In 1976, the political sociologist of Africa, Gavin Williams, controversially 'took the part of peasants' in an essay, the critique of which had farreaching impacts. Africa's common man was then a peasant. In this article, the method of his essay is used to structure a review of petty commodity production (PCP) in India four decades later. India's 'common man' is a petty producer. In neo-liberalizing India, PCP is numerically the commonest form of production and contributes roughly as much to GDP as the corporate sector. Reproducing by multiplication rather than accumulation, it drives growth in Indian livelihoods. Without pretence to being exhaustive, the article uses eclectic micro-level literatures to explore the internal logics of PCP (found to be varied), the circuits and relations of exchange in which PCP fails to accumulate (also very varied), the state's economic project for PCP (incoherent), and the politics of PCP (mediated, marginalized and divisive).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.