Socio-Economic Conditions in Rural India(2007/10/13)
Date: 13th October 2007, 16:00-18:00
Venue: Second Lecture Room (Daini Kogi shitsu), 4th floor, No.4
Engineering Building (kogakubu 4 gokan), Kyoto University
Speaker: Professor V.K. Ramachandran (Professor, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)
Title: Socio-Economic Conditions in Rural India: A Report on Ongoing Research
Summary: In recent years, detailed empirical and theoretical
research has lagged behind the rapid and complex changes that are
taking place in the Indian countryside. This is a matter of concern,
and it is this context that frames my current research.
My colleagues and I are working on a village studies project whose
basic objectives are to characterise the nature of capitalism and
class relations in the countryside, to conduct specific studies of the
oppression of the Dalit and Scheduled Tribe masses and of women; and
to report on the state of basic village amenities and the access of
the rural masses to the facilities of modern life.
The study is to be conducted over a period of about five to six years.
The villages studied will represent a wide range of different
agro-ecological regions in the country. We have now completed surveys
in nine villages across four States.
In the 1970s and 1980s, efforts were made by different authors
including Sundarayya in Andhra Pradesh, Utsa Patnaik (using data from
Haryana), and Venkatesh Athreya and his colleagues and Ramachandran in
different parts of Tamil Nadu - to use empirical data to establish
criteria to analyse the differentiation of the peasantry. One aspect
of our present study is to re-visit some of the issues raised in that
discussion.
In my presentation, I shall attempt to
(i) give an overview of the data base as it now stands; and
(ii) review the issues in the discussion on peasant differentiation.