Peasant as a social group is historically resistant: VK Ramachandran

Professor VK Ramachandran delivering a lecture in Chennai on Monday. Photo. | Photo credit: R. Ragu

Rumors of the death of the peasantry as a social group are much exaggeration; It still exists and plays an important role in production as a whole, said VK Ramachandran, vice-chairman of the Kerala State Planning Commission at a conference titled ‘Rural Wages and Workers in Contemporary India’ organized as part of the MS Swaminathan Centenary Lecture Series , here at the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai, on Monday.

Delivering a lecture on class in the Indian countryside and on the two main components of India, the rural working class of India – the peasants and the wage labourers, Professor Ramachandran said that the peasantry as a social group was enormously religious and It was a category that spans many different types of social formations: under slavery, feudalism and capitalism. “So, as social formations changed, so did the character of the peasantry,” he said.

Professor Ramachandran referred to a series of surveys taken from the early part of the century by the Agrarian Studies Foundation and particularly referred to the 2018 resurgences, two villages in the village in the Bijnor districts in the west of the village dominated by Dalits Derlits Derlits Derlits Derlited by Dalits. , two villages in Bihar, in West Champaran and Samastipur in Bihar, and two villages in the Lower Cauvery Delta.

It further said that the number of women agricultural workers increased from 101 million in 2011-12 to 153 million in 2023-24. “The number of male workers during the same period increased from 233 to 258 million. In total, there were 411 million rural workers in India. So we asked the question: Who are they? ” said.

He said that while the net income of the farm household of a small producer, even in places where farm income was growing such as in sugar cane villages, was less than 40% of the farm family income, while in the villages of Tamil Nadu, it was even less.

However, the picture completely changed when the gross value of agricultural production, including animal husbandry, was considered, he said.

“It was 50-60%… suddenly it went up. It would vary in different villages and different types of agriculture in India. But the participation in the gross value of production of this section of the population (small producers) remains very high. It was high in villages and low towns in the lower Cauvery. So, after much searching for the data, we actually came to the conclusion that the rumors of the death of the peasantry as a social group are greatly exaggerated. It still exists and plays an important role in overall production,” he said.

Professor Ramachandran added that the peasantry could not be considered as a homogeneous mass and that the hallmark of peasantry in India is its differentiation into different classes.

Professor Ramachandran argued that there were two main tendencies that inform the different forms that the agricultural proletariat takes from the peasantry. “One is the loss of land and landless wage workers, and the other thing about proletarianism is that more and more people from each class of peasantry work as agricultural workers, but they also work in non-agricultural tasks.”