This article analyses the impact of agricultural liberalisation on different farming classes in the region of Telangana in South India. The region has been witnessing significant growth in real agricultural output over the last 15 years. At the same time, as NSS (National Sample Survey) household survey data indicate, there have been significant welfare declines not only for marginal farmers and landless labour, but for other groups as well. There have also been more than a thousand farmer suicides between 1998 and 2002. I argue in this article that during the liberalisation period, that is, post 1990, agricultural growth and increased distress have become mutually intertwined. I use the terms, growth-inducing distress and distress-inducing growth to explain this apparent paradox.
This article discusses credit and marketing arrangements for small farmers in developing countries. The authors draw on the mixed experience with agricultural cooperatives in developing countries to present the design of a credit and marketing cooperative. The authors argue that in conjunction with other state policies, this arrangement works better for small farmers than other alternatives, in particular corporate ones.
Since liberalization, urban migration in India has increased in quantity, but also changed in quality, with permanent marriage migration and temporary, circular employment migration rising, even as permanent economic migration remains stagnant. This chapter understands internal migration in India to be a reordering of productive and reproductive labor that signifies a deep transformation of society. The chapter argues that this transformation is a response to three overlapping crises: an agrarian crisis, an employment crisis, and a crisis of social reproduction. These are not crises for capitalist accumulation, which they enable. Rather, they make it impossible for a majority of Indians to achieve stable, rooted livelihoods.
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