This inaugural essay surveys themes and approaches in agrarian political economy over the last three decades, especially with reference to contributions to, and debates in, the Journal of Peasant Studies of which T. J. Byres was editor from 1973 to 2000 and Henry Bernstein editor from 1985 to 2000. We indicate intellectual strengths and lacunae, new approaches to longstanding issues, and new concerns which emerged over that period, and which inform the project of this new Journal of Agrarian Change and the challenges it presents.

From Peasant Studies to Agrarian Change

This article considers the capacity of formal education to undermine established processes of caste and class reproduction in an area of north India, with particular reference to the views and strategies of educated Dalit young men. It draws on quantitative and qualitative research conducted by the authors in a village in Bijnor district, western Uttar Pradesh (UP). We discuss how educated Dalit young men perceive education, how they seek to use educational credentials to obtain ‘respectable’ jobs, and how they react when this strategy fails. Increased formal education has given Dalit young men a sense of dignity and confidence at the village level. However, these men are increasingly unable to convert this ‘cultural capital’ into secure employment. This has created a reproductive crisis which is manifest in an emerging culture of masculine Dalit resentment. In response to this culture, Dalit parents are beginning to withdraw from investing money in young mens’ higher secondary and tertiary-level education. Without a substantial redistribution in material assets within society, development initiatives focused on formal education are likely to be only partially successful in raising the social standing and economic position of subordinate groups.

Degrees without Freedom: The Impact of Formal Education on Dalit Young Men in North India

Corruption has reemerged as an important issue in research on geography and development, but there has been little research on the relationship between corruption and class reproduction in rural areas of poorer countries. This article presents insights into how low-level economic corruption actually works within institutions that are responsible for purchasing sugarcane in rural western Uttar Pradesh, India, and the role of this corruption in perpetuating material inequalities within rural society. The discussion is based on 12 months of intensive field research on the economic and social strategies of a dominant caste of rich farmers in Meerut District, western Uttar Pradesh. In this article, I note periodic rural protest against the government’s mismanagement of sugarcane marketing and corruption and describe everyday, disguised, and discrete forms of corruption that allow rich farmers to obtain privileged access to lucrative marketing opportunities. I also show how discourses surrounding corrup...

Caste, class, and clientelism: A political economy of everyday corruption in rural north India

This paper explores the spatiality of caste and power in contemporary rural north India. I aim to introduce the social institution of caste to a non-specialist audience and illustrate how caste is changing. The paper draws upon Pierre Bourdieu’s notions of social capital and habitus and the India-based research ofSrinivas (1955) andMendelsohn (1993). I argue that while caste as a religiously sanctioned system of resource transfer is in decline, caste organization and identity are important forms of social or symbolic capital for rural elites. Drawing on detailed empirical research in western Uttar Pradesh, I demonstrate the continuing importance of caste dominance in the reproduction of social inequality and relate caste to other axes of power.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3650669.pdf

‘A fist is stronger than five fingers’: caste and dominance in rural north India

Drawing on fourteen months' ethnographic field research in western Uttar Pradesh among educated Dalit (ex-untouchable) and Muslim young men, this article uncovers a crisis in educated people's access to salaried employment in rural north India. Against the grain of other studies of youth underemployment in postcolonial settings, we argue that educated Muslim and Dalit young men have reacted to their exclusion from secure white-collar occupations by embracing education as a form of embodied cultural distinction rather than seeking out “traditional,”“indigenous,” or “village-based” identities. Young men elaborate on education's value with reference to a system of differences between moral, civilized, developed “educated” people and immoral, savage, underdeveloped “illiterates.” Education has become a type of discursive “scaffold” upon which people display their ideas about morality, development, and respect. These narratives are compromised and contested and highlight differences in the ability of ...

“A Useless Thing!” or “Nectar of the Gods?” The Cultural Production of Education and Young Men's Struggles for Respect in Liberalizing North India

In the last decade the Bahaujan Samaj Party has established a strong electoral presence in northern India. It has been particularly successful in Uttar Pradesh where it has participated in government three times in the 1990s. Although the party seeks to mobilise the support of the ‘bahujan’ — the non‐high caste majority of the population — it is argued here, on the basis of aggregate and survey analysis, that it has been constrained by its excessive reliance on just some sections of former untouchables (Dalits). The Bahujan Samaj Party represents a significant social and political movement of some Dalit groups but it has failed to secure the support of the wider population of the rural poor.

Dalits and politics in rural North India: The Bahujan Samaj party in Uttar Pradesh

In the last 20 years politics in the rural areas of north India has been transformed by the emergence of non‐Congress parties with strong support among the prosperous strata of the peasantry Studies of these developments have placed different emphases on the importance of class and caste factors, as well as drawing attention to the existence of blocs of potential support previously alienated from the Congress In Uttar Pradesh (UP) the defection from the Congress of peasant leader Charan Singh and the formation of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal (BKD) in the late 1960s, has been seen as one of the most important examples of these changes in rural politics The purpose of this article is to examine the formation and initial electoral fortunes of the BKD in one locality, and, at the same time, to assess the applicability, to a local setting, of general explanations of the emergence and success of the party

Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

This article examines the basis of the success of the Lok Dal in electoral politics in Uttar Pradesh in relation to a wide range of indicators of agricultural innovation and change. It argues that the Lok Dal, through its political practice and electoral strategy, was able to create and sustain an electoral following across the state which subsumed many potentially divisive identities and interests and that the party is better understood as one which created and articulated new aspirations and interests rather than one simply mobilising traditional identities. It goes on to examine how events after the mid‐1980s produced circumstances which inhibited the further consolidation of the Lok Dal and led to major changes in the party political system in Uttar Pradesh.

Ian Duncan

Papers

Dalits and politics in rural North India: The Bahujan Samaj party in Uttar Pradesh

Party politics and the north Indian peasantry: The rise of the Bharatiya Kranti Dal in Uttar Pradesh

Agricultural innovation and political change in north India: The Lok Dal in Uttar Pradesh