes unproductive special economic zones andfor mining concessions which, together with hydroelectric projects, led to ‘massive displace-ment’ of Adivasi (tribal) communities (CPI(M) 2008, 15–18, 32).4

The CPI(M)’s overall strategy is to establish a ‘people’s democracy’ in India, based on acoalition led by a worker–peasant alliance, but including all ‘anti-feudal, anti-monopoly andanti-imperialist forces’ (CPI(M) 2000, 27). Its agrarian strategy follows the same model. Theexploited rural classes – that is, the agricultural labourers and the poor peasants – are the coreallies of the working class. The main enemy is the bourgeois–landlord alliance. That meansthat not all classes belonging to the rural rich classes of exploiters are enemies: only thelandlords (feudal and capitalist), the MNCs and the ‘big bourgeoisie’, who together controlthe agricultural markets, are. The middle peasantry is not – and even rich capitalist peasantsare not, although they accumulate by way of exploiting rural wage labour and hence, asoutlined by the CPI(M)’s own analysis, are near indistinguishable from capitalist landlords.Opposed to the landlords, this class is seen as also being hurt by the liberalized market,monopoly traders and MNCs, and can therefore, in certain situations, become allies of theworker–peasant alliance. A similar argument is employed for those sections of the bourgeoisiethat do not fall within the ‘big bourgeoisie’ category (ibid., 34–6).

A core objective of the ‘people’s democracy’ is to abolish landlordism and implementradical land reforms for agricultural labourers and poor peasants. This would be accompaniedby other reforms freeing the producers from exploitation by traders and MNCs, and securingproper wages and social security for agricultural workers etc. (ibid., 31).

The party programme does not set out policy demands for the immediate future, beforethe achievement of ‘people’s democracy’, but the party’s 2008 policy resolution does. Herethe government is critiqued for not having implemented the National Commission ofFarmers’ recommendation for the allocation of 1 hectare of land to all landless households, aswell as a raft of other agriculture-related policies. This is raised together with a number ofother issues, including Dalit rights, gender rights, rights of ‘tribal’ people [Adivasis], Muslimrights, the right to education and health, environmental issues and so on, without anyprioritization amongst them (CPI(M) 2008). In June 2011, the CPI(M) website listed its maincampaigns as (a) price rises and food security and (b) solidarity with West Bengal (CPI(M)

4 It should be noted that the CPI(M), given its classical focus on industrialisation and agrarian transition, onlystated that they were against unproductive SEZs.

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n.d.), while throughout the past decade activists and academics close to the CPI(M) haveplayed major roles in the campaigns for a National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREGA)and for a comprehensive social security legislation.

Overall, the CPI(M) views the agrarian transition along the same classical lines as thoseoutlined by Byres, with a not dissimilar focus on the role of the landlord class and oncapitalist developments from within the peasantry, related to and increasing peasant differen-tiation. To this is added the struggle against imperialism, but this does not change the overallanalysis. However, the CPI(M) analysis differs fundamentally from the classical agrarian transi-tion approach concerning land reforms.The CPI(M) sees radical redistributive land reforms asa core long-term goal. It is notable that it is only landlords whose land will be expropriated.If the objective were to use land reforms to replace unproductive feudal landholdings withproductive peasant holdings, then a certain size of plot would be necessary. However, theCPI(M) is aiming for proper redistributive land reforms, which entails very small plots. Such aland reform is eminently reasonable from a social justice perspective, but not from a perspec-tive that is looking to speed up the deepening of capitalist growth in agriculture.The CPI(M)may wish to obtain a degree of social justice as quickly as possible, at the cost of not speedingup the agrarian transition, but there is no discussion of such contradictory perspectives in theprogramme.

Other, more extreme, left-wing parties also base their agrarian programmes on a classicallyinspired agrarian analysis.The Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) (CPI(ML)) analy-sis has many similarities with that of the CPI(M). Differences include that the CPI(ML)defines landlords solely in relation to their productive role; for example, capitalist landlords arelandowners who invest in modern equipment but who do not take part in the physicalaspects of production. The CPI(M) defines landlords simply as landowners who descend froma pre-land reform landlord family, while the definition used by the CPI(ML) corresponds tothe CPI(M) joint category ‘landlords and rich farmers’.The CPI(ML) also puts more stress onthe existence and importance of ‘feudal remnants’ such as extra-economic exploitation, anddiversion of profits into non-productive consumption even by capitalist farmers; and theystress the connectedness of the struggle against MNCs and neoliberalism with the struggleagainst semi-feudalism (CPI(ML) 2007).

The programme of the CPI(Maoist) – that is, the Naxalites – argues that capitalist devel-opment within agriculture is even less predominant. It states that the ‘principal contradiction’in India is ‘between feudalism . . .’ (i.e. not feudal remnants, not capitalist landlords butfeudalism per se) ‘. . . and the broad masses of people’. The countryside is ‘dominated bylandlords, usurers, merchants and religious institutions’. A second ‘basic’ contradiction isbetween ‘imperialism and the Indian people’: India is ‘semi-colonial and semi-feudal’. Thetargets of the revolution ‘are the imperialists, the comprador bureaucratic bourgeoisie andthe big landlord classes’. Redistributive land reforms are necessary, but again, it is only thelandlords (and religious institutions) that should lose land. There is little room for nuancehere, and the class alliances are as broad as it gets (CPI(Maoist) 2004). Compared to theCPI(M)’s analysis – that capitalism has made inroads into the countryside – the CPI(Maoist)understanding of semi-feudalism emphasizes the feudal structure much more than its partialtransformation.

