Revisiting Senapur: Reflections on Agrarian Changes in North India

Abstract

Through a revisit study in 2013, this article attempts to explore agrarian relations in Senapur, a village located in eastern Uttar Pradesh. Research reveals that landlessness remains concentrated amongst dalits as does the continuing hold of ‘upper castes’ on land. When inheritance acts as the primary mode of transfer of landed property in the absence of market-mediated and state-mediated transactions, two results are evident: a decrease in the size of holdings due to the subdivision of property and simultaneously the land remains with the original group of land owners resulting in continuing group inequalities. Given this skewed landownership pattern, one-fifth of the total input cost in cultivation by the landless class is usurped by the landed class in the form of land rent. Another interesting feature of agrarian relations that is observed is the occasional rise in cash agricultural wages which accompany falling incomes from agricultural labour wages. The study also reveals that the ‘eradication of the small farmers’ is not a perceptible phenomenon in Senapur with farming families augmenting their income from other sources to keep their small farms going. The biggest change appears in the composition of the labour force marked by a massive movement from agriculture to construction in the last one decade.