Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on primary sources
- Introduction
- 1 Town–country struggles in development: A brief overview of existing theories
- 2 Nehru's agricultural policy: A reconstruction (1947–1964)
- 3 Policy change in the mid-1960s
- 4 The rise of agrarian power in the 1970s
- 5 Organizing the countryside in the 1980s
- 6 Has rural India lost out?
- 7 The paradoxes of power and the intricacies of economic policy
- 8 Democracy and the countryside
- Appendix: Liberal trade regimes, border prices, and Indian agriculture
- Index
- Titles in the series
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- A note on primary sources
- Introduction
- 1 Town–country struggles in development: A brief overview of existing theories
- 2 Nehru's agricultural policy: A reconstruction (1947–1964)
- 3 Policy change in the mid-1960s
- 4 The rise of agrarian power in the 1970s
- 5 Organizing the countryside in the 1980s
- 6 Has rural India lost out?
- 7 The paradoxes of power and the intricacies of economic policy
- 8 Democracy and the countryside
- Appendix: Liberal trade regimes, border prices, and Indian agriculture
- Index
- Titles in the series
Summary
Just what does modernization mean for the peasantry beyond the simple but brutal truth that sooner or later they are its victims?
—Barrington Moore, Jr., Social Origins of Democracy and Dictatorship, 1967A new specter of peasant power is likely to haunt India in coming years.
—The Times of India, February 3, 1988In the autumn of 1989, thousands of farmers arrived in Delhi around the time Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi wished to hold a massive rally of the Congress party. The farmers were agitating for higher agricultural prices and subsidies, and for a better allocation of resources for the countryside. India's cities, they argued, were pampered, whereas the villages, where most Indians still lived, were badly served. The farmers were led by M. S. Tikait, a man who had rarely traveled beyond his region, a man most metropolitan journalists had found difficult to interview, for he could not even speak Hindi properly. He spoke a dialect of Hindi incomprehensible to the powerful, English-language media. In the end, Tikait's farmers held their demonstration in the heart of Delhi; Rajiv Gandhi moved his rally to the outskirts. The Prime Minister thought it wise not to confront the farmers.
Before religious issues overwhelmed India's politics in the early 1990s, Tikait's march into Delhi was among the more striking political images of the 1980s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Democracy, Development, and the CountrysideUrban-Rural Struggles in India, pp. 1 - 9Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995