So, there are differences between the above parties regarding the assessment of the rolesand strength of landlords and pre-capitalist elements in the ongoing agrarian transition. Thereare also differences regarding the impact of neoliberalism, and the importance of and all-encompassing character of class alliances, not least in relation to land reforms and the anti-imperialist struggle.



In addition to these party-based analyses, there is also an influential argument on theIndian Left that neoliberalism has led to fundamental changes of the objective conditions inthe countryside and that Left strategies should reflect this. An extreme exponent of this isVandana Shiva (2005). But in relation to the views of the communist parties, the views ofUtsa Patnaik, who is close to the CPI(M), are more relevant.

In an article in People’s Democracy, the weekly organ of the CPI(M), Patnaik arguesthat the neoliberal reforms in India led to the present agrarian crisis and that thefightback against this has first priority now. Neoliberal policies led to a sharp decrease inavailability of food in India, due to a move away from foodgrain production and towardsexport cash crop production, as well as to the rolling back of procurements for the publicdistribution system. Government and banks starved the countryside of investment,removed subsidies and support prices, and opened up agriculture to world market pricefluctuations, all of which, when prices fell from the late 1990s onwards, had catastrophicconsequences.

The steeply falling profitability of agricultural production hit all agrarian classes and hasput a halt to the rise in capitalist farming. The capitalist landlords who were at the core ofagrarian capitalism have reverted to rent extraction and money lending, while the peasantry isbeing pauperized. The ongoing ‘corporatization of agriculture’ is equivalent to transnationalcapital taking control over peasant production and to ‘imperialist domination of our peas-antry’. Contract farming and GM crops (Bt Cotton) is a part of this pattern, leading to‘sub-human levels of living’ (Patnaik 2006) as international corporations maximize theirprofits. Little wonder that land reform is not on the agenda for Patnaik. To her, ‘the landquestion has now become one of defending the right of peasants including tribal peoples totheir land and livelihoods’ in a fight against imperialist globalization. This is a fight for allpeasant classes, including the rich peasants, as pauperization of all peasants as opposed topeasant differentiation dominates (Patnaik 2006).

Patnaik developed her analysis further at a CPI(M) event in 2010, the Sundarayya Memo-rial Lecture in Hyderabad. Here, she argued that today’s agrarian imperialism is best analysedas a ‘new phase of primitive accumulation’ where ‘advanced nation corporations . . . formallysubsume the peasantry under capital’ through contract systems or ‘through outright landacquisition’. This complements the fight by the same states to ‘control world energyresources’, which has led to the biofuel boom and related food crisis in many developingcountries.The necessary counterstrategy is for developing countries to rely primarily on theirinternal market for economic growth, but also to avoid standard forms of industrializationthat, anyway, are uncompetitive in a globalized world and, instead, to preserve and encourage‘labour-intensive petty production’ (Patnaik 2010).

So Patnaik, who used to be one of the most stringent classical agrarian question analysts,has now become a proponent of the radical rethink of the agrarian question suggested byMcMichael. As for McMichael, all social classes except a very small layer have the sameenemy, namely imperialism, neoliberal globalization and corporates of the advanced nations: inother words, to use McMichael’s phrase, the ‘corporate food regime’ and hence social classbecomes unimportant for the analysis. The alternative for Patnaik might not quite be a ‘newmodernity’, but it is nevertheless national development of a sort that breaks radically withthe classical Marxist perspective. And the substitution of ‘differentiation’ with ‘pauperization’ isalso a radical departure from the analytical position of the classical approach to the agrarianquestion.

In many ways, Patnaik’s analysis of the Indian agrarian crisis is well founded, much of itbeing based on meticulous analysis of Indian food and agricultural production statistics.

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The difficult question is whether her interpretation of the consequences of neoliberalglobalization holds true. Has the role played by the landlord class been reversed? Has peasantdifferentiation been superseded by peasant pauperization? Are living standards falling; anddoes this warrant a new, non-class-specific development strategy, based on rejection of glo-balization and a turn towards a new type of national inward-orientated strategy based onsmall-scale production?

The third agrarian perspective, the suggestion made by Bernstein that the agrarian questionof capital has been bypassed, does not figure in the Indian debate. It does, nevertheless,provide a useful perspective on events on the ground. The evidence is that the agrarianquestion has lost much of its importance for capital in India. In the classical version of theagrarian question, a dynamic, capitalist agrarian sector was expected to provide the capitalneeded for industrial growth, and the evolving agrarian bourgeoisie to provide a market fornon-agricultural produce. However, this did not happen in India. It is widely accepted thatthroughout the post-Independence years, weak agricultural growth put a brake on industrialgrowth. One element contributing to the high growth from the 1980s onwards, and especiallyfrom 1991, was that new sources of finance became available. International financial capitalsought out emerging markets such as India during the 1980s. Later, international financialcapital also became a source for private-sector investments in India. The emergence of finan-cial capital on the scene weakened the dependence of the economy on surplus creation in theagricultural sector.

The economic regime that developed in India from the mid-1980s was one of significantlyweakened linkages between growth in agriculture and industry (and strong linkages betweenindustrial growth and service sector growth). In an analysis of input–output tables for theIndian economy, Chandrasekhar summarizes the evidence as follows: the available input–output tables indicate that ‘in 1968–69 a one unit rise in industrial output was likely toenhance demand from agriculture by 0.247 units, which was reduced to 0.087 by 1993–94.On the other hand, in 1968–69, a one unit rise in industry was to cause 0.237 units demandfrom the service sector, which increased to 0.457 units in 1993–94’ (Chandrasekhar 2007,5–6). The weakening of the links between agriculture and the rest of the economy is alsoevidenced by the fact that the non-agricultural sectors did grow rapidly from the 1990sonwards, in spite of weak agricultural growth. The growth took place in sectors catering forthe urban middle classes and export markets. On the basis of this evidence, the non-agrarianIndian bourgeoisie does not seem to need to press for a solution to the agrarian question inthe classical sense; its functionality has been taken over by non-agrarian, mainly foreign,finance and non-agrarian markets. This, in Bernstein’s schema, means that the agrarian ques-tion of capital has been bypassed.

