Revised version of papers presented at the National Workshop on Land Markets and Rural Poverty, held at Mussoorie during 10-11 August 2004.

The book discusses important developments emerging around the land questions in India in the context of India’s neoliberal economic development and its changing political economy. It covers many issues that have been impinging the political economy in land and livelihoods in India since the 1990s, examining the land question from diverse methodological standpoints. Most of the chapters rely on evidence generated through primary surveys in different parts of the country. The book, via its diversity of approaches and methodologies, brings out new and hitherto unexplored and/or less researched issues on the emerging land question in India. The range of issues addressed in the volume encompasses the contemporary developments in the political economy of land, land dispossession, SEZs, agrarian changes, urbanisation and the drive for the commodification of land across India. The authors also examine role of the state in promoting the capitalist transformation in India and continuities and changes emerging in the context of land liberalisation and market-friendly economic reforms.

Agricultural performance is influenced by agricultural commodity markets. However, the importance of these markets has largely been ignored by agricultural policymakers and mainstream economists. This pioneering study, covering both the pre- and the post-liberalization periods, and West Bengal's transformation from a seriously deficit to a surplus state, conceives of the post-harvest sector as a system of markets. It shows how, while West Bengal enjoyed the results of a reformed agrarian system, the market system remained unreformed until recently. The book sheds light on the role and importance of distribution and commodity markets in shaping and spreading the benefits of higher productivity across society. An original analysis of the regulation of markets by institutions of collective action and social identity, as well as by the state, the book discusses a regulatory policy that could be adopted by any government, irrespective of its ideology. Barbara Harriss-White's quarter-century of field work in West Bengal has yielded new insights into the political economy, where ethno-cultural networks and informal finance have led to a polarization of agro-commercial power on the one hand, and a proliferation of livelihoods for small traders in the post-harvest market system on the other. Challenging many of the claims of orthodox political economy, this well researched volume offers a new interpretation of rural development over three decades of communist rule.

This book examines the economic gains and social costs of agrarian transformation in India. The author looks at three phases of agrarian transformation: colonial, post- colonial, and neoliberal. This work combines macro and micro economic data, economic and noneconomic phenomena, and quantitative and qualitative aspects while exploring the context of historical and contemporary changes with special reference to Maharashtra in western India. It discusses regional disparities in agricultural development, issues of modernisation and social inequality, land owning among scheduled castes and tribes, women in agriculture, pattern of labour migration and farmer’s suicides, and documents the experiences and conditions of the rural poor and socially weaker sections to provide a comprehensive understanding of the significant changes in agrarian rural economy of western India. It also discusses contemporary development policy and practices and their consequences. Lucid and topical, this volume will be useful to scholars and researchers of agrarian studies, rural sociology, social history, agricultural economics, development studies, political economy, political studies, and public policy, as well as planning and policy experts.

The book Agricultural Planning and Technology in Rural Development is a collection of essays written in honour of Dr Bidyadhar Misra, one of the distinguished educationists and economists of our country. These essays reveal the role of planning and technology in agricultural and rural development during the era of planned economic development.