The rural proletariat constitute a substantial proportion of the global poor. Leading better lives is central to their political practices. In this paper, I aim to elaborate the political practices that attend to these aspirations, interrogations and contests. I examine existing approaches to studying political practices of the rural proletariat. I do this with a focus on India, where the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is in force since 2005. I locate the program against the backdrop of neoliberal transformations in India. I then examine the ways in which the rural proletariat engage with the program, even when other opportunities in the agricultural sector are available. Based on these examinations, I argue that the practices spawned by the program are to be understood as 'encroachments' into the extant social customs, norms and habits of rural India. This perspective, I contend, is more fruitful than locating the rural proletariat's engagement with the NREGA as a coping strategy or a tactic of resistance against rural elites. The data which this paper draws on include official sources, in-depth interviews with workers in rural Bihar and West Bengal and ethnographic observations.
This paper makes an analytical case for the understanding of development as a process that enables people to reclaim their dignity and interrogate inegalitarian social relations. It is motivated by the ongoing debate within development studies between those who propound a teleological view of development and those who adopt the opposing view that the process must not obliterate historical and cultural difference. The former view is informed by an assumption that the human condition can and should be improved, and the trajectory of such improvement is predetermined and predictable. The latter view is ambivalent, not only about the possibility of improvement, but also about its desirability. Against this dichotomy, this paper urges scholars of development to consider that people might envisage that the social inequalities they experience could be reduced, irrespective of "improvement". The ethnography on which the paper draws cover show the way in which a group of agricultural labourer households stigmatised as "untouchable" -and alleged to be illegally squatting on public property-stand their ground violent opposition by local elites. While servility to and quiescence with elite opinion would allow them to "improve" their lives by relocating to a less contentious space, community members assert their ethical claims on the disputed property without flinching. They do this not because they like to live in squalid conditions, but because complying with elite diktats is an affront to their dignity. JEL Classification: D63, D72, P48, Q15 Vikas hua hai, badlaw aaya hai. Abhi hum jamindar ke ankhon mein ankh daal kar baat kar barabari se saktey hain. [Development has taken place. Change has happened. Today, we can look the landlord in the eye and speak as equals. 1 ] (Medha Devi Rishi, 32, Landless Labourer, Sargana, Bihar, 2 April 2010)Egalitarian effects occur only through a forcing, that is, the instituting of a quarrel that challenges the incorporated, perceptible evidence of an inegalitarian logic. This quarrel is politics.
Purpose This paper aims to analyse the change in performance of parent Indian firms (home effects) who have invested in overseas locations in recent times. Design/methodology/approach Difference-in-difference (DiD) estimate of home effects using farm level data. Findings Home effects of Indian outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), in general, are insignificant. However, in the case of OFDI directed only to non-offshore financial centre (OFC), some firms did enjoy beneficial home effects with respect to turnover, current ratio and leverage ratio. In the case of OFDI directed purely to OFC locations, some of the parameters exhibited negative home effects. In the subsample of Indian OFDI directed to combination of OFC and non-OFC locations, the results show positive home effects with respect to export, operating profit margin and forex earnings; however, impact on turnover seems to be negative for all the quartiles. Research limitations/implications Estimation of home effects using data over longer horizon may yield robust outcome. Practical implications These results make a strong case to draw a distinction among OFDIs to OFC, non-OFC and combination of OFC and non-OFC locations in studying the beneficial home effects of OFDI. Originality/value To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper which estimates home effects of different groups of Indian firms (based on their investment locations and size class) using difference-in-difference estimate.
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