The overall economic balance between agriculture and other sectors is difficult to gauge.First, there are two opposite developments from the early 1990s onwards. State support toagriculture has been cut back, whereas the terms of trade between agriculture, industry andservice sectors have improved from the point of view of agriculture (although this hasfluctuated a good deal during the neoliberal period) (Deb 2002, 2006; Dev 2009). Second, itis fiercely debated whether, before the neoliberal period, state support resulted in a nettransfer of value to agriculture or, on the contrary, surplus was siphoned off from agriculture(for a review of the debate, see Jan and Harriss-White 2012). Hence, the combined effects ofpresent-day developments are not known and there is also no clear baseline from which toassess these developments. However, it remains that the overall tendency is a weakening of thelinks between agriculture and the rest of the economy, and this makes the absence of suchinsights less glaring.



ACTUAL DEVELOPMENTS

Agricultural Crisis and Growth

This section will concentrate on an analysis of the nature, extent and degree of transformationof agriculture in India. Concentrating on the neoliberal decades, the available evidence pointsto a more complex picture than that painted by the Left (and the more extreme version ofPatnaik) of an out-and-out crisis of agriculture. Following the severe post-1997 crisis, agricul-tural growth has recovered a good deal since 2003–4. Although growth is not as strong orstable as before the crisis, it is significantly higher than during the downturn. This is animportant finding, which is yet to fully penetrate the literature on post-liberalization agrariandevelopment in India. It is wrong that agriculture per se is in crisis in India today, and thatliberalization has stopped agricultural growth (see Table 1). A recent article by V.K. Ramachan-dran, in the CPI(M) theoretical journal The Marxist, also pointed out this development trend(Ramachandran 2011).5

In addition, there are clear regional variations, both in how hard the 1997–2003 crisis hitand in growth patterns since then. G.S. Bhalla and Gurmail Singh have calculated fromgovernment statistics that during the period 1990–3 to 2003–6, 6 out of 17 states hadagricultural growth rates of above 2 per cent per annum, while three experienced negativegrowth.6 The north-eastern states, followed by Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa, stand outas the states with the lowest levels of coverage of modern agricultural crops (HYV seeds).7

For technologies such as irrigation, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa are the worst per-formers (the north-eastern states are not included in the NSSO irrigation data) (NCEUS2008, 62, 65). Moreover, it is also well known that there are major differences within states;for example, between ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ areas. The regionally specific trajectories are important,also for an understanding of views on policy directions, including those of the variouscommunist parties, but cannot be dealt with in detail in this paper.

The agricultural growth pattern in India based on fossil fuels is, of course, just as environ-mentally unsustainable here as elsewhere in the world. The Indian environmental crisis

5 Among other things, the article showed that while public investment in agriculture fell throughout the firstdecade of liberalization, including during the crisis years, such investments have been increasing again, slowly,since 2002 (Ramachandran 2011, 55–6, 73–5).6 The + 2 per cent growth states were Gujarat (5.33 per cent); Rajasthan (3.21 per cent), Madhya Pradesh(including Chhattisgarh) (2.52 per cent), West Bengal (2.39 per cent), Haryana (2.30 per cent) and Maharashtra(2.13 per cent), while the negative growth states were Orissa (–0.67 per cent), Kerala (–0.80 per cent) and TamilNadu (–1.46 per cent) (Bhalla and Singh 2009, 35). The state categories used are the ‘old’ states as they wereorganised in the 1990s.7 In the north-east, Assam is the exception to this rule.

Table 1. Averages of yearly growth rates in GDP at factor cost in agriculture, 1981/2–2011/12

1981/2–1990/1 1991/2–1996/7 1997/8–2002/3 2003/4–2011/12

GDP agriculture atfactor cost (%)

3.8 4.9 0.5 2.9

GDP at constant prices; index year varies.Source: Ministry of Agriculture, various years; except 1997/98–2002/3: Planning Commission 2012.

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includes fast-falling water tables, increasing levels of salinity of soil and increasing soil erosion(Reddy and Mishra 2009). However, in the short run it is nevertheless more profitable, forthose farmers who can, to continue ‘soil mining’ through unsustainable technologies based onfossil fuels than it is to develop a sustainable agriculture.

The overall role of the agricultural sector in India is changing, slowly but steadily. In theearly 1980s, more than two-thirds of the working population were in agriculture and in2009–10 this had fallen to close to the 50 per cent mark (see Table 2). However, this changedoes not seem to form part of a classical agrarian transition leading to dynamic industrialdevelopment. In fact – as in many other developing countries today – the shift in employ-ment has been to the service sector and to construction, not to manufacturing, as shown byTable 3: the industrial sector excluding construction has been stuck at around 11 per cent oftotal employment in India since the early 1980s. GDP-wise, it is also not manufacturing butthe service sector that has taken over from agriculture as the leading contributor to theeconomy (see Table 3).

