Planting the Land and Shifting the Cultivator

Abstract

The essay will engage with the dialectics of land and labour relation and changing patronage relation to assess the multi-layered and changing relationship between nature and culture in jhum development villages. Shifting from existing literature and interdisciplinary theory on the subject, my central argument shows how hybridization remains a ‘way of life’ for many remote highland farming communities across the eastern Himalayas. Conjoining anthropological and ethnographic insight, the paper examines the lives of Yimchunger jhum cultivators and ways it has changed over time with the penetration of market, state and missionary modernisation projects. A new analytic entry point is to show how in the post-independence period this has taken a sweeping turn with the diffusion of balloting politics, decentralisation of development and donor driven agroecological programmes. Labour and land relations have both transformed from communal– common property resources to ‘private assets’ with different meanings attached to right and control over ‘land’ and ‘labour’. In this way the essay will engage with the two key themes of the volume:(1) agricultural work as co-production of society and nature; and (2) rural labour relations as elements of larger political and economic systems.