The seventh session of the FAS Young Scholars’ Online Seminar Series 2022-23 featuring Soham Bhattacharya, PhD Scholar at the Economic Analysis Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore Centre, was held on October 27, 2022.

Soham spoke about his work, “Agricultural Tenancy in Contemporary Rural India.”

Soham’s study is an examination of the prevalence and nature of tenancy relations in rural India. More specifically, he studied three elements of tenancy: Incidence, nature of contracts and burden of rent in two states, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. Using both secondary and primary data, the study explores the socio-economic location of tenants in these states, features of tenancy contracts across different classes, and implications of rent on crop incomes for tenant farmers in India. A Primary finding of the study suggests that there are two paths associated with the tenancy relations in the aforementioned states, and in both paths, small and marginal tenant farmers are subjected to exploitative rental burdens in the lease markets.

For his study, Soham used primary survey data, to explore the links between socio-economic differentiation and tenancy relations in two villages – Hakamwala, located in Mansa district of Southern Punjab and Ananthavaram, located in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Both these villages were previously surveyed by the Foundation as part of its Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI).

The session was Chaired by Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, University of Oxford. Murali D A, Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GITAM Bangalore, was the discussant.

A Q&A session, moderated by the Chair, followed the presentation.

The seminar began at 4:30 pm IST on October 27, 2022.

Video recordings of other seminars in this series can be found on our Youtube channel.

For more details, contact us at events[at]fas[dot]org[dot]in.