Changing modes of production in Indian agriculture ( Sociology Optional)

Background

  • Trends of change showed the emergence and existence of new groups and classes in Indian society. This is visible in both the rural and urban -industrial areas.
  • The Indian agrarian economy was actually characterized as multi-structural in which the capitalist and the semi-feudal sectors co-exist and contend against each other. The proponents of various modes of production feudal, semi-feudal, capitalist, colonial and dual mode of production confined themselves to the partial enquiry of agrarian relations.

Thinker’s view

  • There is no agreement among the social scientists on the character of existing mode of production in Indian agriculture.
  • As per some social scientists, agrarian system is capitalistic in nature.
  • As per others, it is still a feudalistic
  • Some others consider it a semi-feudal mode of production.
  • According to the Marxist scholars, crucial element in defining mode of production is ‘the way in which the surplus is produced, and its use controlled’. Surplus means the amount that remains when use or need is satisfied.

Feudalistic Mode

  • Feudal society was seen by Marx and Engles as intermediate, i.e., between the slave society of the ancient world and capitalists and proletarians in the modern era.
  • The evolution of the feudal system brought about the development of exchange of agricultural and manufactured products in regional markets.

Thinkers’ Perspective on feudalistic mode

  • Nirmal Sen Gupta argue that the feudal mode of production is still prevalent in the agrarian system because the forces of imperialism are playing its dominant role.
  • Rejecting Sen Gupta’s notion Nurul Hassan says that the Indian socio-economic system does not contain any characteristics of feudalism.
  • Amit Bhaduri, Pradhan H. Prasad, Nirmal Chandra, Ranjit Sau, argue that Indian agriculture is semi feudal in nature.
  • The main proponent of semi-feudalism theory in Indian agriculture is Amit Bhaduri. Based on a survey of Bengal villages, he concludes that the mode of production in agriculture resembles more of classical feudalism of the master Serf than the industrial capitalism. He has highlighted four characteristics of semi feudal agriculture. They are
    • share cropping
    • perpetual indebtedness of small tenants
    • concentration of two modes of exploitation i.e. usury and land ownership in the hands of the same economic class and
    • Lack of accessibility to the market for the small tenants.
  • Pradhan H Prasad basing on empirical studies of villages in Bihar makes a distinction between semi-proletariat in semi-feudalism and the proletariat in capitalism.
    • The proletariat as a class is found in a capitalist set-up where the labour is free to sell his labour power.
    • On the other hand, in a semi-feudal set up, he is not to sell his labour power.
    • Prasad emphasizes that the main characteristic of the semi-feudal set up is that an indissoluble bond between the semi-proletariat and his over-lord is maintained by resort to usury.

Usury and Indebtedness 

  • Authors of semi-feudal say that usury is an important additional source of income of the semi-feudal landlords.
  • Bhaduri says that since the tenants can't move away without giving back the money and the interest goes very high, for example 25 to 200% for a period of 4 months. This interest sucking is termed by Bhaduri as “double exploitation” e., exploitation through surplus and value through interest.
  • For money lenders, the rate of return on capital is higher through usury than through investment in agriculture. So, money lenders perpetuate the semi-feudal relationship in agriculture.
  • Hence, feudals are the chief cause of backwardness and exploitation in our agrarian social system.

Capitalistic Mode

  • As per Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of productionrefers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies.
  • Private money-making in various forms (renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on) preceded the development of the capitalist mode of production as such.
  • Capital can be in various forms. It can take the form of money or credit for the purchase of labour power and materials of production. It can be money or credit for buying physical machinery.
  • In capitalist mode of production, the private ownership of capital in its various forms is in the hands of a class of capitalists. The ownership by capitalists is to the exclusion of the mass of the population.

Thinkers’ Perspective on capitalistic mode

  • Scholars like Ashok Rudra (1970), Daniel Thorner (1976), Alice Thorner (1982), Utsa Patnaik, R.S. Rao, Paresh Chaudhary, Gail Omvedt, identify that capitalist mode has arisen in Indian agriculture.
  • In the opinion of Usha Patnaik, “the capitalist path in India's agriculture is dominated by a socially narrow-based “landlord capitalism," with semi-feudal features of caste subordination of workers.
  • Daniel Thorner viewed that an advanced agricultural economy has emerged in the Indian rural society-which can be compared to advanced industrial sector because it is profitable and expending.
  • Dipanker Gupta has characterized the Indian agrarian economy as a capitalist one, where capitalism has not developed uniformly.

Enablers of capitalist mode of production

For capitalism to predominate in agricultural production should have the following features:

  • Capital investment agriculture
  • Mechanisation of agricultural production
  • Development of intensive agricultural
  • Production of commercial and industrial crops
  • Consequent replacement of a small-scale agricultural production with large scale industrial production and finally
  • Hired or wage labour must be the main source of surplus value in capitalist agriculture.

Cooperativisation of agriculture

  • Many of the top leaders including Nehru and Gandhi were convinced about the benefit of cooperativisation. As per them, it would lead to major improvement in agriculture.
  • Cooperativisation constituted an important component of the first phase of land reforms.
  • But the goal of cooprativisation was also faced with the problem. Like in the case of land reforms there existed no consensus in favour of it among the peasantry.
  • The Kumarappa committee on Agrarian Reforms in 1949 recommended that the states should be empowered to enforce the application of varying degree of cooperation for different types of farmings.

Bhoodan Movement

  • Bhoodan or land-gift Movement launched in April 1951 by Acharya Vinoba Bhave.
  • The purpose of this movement was to appeal to the landowning classes to donate their surplus land to the poor.
  • But the method adopted for this purpose by the movement was completely different from the one used in the abolition of Zamindari.
  • Inspired by Gandhian technique, the Sarvodya Samaj of Vinoba Bhave used the ideal of non-violent method of social transformation.