I wish you a very happy new year on behalf of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.
As we draw the curtains on 2022, I can comfortably say that the quarter gone by has been one of steady sailing with respect to our research commitments. The year witnessed a new collaboration with the Evidence Module of the CGIAR Gender Platform at International Rice Research Institute. We hope to see further collaborations in future.
In continuation with our long-held position on the importance of developments in science and technology for the advancement of agriculture, we have started an oral histories project in collaboration with the Archives at NCBS. This project attempts to critically understand the role of Indian agriculture scientists in the Green Revolution.
We have also successfully held the ninth and final Young Scholars' Seminar of this edition in December. The enthusiasm shown by the online team at FAS and the seminar series's Chair, Professor Barbara Harriss-White, were instrumental in enabling us to pull of the nine-month-long seminar series. We plan to take a break of a couple of months to think about newer and more interesting formats in which this series can be brought back in 2023.
We continued to communicate complex dimensions of the agrarian question in India in this quarter through our posts on Small Farmers in India. The series was based on the Foundation's publication "How Do Small Farmers Fare? Evidence from Village Studies in India," published in 2017.
Sandipan Baksi
Director,
Foundation for Agrarian Studies
The Foundation for Agrarian Studies (FAS) undertook a research project titled “Big Data Analysis to Understand Trends in Gender Division of Work and Wages in Rural India and Trends in Costs and Incomes from Crop Production in India” in collaboration with the Evidence Module of the CGIAR Gender Platform led by the International Rice Research Institute. The project consisted of two work packages. Work Package 1 sought to analyze the gender division of work in Indian agriculture, and its implications for gender wage gap. Work Package 2 is a detailed enquiry into the trends in costs, prices, incomes from crop production in India.
The research outputs from both the work packages are currently under preparation.
The Foundation has taken up an oral history project in collaboration with Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. The objective of the project is to critically examine the contributions of the first few generations of Indian agricultural scientists to the science of agriculture and food production, and to the practice of agricultural production in the developing economies, through oral history interviews of first few generations agricultural scientists of independent India. The recordings of these interviews will be housed at the archives.
So far, we have interviewed a few eminent agricultural scientists and are in the process of identifying other names.
The latest issue of our open access bi-annual journal, Review of Agrarian Studies, is under preparation.
Articles that are currently available online include a tribute to Professor Abhijit Sen, two book reviews - one on A Strategic Myth:‘Underdevelopment’ in Jammu and Kashmir, and another on Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World, a research note on financial inclusion in rural India and an edited transcript of Professor Irfan Habib's FAS annual oration on caste and agrarian relations in premodern India.
On October 26th, 2022, India's Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recommended the “environmental release” of genetically modified (GM) or transgenic hybrid mustard DMH (Dhara Mustard Hybrid)-11.
Among others, DMH-11's development as a public-funded project exemplifies a hope for re-appropriation of the definition of scientific research as a public good, writes Sandipan Baksi, in his blog.
On October 12, the Foundation organised and online symposium to discuss a series of research articles and notes that have been published in the Review of Agrarian Studies (vol 12, no 1) as a special In Focus section. These articles drew from the data collected by the Foundation in Bihar as part of its Project on Agrarian Relations in India.
Starting April 2022, the Foundation has been organising the Young Scholars’ Online Seminar Series. The series aims to provide a platform to a selected group of young scholars from India and across the world working on agrarian studies and socioeconomic life of rural India to present their work. With the ninth seminar that was held in December, this edition of the series has come to an end. The series will take a break for a while to reflect on the learnings.
Soham Bhattacharya, PhD Scholar at the Economic Analysis Unit, ISI Bangalore, in October, presented his study of three elements of tenancy: Incidence, nature of contracts and burden of rent in two states, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab.
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.
Murali D A, Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, GITAM Bangalore, acted as the discussant for this session.
The eighth session of the seminar series, featuring Deepak Johnson, JSPS Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, was held in the first week of December.
Through this seminar, Deepak answered two specific questions: How do incomes from rice cultivation differ in the two regions? What factors, including differences in cost structure, and the role of government policy, explain differences in incomes from rice cultivation between these two regions?
Rui Takahashi, Professor, Department of Economics, School and Political Science and Economics, Tokai University,was the discussant for this session.
As part of the ninth seminar of the series, Athary Janiso, PhD Scholar, Department of Economics and Finance, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, presented his work that examines the factors that influence rural employment diversification in India.
To understand the problem of under-counting of women’s work, he collected and analysed responses to three distinct survey questionnaires from the same set of respondents in two villages, Katkuian in Bihar and Modegaon in Telangana.
He observed that the economic contributions made by rural women are underrepresented in the official Indian labour force survey (Periodic Labour Force Survey, National Statistical Office) and that the survey ignores and conceals the economic activities of women who work in agriculture and animal husbandry under the guise of household duties.
Soundarya Iyer, Assistant Professor, R V University, Bengaluru, acted as the discussant for this session.
On October 21, 2022, the Foundation organised an in-house discussion on Bimal Roy’s 1953 movie, “Do Bigha Zamin.” Various interesting themes like the movie’s political significance, increasing alienation of peasants from land in the country then, the difference between the pace of life in the village and the city, class angles present in the movie, and the influence of the stage on the performances in the film were discussed.
In November, Deepak Johnson, the then Associate Fellow at the Foundation, presented few notes and considerations that would help FAS in its agricultural policy research.
He discussed various definitions of agricultural policy, how it is seen in national and international contexts, and the databases that could help in examining its consequences on the Indian countryside.
Along with these, the Foundation has also organised in-house seminars to equip the staff with an understanding of digital systems in the office and a consultation with experts on analysing costs and incomes from crop production. Details about these events can be foundhere.
The series can be found on Twitter under the Hashtag https://twitter.com/fasagristudies/status/1602990539946663936?s=20#SmallFarmersSeries. First of the posts can be found here.
