Emerging Agrarian Trends in Post Economic Reform Period:Village-Level Evidences from Rajasthan

Background/ Objective: This study is based on the primary survey conducted for doctoral thesis at CESP, JNU New Delhi. The study aims in studying, inter alia, land relations, production relations, and changes in these variables taken place in post economic reform period.

Methods/ Statistical Analysis: The production relations in post economic reform period were studied by means of detailed primary study. A census survey was undertaken in a village of in Rajasthan in 2007. The census survey of the same village was repeated in 2013 to capture the changes.

Findings: Data obtained from study village indicate growing agrarian distress due to increasing land and income inequality, increasing landlessness and disparity in access to government credit as well as government land for leasing. Integration of Indian agriculture with world market has posed many new agrarian challenges. Sudden increase in price of guar in the year 2012 in world market, which persisted even in 2013, has not only benefited guar cultivators but has also brought huge instability in the land rental market. On the one hand, it resulted in the area under cultivation of guar and on the other in the absence of legal tenancy contracts, it has resulted in dishonoring of oral contracts, changing forms of tenancy contracts, fall in tenancy practices and increasing economic insecurity of tenant farmers.

Improvements/ Applications: Increased instability in agrarian market has resulted in more or less similar kind of situations in other part of the country, which requires government intervention to control instability.