







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 6(2): 281-284, July 2023 

BOOK REVIEW 

Political Economy of Farming in India: Chronicling 50 
Years of Scholarship and Transformation 

Budhaditya Das* 

Jodhka, Surinder S, ed. 2022. Agrarian Change in India. Hyderabad: Orient 
Blackswan Private Limited. 
 

“We do not want a solar 
power generation plant here. 
Our animals and nature will 
be destroyed. We eat rotis 
made of bajra and drink ghi; 
we are content. This will 
finish if the plant is 
constructed here.” An old 
farmer told us angrily during 
a recent phase of fieldwork 
in western Rajasthan. On 
another day, another village 
resident explained why some 
people seemed willing to 
give their land away to 
renewable energy projects: 
“a farmer who earns one 
lakh rupees annually from 
his land calculates that he 
could earn two lakh rupees 
if he leases his land to the 
company.” The dilemmas, 
opportunities, and choices 

 
*Assistant Professor, School of Human Ecology, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. 

das.budhaditya@gmail.com  
Copyright © Das 2023. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author. Published by Indian Society for 
Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic Growth, University Enclave, 
North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1017  

mailto:das.budhaditya@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v6i2.1017


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [282] 

of millions of farmers across India’s vast rural landscape have always been 
intertwined with our nation’s vision of progress, future, and modernity. 
Contrary to many expectations, agriculture refuses to fade from the national 
imaginary, even 75 years after Independence. Agrarian Change in India is a 
book that chronicles the journey of this occupation and its connections 
with the state, markets, and society in a changing world. The volume is a 
collection of 23 essays that have previously been published in the Economic 
& Political Weekly (EPW) over 50 years from 1965 to 2019. EPW holds a 
special position within the social sciences in India, not only for being a 
repository of some of the finest writings and thinking on political economy 
but also for nurturing sophisticated scholarship on South Asia. 

The essays are divided into five sections: (1) conceptual frames; (2) holding 
size and land reforms; (3) the Green Revolution and market edifice; (4) 
relational structures and transitions, and (5) emergent agrarians. Land forms 
both the base and beginning of agriculture and is the central element of 
several chapters. Economic and proprietary relations around land have been 
the principal basis for stratification in rural society. Chapters authored by 
Pranab Bardhan, Ronald Herring, Sucha Singh Gill, and Sheila Bhalla, 
among others, examine the patterns of land ownership and land reforms 
introduced by the postcolonial state within the broader frames of justice, 
equity, productivity, and the well-being of cultivators. Somewhat 
paradoxically, scholarly debates on Indian agriculture have built upon the 
insights of the remarkable philosopher of industrial capitalism, Karl Marx. 
The “mode of production debate” that unfolded in the pages of EPW in 
the 1970s and 80s remains a staple for every student of India’s rural 
economy. The fate of farming and the farmers within (and beyond) 
capitalism—or what came to be known as the agrarian question—is the 
focus of several chapters by celebrated scholars (Daniel Thorner, Sam 
Moyo, Ashok Rudra, Alice Thorner, and Barbara Harriss-White, among 
others). 

Markets are another focus area of the volume, in keeping with their 
centrality to agrarian life. Input, output, credit, and labour markets govern 
farm-level decision-making and determine profits and prospects for 
economic mobility for farming households. State attempts to regulate or 
intervene in markets—whether in the form of fertilizer subsidies, export 
and import tariffs, krishi mandis (farmer markets), or rural employment 
schemes—are driven by the agrarian political economy, global market 
forces, as well as a range of economic ideologies. Chapters by Ramesh 
Chand, Richa Kumar, Mekhala Krishnamurthy, and AR Vasavi focus on 
market policies, the Green Revolution, and their implications for farmer 
well-being in both regional contexts and at the national level. Finally, the 



[283] Das 

volume draws our attention towards farming communities and social 
groups engaged in agriculture and the heterogenous regional dynamics that 
shape the economic trajectories of these communities. Power, prosperity, 
poverty, and precarity are unevenly distributed within Indian agriculture, as 
shown by chapters on the farmer-capitalists of coastal Andhra Pradesh 
(Carol Upadhya); Jat farmers of Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar 
Pradesh (Surinder Jodhka, Jens Lerche, Anita Gill); farm entrepreneurs in 
Gujarat (Mario Rutten); and migrant, women, and Dalit labourers in Bihar, 
West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh. 

In its scope and coverage, Agrarian Change in India is comprehensive, and yet 
it leaves the reader still desiring a lot more. One wishes that more chapters 
engaged with questions of ecology, gender, and science and technology. 
Climate and ecological crises are now affecting farming livelihoods in an 
unprecedented manner, with climate risks increasingly inseparable from the 
systemic risks of agrarian capitalism (Matthan 2023). New technologies such 
as drones, digital transactions, remote sensing, and genetic modification 
have also emerged on the agrarian horizon. There is no dedicated chapter 
on water management, even though canal irrigation, river valley projects, 
and groundwater extraction are crucial drivers of agrarian change (Shah, 
Vijayshankar, and Harris 2021). Moreover, agrarian change in “marginal” 
ecosystems and ecologically difficult areas, such as arid zones, uplands, 
mountains, and forest areas (Bakshi, Chawla, and Shah 2015), remains an 
understudied phenomenon as the academic focus remains on fertile plains, 
river valleys, and irrigated tracts. As demonstrated in the earlier vignette 
from Rajasthan, agrarian change also intersects with the processes of 
urbanization, industrialization, and political conflicts over land and 
dispossession in contemporary India (Levien 2015). Articles from EPW that 
focus on some of these themes would have been welcome additions to the 
volume. 

These omissions, however, do not detract from the overall value and 
significance of the volume. Surinder Jodhka’s introduction provides a 
comprehensive and insightful discussion on the field of agrarian studies and 
is particularly helpful in tracing key moments in India’s agrarian history over 
200 years. Agrarian Change in India is an indispensable volume for anyone 
who wishes to understand Indian agriculture and familiarize themselves 
with the scholarly debates and theoretical developments in this field of 
study. 

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 

 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [284] 

REFERENCES 

Bakshi, Sanchita, Arunish Chawla, and Mihir Shah. 2015. “Regional Disparities in 
India: A Moving Frontier.” Economic and Political Weekly 50 (1): 44–53. 

Levien, Michael. 2015. “From Primitive Accumulation to Regimes of 
Dispossession.” Economic and Political Weekly 50 (22): 146–57. 

Matthan, Tanya. 2023. “Beyond Bad Weather: Climates of Uncertainty in Rural 
India.” The Journal of Peasant Studies 50 (1): 114–135. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2116316.  

Shah, Mihir, PS Vijayshankar, and Francesca Harris. 2021. “Water and Agricultural 
Transformation in India: A Symbiotic Relationship-I.” Economic and Political Weekly 
56 (29): 43–55.  

  

  

https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2116316