Agrarian Classes: Landlords and Rich Capitalist Farmers

The question is, then, which social groups are spearheading this growth trajectory? Beforeinvestigating the evidence, the conceptual frame should be established. Bernstein’s classicaldefinition of peasants as petty commodity producers combining the role of capital and labourwithin the household is a good starting point. Patnaik’s class definition based on whetherpeasants are mainly net labour sellers or buyers, or more or less neutral, adds to this, especiallywhen linked the extent to which capital accumulation takes place or not. On the top of thepyramid is the class of big capitalist farmers and capitalist landlords who, while accumulatingthrough the exploitation of labour, do not partake in agricultural work themselves – at most,they engage in farm management activities.They will only invest in agriculture if this is moreprofitable than to sharecrop out the land and invest in other activities (Patnaik 1986, 1987;Ramachandran 2011).

Table 2. Employment by sector as percentage of total employment in India

1983 1993–4 1999–2000 2004–5 2009–10

Agriculture 68.5 64.0 59.9 56.5 53.2Industrya 11.2 11.4 11.6 12.8 11.7Construction 2.2 3.2 4.4 5.7 12.2Services 20.3 24.6 28.4 30.6 35.1Total 99.9 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

a Excluding construction.Sources: Ramaswami (2007, 48) and Mehrotra et al. (2012, 63), based on NSS data.

Table 3. GDP by sector in India, 2011

Agriculture and allied sectors Manufacturing and mining Services

2011 17.2% 26.4% 56.4%

Source: Index Mundi (n.d.).



It may be recalled that the CPI(M) programme from the year 2000 singled out(ex-)landlords as the core group whose economic behaviour decides the extent to whichcapitalist development is occurring in agriculture.This is a questionable assumption. Since theonset of the Green Revolution in the early 1970s, numerous mid-ranking castes different tothe main ex-landlord groups have emerged as the economically dominant farming groupsacross India, groups such as Jats and Yadavs in northern India and the Vokkaligas in Karnataka.For example, Byres argues that it was the rich peasants that drove the capitalist transformationin Punjab, Haryana and West Uttar Pradesh, not ex-landlords (Byres 1991, 64). More recently,it has been argued (although this is yet to be supported by detailed empirical studies) that thecontinued spread of Green Revolution technology, including electrical/diesel tubewells, tosemi-dry parts of India, which resulted in between 42 per cent (Kharif season) and 55 percent (Rabi season) of the land being irrigated by 2003 (NCEUS 2008, 62)8 was, in the 1990s,driven by new groups of petty commodity producers seeking to transform themselves intocapitalist farmers (Reddy and Mishra 2009).

This said, village-based ex-landlords are also important in many parts of the country but, Iwould argue, not to such an extent as suggested by the CPI(M), and not to the extent thatused to be the case – certainly not if the above argument regarding the role of the dominantfarming groups is correct.9 Two recent longitudinal village studies from Tamil Nadu bothpoint to the decreasing, if still significant, role of ex-landlords (Harriss et al. 2010; and, evenmore so, Djurfeldt et al. 2008). Two other field-based studies from Andhra Pradesh and WestBengal have highlighted the continued importance of ex-landlords (Ramachandran et al.2010; Rakshit 2011; Ramachandran 2011). The two latter cases also showed that there is notmuch difference between the economic behaviour of ex-landlords and that of big capitalistfarmers of non-landlord descent: both groups, at most, engage in the management of farmactivities, not in actual physical agricultural work (Ramachandran et al. 2010, 24–5;Ramachandran 2011, 58–9; Rakshit 2011).10 Both groups dominate village life economicallyand politically; both groups seek access to state power and the corruption money that flowsfrom that; and both groups tend to engage in economic activities outside agriculture, includ-ing trading of agricultural produce and money lending (Ramachandran et al. 2010, 86;Ramachandran 2011, 58–60: see also Pattenden 2011).

Returning to the CPI(M), its 2000 party programme maintains that landlord family back-ground does matter and that, in India, capitalist landlords of landlord descent drive agrarianchange. However it should be noted that its 2008 political resolution does not mentionlandlordism (CPI(M) 2008). This may be due to its stronger focus on here-and-now issues,but it cannot be ruled out that this could signal the beginning of a change of its landlord-focused analysis. Taking a different direction Patnaik, on the other hand, now argues thatlandlord capitalists have reverted to ‘extracting through land rent and usurious interests’(Patnaik 2006) – that is, have reverted to semi-feudal activities – but she does not provideadditional evidence in support of this.

8 The irrigation figures denote the area under irrigation as a percentage of the net cultivated area across farms.9 The NSSO figures indicate that landownership of medium and large farmers may have fallen fairly constantlysince 1953–4 but by 2003–4, the 7 per cent of the landowners who operated more than 4 hectares were still incharge of 34 per cent of the land (NCEUS 2008, 4). However, while NSSO data in general is reliable,underreporting by large landowners is commonplace, due to the Indian land ceiling legislation, so it may well bethat the numbers and land sizes of large-scale landowners are significantly higher.10 That said, Ramachandran appears in places to maintain that ex-landlords and rich farmers are usefully dealtwith as two different sub-categories within an overall joint category (Ramachandran 2011, 58–9).

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Official statistics break down agriculture into land-size groups. Seen from a class perspec-tive this is problematic, as there is no straightforward correlation between land sizes and theextent to which farmers invest, accumulate and exploit labour.11 This means that case studymaterial is an analytically better source even though, of course, it is very limited in itscoverage. The evidence from both the village studies of Ramachandran et al. and Rakshit’sWest Bengal study is that the most productive farmers (measured as net income from cropproduction per acre) are capitalist farmers who do take part in agricultural activities them-selves but still are net labour exploiters; that is, they buy in more labour, either as wage labouror through sharecropping, than they put in by way of own labour. The second most produc-tive group is the big capitalist farmers/landlords, defined as landowners who either rely fullyon leasing out their land or who till their land using wage labour while they act only asmanagers (Ramachandran et al. 2010, 92; Rakshit 2011). It is also these two groups which, invarious permutations, have the highest levels of household income by far. There does appearto be a good deal of variation in this pattern.

