Liquid Debts: credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India

This paper uses an approach grounded in political ecology and political economy to explain the social and ecological foundations of groundwater overexploitation and agrarian distress within semi-arid Andhra Pradesh It emphasises how relations of credit/debt have become intertwined with the tenuous social and ecological foundations of smallholder production to create a new dynamic of vulnerability across the agrarian environment. It thereby links cycles of groundwater depletion to the debt-driven survival strategies of India’s small and marginal farmers within a context of dramatic changes in Indian agrarian social relations over the past three decades. In so doing, it critiques established perspectives that portray the trend towards acute groundwater overexploitation as stemming from inadequate regulation or information deficits among rural producers. Ultimately it argues that groundwater overexploitation represents a common tragedy of debt-driven livelihoods within an austere agrarian environment.