Plenary 2 on Day 2 (November 7, 2025) of the International Conference on Agrarian Change was chaired by S. Mahendra Dev, Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). The session featured Madhura Swaminathan (Professor and Head, Economic Analysis Unit, ISI Bengaluru), Arindam Das (Joint Director, Foundation for Agrarian Studies), Yoshifumi Usami (Retired Professor, Osaka Prefecture University), Brinda Karat (Former Member of Parliament; former General Secretary, AIDWA), Avinash M. Tripathi (Faculty, Azim Premji University), and Gopal Guru (Political Scientist; Former Professor, Centre for Political Studies, JNU). The speakers discussed persistent rural poverty, wage stagnation, rising inequality, and the marginalisation of Adivasi communities, underscoring the need for robust data, careful interpretation of wage trends, and clearer conceptual frameworks to understand contemporary rural deprivation.