The Peasants, Agrarian Mobilisation, and the Movements to Reconstruct the Countryside in Liberalised India

The movement of the rich peasants in different parts of the country since the early or mid-1980s, and more particularly the movement of 2020 to 2021 which lasted for a long time and got attention worldwide or even the movements which followed after that, and the relative absence of long-drawn movements by the small, marginal peasants or farmers and the landless in the countryside may in fact give the mistaken impression that it is the rich peasants who have problems in the countryside, and the other category of peasants or people who subsist on land do not suffer from problems at all. In this paper, we contend that all categories of farmers or peasants in the countryside have been in distress for a long time, particularly since the adoption of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1991. One of the pieces of evidence is that a large number of farmers commit suicide in the countryside every year. As per one estimate, more than 16,000 farmers per year commit suicide, and this is due to economic factors like increasing indebtedness, etc. We contend that the crisis in the countryside is total. All sections of the farmers had been affected by it. As a result, all categories of peasants or farmers have suffered to varying degrees, and hence, what we note is that there are two different kinds of peasant mobilisation and movements in the country. The first types of movements are those of the poor, the marginal or small peasants and agricultural labourers. The movement’s voice demands related to their economic condition, for example, the demand of agricultural labourers for higher wages, etc. The second types of movements is among the more prosperous peasants, those who produce a considerable surplus within the rural economy. M. V. Nadkarni was the first to analyse these movements in 1987. The first types of movements is being led mainly by the Leftists, including the ultra-Leftists, whereas the second types of movements is being led by several rich peasant organisations in different parts of the country. Hence, the movements of both kinds in one way attempt to transform the existing order in the countryside. In this paper we examine the two different forms of agrarian mobilisation and movements in contemporary India with a focus more on the rich and middle peasants mobilisation and movement that had dominated all our attention in more recent times.