Moreover, the case studies also show that even small farmers in agriculturally developedareas operate with high and, over time, increasing levels of productivity – while this is not thecase in the less developed study areas. In states such as West Bengal, which have a very highproportion of small and marginal farmers, they are important for the development of capitalistagriculture and are, in fact, delivering 86 per cent of the total agricultural output. In Punjab,by comparison, the figure is only 19 per cent and the all-India average is 51 per cent(NCEUS 2008, 54). Overall, the case studies support the view that not only are both bigcapitalist farmers and ex-landlords of importance for capitalist development in Indian agricul-ture, but so too are capitalist farmers who partake in the work themselves, as well as, at leastin some parts of India, the peasant petty commodity producers.12

Some landowners do still behave in a classical ‘feudal’ manner, with their main activity inagriculture being the renting out of land. However, according to NSSO data, in 2002–3 only6.5 per cent of operated area was under tenancy (NCEUS 2008, 56).13 It should be notedthat even sharecropping has its more dynamic forms, such as the leasing out of the cultivationof specific crops under conditions that ensure the highest possible yield, by way of thelandowner supplying modern input and machinery in return for a higher share of the harvest.

11 Apart from marginal farmers who are unlikely to be labour exploiting but who can, nevertheless, be engagedin capital accumulating production processes.12 Relying on size, the analyses would lead to different and sometimes confusing results. For example, a recentreport based on NSSO data supports the argument that bigger landowners play a role in increasing agriculturalproduction in India. NSSO data from 2003 shows that use of the most modern farming resources is directlyproportional to farm sizes. On the other hand, the data showed that medium-sized farmers also invested inmodern inputs and, regarding irrigation, this group is ahead of large farmers (NCEUS 2008, 17, 62). However,an article based on data from input surveys of the Ministry of Agriculture concludes that modern farming inputis inversely related to land sizes (Chand et al. 2011). Both NSSO data and Ministry of Agriculture data agree thatmarginal farmers are in the lead regarding irrigation.

The difficulty here (apart from the disagreement between the two statistical sources) is the confusion of landsizes and social class (which makes Chand et al. conclude that the inverse relationship is intact). This also meansthat land-size categories from regions where capitalist production relations have not penetrated deeply are mixedwith land-size categories from regions where the production process is more transformed, with what that meansfor further mixing of categories that are analytically different.13 This included both registered and unregistered tenancies, and land leased out by large landowners as well asland leased out by small/near-landless households (reverse tenancy). The states with a higher than averageproportion of tenancies were (of the usual 17 ‘old’ big states): Punjab (17 per cent), Haryana (14 per cent), Orissa(13 per cent), UP (10 per cent), West Bengal (9 per cent), AP (9 per cent) and Bihar (including Jharkhand) (9per cent); that is, a mixture of the agriculturally most and least developed states. This may reflect different typesof tenancy arrangement: see the main text. The data relate to the kharif season. The figures are based on the‘operated holdings’ category, as opposed to ‘ownership’.



This type of sharecropping, classically associated with ‘capitalist landlords’ as opposed to ‘feudallandlords’, has been reported across India for several decades.

Nevertheless, feudal landowners/landlords may exist in more significant numbers in specificstates and regions within states. The pattern seems to be that within generally less agricultur-ally developed states, the big landowners are not investing in highly productive agriculture.14

Variation within states is highlighted by the above case studies. For example, there was a gooddeal of variation in the extent to which the individual landowners of landlord descent of theAndhra Pradesh village study acted as capitalist landlords; and in the West Bengal case study,the ex-landlords of the more ‘backward’ of the two districts studied did not invest significantlyin agriculture.

Agrarian Classes: the Poor Peasant–‘Large Peasant’ Spectrum

We shall move on now to the remaining agrarian classes – the huge majority of the ruralpopulation. Conceptually, Bernstein suggests that capital today is so dominant that it shapessocial and thus class relations in a very direct way, even if not expressed through the domi-nance of ‘classical’ capital–labour relations. He suggests a new concept, ‘classes of labour’,which includes both classical wage labourers and those who depend indirectly on the sale oftheir labour power. With this concept, he encompasses all those who ‘have to pursue theirreproduction through insecure and oppressive – and typically increasingly scarce – wageemployment and/or a range of likewise precarious small-scale and insecure, ‘informal sector’(‘survival’) activity, including farming; in effect, various and complex combinations of employ-ment and self-employment’ (Bernstein 2008, 18). Classes of labour thus include those whopossess some means of production, but who nevertheless share with wage labourers the overallposition of being exploited and oppressed – and who, indeed, may alternate between beingwage workers and being small-scale petty commodity producers, seasonally or throughouttheir lifetimes. In addition, a dividing line within the classes of labour is the extent to whichhouseholds are net food sellers or net food buyers. As will be shown below, this is important,not least in the context of changing food prices.

Returning to the Indian context, Vikas Rawal has shown, through a careful reading ofNSSO data, that inequality in landownership increased from 1992 to 2003–4: the Ginicoefficient of ownership of land increased from 0.73 to 0.76 (Rawal 2008, 47).15 In 2003–4,landlessness (except for homesteads) stood at 42 per cent, an increase of 6 per cent since1992. In 2003, according to the NSSO data, 63 per cent of all landowners fell into thecategory of ‘marginal farmers’ (NCEUS 2008, 3).16 Few, if any, of the marginal farmersaccumulate capital through their agricultural activities. Most are best characterized as de factowage workers who receive a subsidiary income from the plot of land they own: more thanhalf of the income of marginal farmers is wage income and only one-third of the income isfrom farming or farm animals (NCEUS 2008, 4, 34).These marginal farmers are also likely tobelong to the ‘classes of labour’ as defined above, together with by far most of the landlessrural dwellers, as well as an unknown proportion of landowners with more than 1 hectare ofland, especially those who have been unable to invest in irrigation and the like.

