Accumulation by Dispossession or Accumulation without Dispossession: The Case of Contract Farming in India

Abstract

According to David Harvey, Accumulation by Dispossession (ABD) has become the dominant form of accumulation under the mantra of neoliberalism backed by the State policies, whether in developed or in developing economies. Using empirical evidence on contract farming in India, I argue that capitalist accumulation can indeed occur without dispossession. I show how a class of petty capitalist farmers (petty, in comparison to corporate capital) is encouraged to maintain its private property (land) and to enter into commercial contracts with big industrial (multinational) companies to deliver certain farm products at a pre-determined price. These companies have no intention to dispossess the farmers, and they do not have to. As a structure of multiple class actors (big business; capitalist farmers; rural labour), contract farming is a process that represents centralisation (and concentration) of capital and points to the ways in which agrarian and industrial capitals are intertwined. Contract farming as a form of accumulation is based on appalling working conditions of labour, including vulnerable women workers and migrants, on contract farms, and it exhibits much geographical variation in its occurrence.