Agrarian Crises in Contemporary India: Some Sociological Reflections

Abstract

Agriculture in India has never been smooth sailing, as it is always confronted with one or the other problems. The life of the peasants being largely dependent upon agriculture has never been easy as his livelihood is determined by several social and environmental factors. Exploitation of the peasants by the merchants, middleman, money lenders etc., gamble with monsoon and inadequate irrigation, crop diseases, costly agricultural inputs, fluctuating and unremunerative agricultur al inputs, smallholdings, low yield from land are some of the important problems of agriculture. Above all, a dualistic kind of development model, and ineffective implementation of the government policies and programmes have deepened the miseries of the peasants and widened the gap between rich, middle, small and marginal peasants and landless peasants. Agricultural crisis in India is not something new. There have always been agrarian crises in India. These crises may be individuals specific, crops specific, class’s specific or regional specific. However, the nature and the extent of these crises have been changing from time to time with changing policies and conditions at both national and international level. Therefore, the statesmen, academicians, policy makers and politicians are debating this issue since long. In this paper an attempt is being made to trace this changing trajectory of agrarian crises. However, one finds a definite and steady change taking place in the villages in general and agriculture sector in particular. But these changes are either too small to make a dent on agricultural and other problems or they have created adverse conditions to the agriculturists.