14 For example, the use of HYV seeds by ‘medium and large farmers’ is lowest in the same states as where theusage is low in general: the north-east with the exception of Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa(NCEUS 2008, 65). See also Harriss-White et al. (2009) on Arunachal Pradesh.15 This calculation excludes homestead land (Rawal 2008). It also does not consider false reporting of largelandowners who wish to hide the fact that they are over and above state land ceilings16 The figures are based on the ‘operated holdings’ category. Another 18 per cent are ‘small farmers’ operatingless than 2 hectares (NCEUS 2008, 4).

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It seems reasonably clear that a large proportion of cultivators were hit by the 1997–2003agricultural crisis. NSSO data shows that in 2003 the average income for farmers operatingless than 4 hectares as negative (NCEUS 2008, 59).This indicates that even highly productivepetty commodity producers could have been losing out, something the Andhra Pradesh casestudy also documented. Some big players were also hit.The West Bengal case study shows thatliberalization of the trading in agricultural produce and the entrance of multinational compa-nies into the trade squeezed out at least some landlord/big capitalist farmers (Rakshit 2011).However, the social group worst hit appears to be the group of petty commodity producersaiming to become proper capitalist farmers through (usurious) loan-based investments inhigh-value cash crops, and who were caught out when prices crashed from 1997 onwards. Itwas primarily from within this group that the victims of the ‘suicide wave’ of the late 1990sand early 2000s came (Reddy and Mishra 2009).

More generally, the agrarian system is skewed against the poorer cultivators. They have lessaccess to cheap institutional credit, cannot take risks in order to invest in modern technolo-gies (the farmer suicides brought home what the consequences of that might be) and mayoften be tied in through loans to traders of agricultural inputs and produce, with all thatentails of higher input prices and lower sales prices. This has been shown to be the caseduring the past decade in parts of Tamil Nadu (Harriss-White 2008, 2010), Odisha (Mishra2008) and Andhra Pradesh (Ramachandran et al. 2010), as well as in a number of olderstudies.17 Where India’s government procurement system for agricultural produce is function-ing properly and the procurement prices are above the price offered by traders, it still onlybenefits those producers not debt-tied to traders, as Ramachandran shows in his case study.The public procurement system thus tends to support primarily the well-to-do farmers, andthat too in only a handful of (mainly original Green Revolution) states (Deshpande 2008).18

Commodity prices began rising again in 2003 and agricultural prices took off from 2005to 2006, leading to two price spikes (‘food crises’) since then (Ghosh 2010). While theextreme price spikes were linked to commodity speculation, experts argue that the underlyinglong-term trend in food prices is upwards (Lang 2010). The radically improved performanceof Indian agriculture (both regarding food crops and cash crops) since 2003–4 is likely to belinked to this development, even if traders (including multinational agro-businesses) mostlikely are benefitting more than farmers from the price rises (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh2010) and even if the (modest) increase in government investments also played a role in theresurgence.

Summing up, Indian agrarian production has returned to growth since 2003–4. This hashappened in spite of liberalization, direct exposure to multinational agribusiness and contin-ued deepening environmental problems. Major regional differences in investment in agricul-ture and in productivity continue. The spread and intensification of capitalist agricultureappears to be driven by capitalist farmers who also partake in the production themselves, aswell as by the class of (ex-)landlords and big capitalist farmers, whose involvement in produc-tion is limited to a managerial role at most. Petty commodity producers also play a role in thedynamic agricultural regions.

Neither for the present period nor for the 1997–2003 crisis is there much evidence thatbig capitalist farmers/capitalist landlords chose to revert to pre-capitalist production relations.

17 According to Harriss-White, an increasing proportion of well-to-do farmers around the Tamil Nadu markettown of Arni are now able to avoid relying on loans from rice traders (2010, 59).18 This price support ‘safety net’ works best in the classical north-western Green Revolution areas of Punjab,Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh (regarding wheat, paddy and sugar cane) and also has some purchase in thesouthern Green Revolution states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu with regard to paddy (Deshpande 2008).



While the miniaturization of plots continues, there is no hard evidence that the oppositeaspect of peasant differentiation, namely the economic growth of a section of the capitalistfarmers, is continuing, but the steep differences in income between marginal farmers and bigfarmers and the stacking of the agrarian system against smaller farmers does make this likely.The case study evidence is that big capitalist farmers and ex-landlords invest part of theirwealth outside agriculture, not least in illicit investments to become part of institutionalizedcorruption rackets siphoning money off government programmes. It is unlikely that all agri-cultural classes are experiencing pauperization, as some would have it. Overall, the conclusionis that while a large section of cultivators, from petty commodity producers to big capitalistfarmers, is strengthening and deepening capitalist agriculture, a much narrower group isbenefitting economically from this in a substantial way. This development has little impact onIndian non-agricultural sectors, apart from (multinational) agribusiness, which appears to besuccessfully appropriating some of the agrarian profits.

