The last three months, July-September, 2023, kept us busy with entering and cleaning the data from the two villages of Uttar Pradesh that were resurveyed in June, as part of our village studies program, the Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI). We are now through, what can perhaps be termed as, the most difficult stage of our study of these two villages. The data processing should be over by the end of 2023, and we hope to have the preliminary analysis completed by the first quarter of 2024.

The latest issue of the Journal of the Foundation for Agrarian Studies, Review of Agrarian Studies (13, 1), was out in print in this period. The print edition is available through subscription and direct purchase. The online edition is at present free to all users, and we recommend that you register.

The other major achievement in this quarter was the successful conduct of two seminars as part of the FAS Young Scholars' Online Seminar Series 2023-24. One of the seminars was delivered by a young scholar from Bangladesh, the other was by a researcher from Sri Lanka. These seminars, we hope, will help us build a network of young scholars working on different aspects of agrarian studies across South Asia.

Finally, in this quarter we ran a unique social media series on "Colonialism and Agriculture in India," based on a series of articles published in the Review of Agrarian Studies in past.

Sandipan Baksi
Director
Foundation for Agrarian Studies

Research
Publications
Events
Initiatives

Data Entry and Processing of the UP Survey

In June 2023, the Foundation resurveyed two villages in Uttar Pradesh, namely Mahatwar in the Rasra tehsil of Ballia district, and Harevli in the Najibabad block of Bijnor district. These villages were previously surveyed by the Foundation as part of our Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI) in 2006.

The data collected from this survey is currently being processed. Analysis of the data will commence in the subsequent months.

Research Collaboration with scholars from Universities of Japan

The Foundation has collaborated with scholars from Universities of Japan on a project that examined the land records of Palakurichi, a village in the lower Cauvery delta in Tamil Nadu. This village was surveyed by the Foundation in 2019 as part of our village studies program.
Some findings from this work were presented in the JASAS 36th Annual Conference organised by Japan Association of South Asian Studies.

Review of Agrarian Studies

RAS Volume 13, No 1

The latest issue (Vol 13, No 1) of our open access journal, Review of Agrarian Studies was published in this quarter.

This issue begins with an Editorial on food insecurity in Africa and Asia.

The Research Articles include a discussion on four decades of Doi Moi in Viet Nam Agriculture by Cao Đức Phát; on the corporatisation of Indian agriculture by Surajit Mazumdar; and one on the contribution of government support to farm incomes in Kerala by Deepak Johnson.

Parvathi Menon interviews Y. Subbarayalu on the Chola agrarian history.

In Research Notes and Statistics, Madhura Swaminathan and Shruti Nagbhushan draw on village-level evidence to discuss wealth mobility in rural Bihar; and Shamsher Singh and Sabah Siddiqui describe the condition of sanitation workers in Haryana during Covid-19.

Our Book Reviews section carries a review of Muchtar Habibi’s Capitalism and Agrarian Change: Class, Production and Reproduction in Indonesia by Venkatesh B. Athreya; and Jonna P. Estudillo, Yoko Kijima, and Tetsushi Sonobe’s Agricultural Development in Asia and Africa: Essays in Honor of
Keijiro Otsuka by S. Niyati.

The print edition of the issue is also out.
For further details, visit ras.org.in.

Public Events

Seminar on Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Change Responses in Coastal Bangladesh

On July 27, 2023 the Foundation organised the second seminar of the Young Scholars' Online Seminar Series 2023-24 featuring Shilpi Kundu, Ph.D. Scholar, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

Shilpi Kundu spoke about her work, “Gender Mainstreaming in Climate Change Responses – Insights from Agricultural Landscape in Coastal Bangladesh”. Her work examines the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, and the challenges associated with the agricultural landscape of the Southwest Coastal Region of Bangladesh. It is focused on four key features of adaptation, namely access to adaptation technology and validated practices, access and availability of financial resources, policy and institutional support, and impacts of macroeconomic changes.

The session was Chaired by Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, University of Oxford. Dr Sreeja Jaiswal, Humboldt Foundation’s International Climate Protection Postdoc Fellow at the University of Heidelberg, was the discussant for the session. The session’s recording can be accessed through our Youtube Channel.

Seminar on Effectiveness of the Community Management in Mangrove Restoration – Evidence from Northern Sri Lanka

The third seminar of the FAS Young Scholars’ Online Seminar Series 2023-24 featuring Sathiyamoorthy Sarujan, PhD Scholar, University of Tokyo, Japan was held on Thursday, August 31, 2023.

Sathiyamoorthy Sarujan spoke about his work, “Effectiveness of the Community Management in Mangrove Restoration – Evidence from Northern Sri Lanka”. His work examines the role of community management in managing the global commons. Sarujan’s study attempts to provide empirical evidences towards the effectiveness of community-based approach in mangrove management in the northern province of Srilanka.

The session was Chaired by Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies, University of Oxford. Dr Kaushik Bora, Agricultural Economist, Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) acted as the discussant for the session.

The session's recording can be accessed through our Youtube Channel.

In-House Events

In-house Seminar - Conceptualising ‘Bondedness’ and ‘(Un)freedom’: The case of Dalit Women Agricultural Labourers in Western Uttar Pradesh

Komal Chauhan, Associate Fellow with the Foundation presented a seminar titled ‘Conceptualising ‘Bondedness’ and ‘(Un)freedom’: The case of Dalit Women Agricultural Labourers in Western Uttar Pradesh’.

In the seminar, Komal tried to unpack the complex relationship between debt and (un)freedom in labour relations through the case of Dalit women agricultural labourers in the Muzaffarnagar district of Western Uttar Pradesh. She talked about how debt bondage is often portrayed as an economic transaction between the victim and the employer (or intermediary). Yet, it is grounded in broader social relations of inequality and insecurity.

She also shed light on how bondedness and (un)freedom in labour relations are reinforced and reproduced by the interplay between multiple sources of credit, which according to her, further leads to the marginalisation of Dalit women situated at the intersection of caste, class and gender.

In house Seminar - Gender Inequality in Land Ownership in India and the Impact of Inheritance Laws

Rakesh Kumar Mahato, Senior Data Analyst with the Foundation presented a seminar titled “Gender Inequality in Land Ownership in India and the Impact of Inheritance Laws”. In his presentation, Rakesh quantified the extent of inequality in land ownership using the latest round of the All India Debt and Investment Survey.

In the seminar, Rakesh also showed that the longer the exposure to reform laws, the greater is the likelihood of females’ owning land. However, the process of reduction in gender inequality remains slow and with effective implementation and awareness of reformed inheritance laws, the inequality can be substantially reduced.

Colonialism and Agriculture Series

In the month of August, we ran a month long social media campaign on the theme of - Colonialism and Agriculture in India.
The posts under the theme included interviews, research and review articles that analysed and explored many facets of Indian agriculture in the colonial setting. The articles and interviews posted under the theme were from the journal of the Foundation, Review of Agrarian Studies.

The posts covered a range of subjects including: Aspects of the rural economy in the colonial period, Agricultural modernisation under colonialism, Rural india in the vernacular literature, Peasant movements during the colonial rule etc.Interviews with some peasant leaders who had witnessed the struggles that took place during the period were a highlight of the series.

Stay tuned with us!

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