Rural Labour Relations in India

This volume is about the emerging development trajectories of rural labour relations in India, based on studies from its regions and states. Its overarching theme is the rural class conflict and the results of such conflict, and the link between this and the nature and impact of state intervention. Vigorous emancipatory processes are identified, and the limitations of and contradictions inherent in such processes are examined. Both powerful general trends and significant regional variations are distinguished.

T.J. Byres, Karin Kapadia, Jens Lerche

Rural labour relations in India - persistent themes, common processes and differential outcomes; liberalisation, rural labour markets and the mobilisation of farm workers - the Haryana story in an All-India context; unfree relations and the feminisation of agricultural labour in Andhra Pradesh, 1970-95; rural labour relations and development dilemmas in Kerala - reflections on the dilemmas of a socially transforming labour force in a slowly growing economy; politics of the poor - agricultural labourers and political transformations in Utter Pradesh; agrarian power and unfree labour; rural labour in Uttar Pradesh - emerging features of subsistence, contradiction and resistance; patterns of accumulation and struggles of rural labour - some aspects of agrarian change in central Bihar; abstracts.