The Labouring Poor

As already mentioned, NSSO data shows that in 2002–3 the average marginal and smallfarmer household had a negative income and often survived on credit. Poverty increased withsmaller size of landholding and also relative to low caste and religious minority status’(NCEUS 2008, 12–13). The continued capitalist development in agriculture clearly did notbenefit the poor majority of cultivators. These ‘labouring classes’ experienced a continuedmarginalization within agriculture and a compulsion to seek employment as agriculturallabour and outside of agriculture – where types of work on offer and remuneration also areregulated by the caste/ethnicity hierarchy, in broad terms. In addition, Rawal estimates thatmore than 40 per cent of all rural households are landless; that is, do not own any land otherthan their homestead (Rawal 2008, 45).

An important point is that the immediate interests of net food sellers and net food buyersamongst the labouring classes are not the same with regard to food prices/agriculturalproduce prices. Landless labourers, as well as small cultivators who are net food buyers, arebecoming de-linked from agricultural development regarding employment (which is mainlyoutside agriculture),19 while their well-being may well be inversely linked to price develop-ments in agriculture.20 This depends, however, on the effectiveness of the government-runpublic distribution system (PDS), which, in principle, supplies basic food produce to poorconsumers at low and constant prices, thus breaking the link between higher farm-gate pricesand consumer prices. Some southern states have an effective PDS in place, delivering in somecases very cheap rice to all. In other states, prices are higher and the system is functioning lesswell. Moreover, many basic food items are not sold via fair price shops.

For the labouring classes, a range of the policy proposals of the Left would be of benefit tothem. Land reforms would, of course: Rawal has estimated that with a uniform 20 acre landceiling, India would have around 15 million acres of above-ceiling land to redistribute (Rawal2008). However, even with the unlikely assumption that such ceiling land is located acrossIndia with the best possible fit between land and landless people, and even if such land wereredistributed to landless households only, this would amount to only 0.35 acre to each of the

19 Agricultural employment fell from 2004–5 to 2009–10, while employment in construction and servicesgrew: see, for example, Thomas (2012).20 The issue of food prices links back to the overall agrarian transition issue. As outlined by Byres, agrariantransition can enable capitalist industrial accumulation in a number of ways, one of which is the supply of cheapfood for the working class (Byres 1996, 138–9).

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57.6 million landless households. Even a small plot can be important for the subsistence of ahousehold; but is unlikely that (ex-)landless households would be in a position to invest inmodern input, technologies and so on. To return to the major debates within agrarianpolitical economy, whereas Byres explicitly opposed such ‘unproductive’ reforms, they fitwithin the subsistence reforms for the classes of labour discussed by Bernstein.

Rawal’s figures are based on the expropriation of land from all large landowners, not onlyfrom ex-landlords – which makes sense given that there is not much that that separates thesetwo groups in class terms. Politically, land-reform initiatives aiming at securing homesteadplots for the landless are supported by leftist movements, as well as by the Gandhian JanSatyagraha movement. A land reform that secured homesteads for the landless would indeedcontribute towards their subsistence. However, it will be difficult to achieve even this. Apointer towards the disinclination of government to pursue such a policy is that the govern-ment’s ‘National Council for Land Reforms’ (NCLR), which was set up in 2008, is yet tohold its first meeting (Roy 2012).That said there is some pressure from below for reforms. InOctober 2012, as a result of pressure from a Jan Satyagraha ‘march for justice’, the governmentannounced that it would ‘establish a draft land reform policy in the next 6 months’ (JanSatyagraha 2012a). A 2009 report from a sub-panel under the NCLRI stated that some stateseither have in place, or have stated that they will put in place, schemes to provide homesteadlands to the landless (West Bengal, Orissa, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh). However, it alsostated that ‘the lands assigned to the poor were mostly uncultivable and where cultivable landshave been assigned they were not under their possession’ (Jan Satyagraha 2012b).The questionis whether the necessary class alliances for such a quite limited land reform can be establishedat a time when capitalist farmers – and especially large capitalist farmers, who would beagainst such reforms – are doing well and are ensconced in local and state-level governments.

The Indian government is in fact involved in a land-reform related exercise at present.TheIndian government led by the Congress (I) party is seeking to pass a ‘land acquisition andrehabilitation bill’, which would, potentially, provide a framework for better compensation forlandowners losing land to infrastructural, industrial and mining projects, as well as for othergroups losing out in the process. This is a reaction to the increasing struggle against landappropriation. The passing of the law is criticized by many campaign groups and movements,and is presently also being stalled by pro-expropriation interests within the ruling coalition(see, e.g., Bharathi 2012). However, even if the law were both passed and properly imple-mented, it would at best be a defence against a further deterioration in the conditions of therural poor. A land reform improving the conditions of the landless is a good deal furtherdown the mainstream political agenda.

Another area where it is difficult to point to successes is the struggle against displacementsof people due to large-scale mining, the building of hydroelectric and irrigation dams, and theuse of hill tracts as military test ranges.This has primarily hit Adivasi people of the interior ofIndia. One estimate cited in a recent government report is that between 1947 and 2004, 24million Adivasis and 12 million Dalits have been displaced by such projects (PlanningCommission 2008; Rath 2006). During the past decade, displacements due to special eco-nomic zones (SEZs) have increased as well.

The pro-poor policies that leftist activists have been pursuing with some success during thepast decade relate to social security and food security. These policies deal with economic andsocial issues of relevance to the classes of labour without attacking propertied classes head-onbut, nevertheless, have transformative potential. The relative success of the National RuralEmployment Policy (NREGA) is well known. Even if, in general, it may be least successful inthose settings where it is most needed, its positive economic and political impact in favour of



the labouring poor in localities across India is well documented, as are the struggles against itby dominant classes who find it a threat to their dominance. However, while it is argued thatNREGA is tightening the labour market and putting upwards pressure on wage levels(Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2011), it remains to be shown that this is the main reason for thedocumented rise in wages (from 2004–5 to 2009–10). On the Social Security Bill, while theLeft’s efforts have led to a new social security law, the final law approved by Parliament lackedmechanisms to ensure the implementation across India of a public-sector-driven social secu-rity system. Likewise, on the food security bill issue, while the Left have also succeeded inpressing the government into taking this issue seriously, it appears that the result will be awatered-down bill, which will not effectively improve food security for the poor (Himanshuand Sen 2011).

