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Is everybody in crisis?
Who is in crisis?
1997 onwards
The period of neo-liberal reforms has
seen a significant curtailment of
purchasing power in the hands of the
working people, especially in rural
India, which has caused growing
distress on the one hand and an
accumulation of unwanted
foodstocks in the hands of the
government on the other.
Patnaik 2003
First suicide
Lee Kyung-Hae, a south Korean
farmer was the first farmer who
committed suicide.
WTO Kills
farmers
Suicides
Cumulative 16-year total from 1995 when
the National Crime Records Bureau started recording farm
suicide data
Formal definition
Farmers are those who work in
agriculture for more than 150 days per
year or those who have 50 percent of
income from agriculture are to be
categorised as a farmer in India?
lots of ambiguity.
First two are net exploiters of labour, the next two combine self
cultivation and hired labour.
The landlord class is reluctant to invest in agricultural modernisation
since profits in agriculture are lower than that earned from investing
surplus in non agricultural sector and rent from leasing out land
upper middle peasants generate surplus;
Poor peasant and wage labour: no ownership of land and sustain
themselves through selling labour alone.
Capitalist farmers
Byres (1981) argues that a new capitalist farmer class
developed in India, as capitalist production and peasant
differentiation took root.
A capitalist farmer is one who may originate from a big or
middle farmer background but has adopted technological
innovation to make agriculture profitable, investing surplus to
upgrade capitalist production, sees agriculture as important to
accumulation even if they have other means of income and do
not undertake self cultivation.
characteristics
The landlords are those who are urban-bound and do not have
stakes in the rural sector. They earn from farming but the
surplus is diverted to the urban sector.
Ramchandran, Rawal and Swaminathan (2010)
landlord households have the largest holdings and their land
is of high quality.
Cultivation does not involve participation of family members.
Enjoy land monopoly, hence economically dominant, but
given their high social status and direct or indirect access to
political power, they also dominate traditional social and
modern political structures.
Gentleman farmers
Gentleman farmers are those who invest surplus
generated from other sectors in agriculture. Their
holdings size vary, starting from 5 acres of land.
They have made good use of the opening up of
borders since liberalisation by investing in high
value crops, oriented towards export market.
Speculation is one thing that they understand and
maneuver well, thus selling their produce when
prices are high.