Session 4A on Day 3 (November 8, 2025) of the International Conference on Agrarian Change was chaired by Balwinder Singh Tiwana (Professor, Department of Economics, Punjabi University). It featured presentations by Venkatesh Athreya (Consultant, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation; Retired Head of the Department of Economics, Bharathidasan University), Arindam Banerjee (Professor and Dean, BML Munjal University) and Anirban Das Gupta, Satendra Kumar (Social Anthropologist and Senior Researcher, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich), and A. R. Prasad Rao (All India Kisan Sabha).

The session examined the precarious conditions of rural manual workers in Tamil Nadu, the need to reimagine agrarian policy in a changing ecological context, the significance of recent farmers’ movements in western Uttar Pradesh, and concerns about the Digital India Land Record Modernisation Programme and its implications for farmers’ rights and land governance.