CONCLUSION

India is not experiencing a classical agrarian transition. Neoliberal globalization has effectivelytrumped the previous home market–orientated development model in India, including therelatively slow ongoing agrarian transition. Today, agriculture does not appear to significantlysupport growth in Indian non-agricultural sectors, neither through capital transfers northrough the creation of a major rural market for industrial produce. That said, surplus valuecreated in agriculture does feed into accumulation of traders-cum-moneylenders, agro-industries and multinational companies operating in the up- and downstream agriculturallyrelated industries, and the specific effects of this are yet to be investigated.

In spite of the absence of a substantive classical agrarian transition, the doomsday scenarioof Patnaik and McMichael’s ‘corporate food regime’ has not materialized. A general pauper-ization of all agrarian classes has not taken place, not even during the 1997–2003 crisis.Instead, the indications are that the classical processes of peasant differentiation may well stillbe ongoing. Regarding the growth of Indian agriculture based on continued intensification ofmodern production methods in agriculture, it appears, unsurprisingly, that as long as worldmarket prices tend to go up, Indian agriculture stands a good chance of following suit. Its fateis no longer linked to the national market; and its links to world market prices mean that ina narrow economic sense, the longer-term trend is likely to be favourable.

It seems safe to conclude that, for now at least, the classical agrarian transition does notform the backbone of overall structural development in India. Capitalism in agriculture is stilldeepening, but in a manner that does not significantly benefit economic development ofsociety at large, as was anticipated by the classical model. For this to change would requirevictory not only in a battle but also in the overall war against globalization and neoliberalism,and would thus amount to a reversal of the balance of power between capital and labour.Thisis unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future. The conclusion could be that the agrarianquestion has been ‘bypassed’, as suggested by Bernstein. However, I would argue that ispreferable to state that only the ‘classical’ agrarian transition has been bypassed, as such aformulation allows for a continued investigation into the actual processes of agrarian changethat clearly are taking place in India.

In spite of the ongoing deepening of capitalism in agriculture, the CPI(Maoist) sees it assemi-feudal and emphasizes the feudal structure much more than its partial transformation.The CPI(M) acknowledges that capitalism has made inroads into the countryside, but attachesprimacy to capitalist (ex-)landlords in this process (or, at least it did in its year 2000 partyprogramme). The evidence is, though, that big capitalist farmers also play an important roleand, to an extent not known, smaller capitalist farmers and petty commodity producers do so

400 Jens Lerche


too. How much petty commodity producers in particular benefit from this is a moot point,given that the agrarian system is stacked against them. While the farm-gate price slump crisishit many producers hard, the statistical evidence is that (ex-)landlords and capitalist farmersdid not revert to low-productivity tenancy systems, even during this period.

The classes of labour, the majority of whom are not net food sellers, have opposite intereststo those of surplus producers regarding farm-gate prices, at least to the extent that no fullyfunctioning systems are in place to avoid the transmission of price hikes to them as consum-ers. For the classes of labour based in the countryside, short-term achievable livelihood goalsdo not relate to agriculture. Achievable and relevant livelihood goals are linked to wageincome and availability of paid work and food price levels. The focus of the CPI(M) andsocial activists on NREGA, social security and food security as goals on a short to mediumtime horizon has been an accomplished move.

Class alliances play an important role in all the communist parties’ strategies. However, ifthere is little difference between ex-landlords and big capitalist farmers, then pitting allnon-landlord classes, including the big capitalist farmers, against them for redistributive landreforms will be difficult. On the other hand, if this is acknowledged, then to achieve asuccessful alliance against both landlords and big capitalist farmers is evidently harder. Landreforms solely benefitting landless people are a more modest political goal, but alliances forsuch a reform might be more difficult to create, as fewer social groups would benefit fromthem. Compared to the pro-poor NREGA example, land reforms are harder to achieve, asdominant classes would lose out very directly if such reforms were implemented. It will also bedifficult to construct a forceful alliance against multinational agribusiness and against agrarian-related neoliberalism in general, especially for as long as farm-gate prices are improving.

Of course, it makes sense that leftist parties pursue goals that can only be achieved throughclass alliances. But the argument here is that anti-neoliberalism and anti-large landownerreforms are long-term strategic goals; for example, in line with how the CPI(M) views its‘people democracy’ phase.This goal would involve a break with the neoliberal world in orderto make possible the pursuit of a domestic market-orientated national industrial policy andthe re-establishing of domestic linkages between industry, national agribusiness and agricultureby way of a return to a classical agrarian transition.

It is not clear how broad strategic alliances for these targets can be established. It certainlywould require that it was also plausible that propertied and labour exploiting classes couldbenefit from such alliances. This, however, is not likely to happen, as the main politicaldividing line – not only as an abstraction but also in practice – is the labour exploitation andaccumulation fault line. In addition to this, amongst the classes of labour, divides existbetween food selling and buying. Both types of divide are mediated, as always in India, bycaste, ethnicity, gender and so on. Across the board, ruthless exploitation of the labouringclasses, as highlighted by so many studies, is the order of the day in India. It is hard toenvisage the labour-exploiting classes abandoning their relatively cosy relationship to interna-tional neoliberalism and opting for an alliance with the labouring poor, which would inevi-tably challenge the existing order.

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