Suthar S. K., Singh Sh. “New” rural-agrarian movements in India: Continuities and shifts // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2026. V.11. №2. P. 119-134.

EDN: GTERCR

Annotation

Political mobilization of farmers in India has always interested and puzzled scholars studying agrarian change. The major political phenomenon in India’s agrarian history were farmers movements in the 1980s, which showed the strength of organization and mobilization of such leaders as Mahindra Singh Tikait and Sharad Joshi. This phenomenon gradually faded away by the 1990s. However, in recent decades India once again witnessed farmers protests with three major demands: waiving off agricultural loans; more rationalized Minimum Support Price covering more crops and input costs; implementation of the Swaminathan Committee report’s recommendations1. The national magazine’s cover called these protests “farmers revolt”. In the interview, Yogendra Yadav, a political activist associated with Swaraj Abhiyan, called them a historical moment and a move towards “peasant rebellion”. The article considers the nature of farmers mobilization from 2014 to 2020, focusing on the initial phase of this movement and emphasizing that farmers protests should not be seen as sporadic, scattered and short-term unrest, as they appear prima facie. Instead, these protests reflect a major shift in the nature of social movements in India in general and agrarian movements in particular, being different from the 1980s farmers movements. Recent protests show that the new rural youth want to reimagine Indian rural society, develops new methods of protests and negotiations and new class distinctions, considering diverse ideological positions on the rural-agrarian question. This new rural social class is against the right-wing populism and neo-populism of the 1980s farmers movements, but it is also against the Indian left-wing idea of modernity and the definition of rural India in terms of class politics. The authors argue that recent protests should be characterized as rural-agrarian rather than farmers, since they suggest the rural-agrarian dominance in the Indian political economy and define the new rural and post-green revolution as agrarian. Given the growing sense of losing identity under urbanization and corporatization, the new rural-agrarian class faces a serious existential threat that leads to protests and their culmination in the form of movement. The authors make some conclusions about this movement, highlighting its recent trends. The article consists of four sections: foundations of this movement evolution; concept of rural-agrarian movements; features of new farmers unrest, different from movements in the 1970s and 1980s; critical analysis in the context of existing theories.

Keywords

Political mobilization of farmers, India, new rural-agrarian movement, rural youth, farmers’ protests, political economy, new rural social class.  

About the authors

Sudhir Kumar Suthar, PhD (Political Science), Assistant Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi, 110067, India.
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Shailza Singh, PhD (Political Science), Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, Bharati College, University of Delhi. C-4, Dada Satram Mamtani Marg, Janakpuri, New Delhi, 110058, India.
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Savinova T.A. Master’s exam for A.V. Chayanov // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №1. P. 226-230.

EDN: TFNDGZ

Annotation

This is the letter from the Professor of the Moscow Agricultural Institute V.Ya. Zheleznov to A. F. Fortunatov with requirements for the program of the Master’s exam in Political Economy for the graduate A. V. Chayanov.

Keywords

Master’s exam, political economy, A. F. Fortunatov, V.Ya. Zheleznov, A. V. Chayanov.

About the author

Tatyana A. Savinova, PhD (Economics), Russian State Archive of Economics. Bolshaya Pirogovskaya St., 17, Moscow, 119435, Russia.
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Bernstein G., Trotsuk I. Policital Economy of the Agrarian Change // Russian Peasant Studies. 2016. V.1. №1. P. 8-37.

DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2016-1-1-8-37

Annotation

According to the author, the understanding of the agrarian transformations in the modern world requires an analysis of capitalism as a special system of social relations between capital and labor, which as historical development is changing the social nature of small farms, runs the processes of commodification and produces not a single "class" of the peasants or the heads of households and internally heterogeneous classes small agricultural capitalists, small producers and workers. The author poses a challenge - using categorical apparatus of the class theory of Marx on the capitalist mode of production, to bring order in the diverse and complex agrarian history of the modern world, designating a number of "common themes" in the world-historical career of capitalism and refusing thereby from simple and ideologically attractive moralizing stories about peasant world and its disappearance. The article indicated by the general logic of the historical relationships of colonialism and capitalism, gave rise to large-scale agricultural transformation on all continents; highlighted local and global trends in the development of agriculture and the rural economy; given the characteristics of new forms of organization of the world capitalist system that emerged under the influence of neo-liberal globalization; The role of resistance to capitalist exploitation and land reform in the development of modern agriculture. 

Keywords

political economy, agrarian change, capitalism, colonialism, class of capitalists, class of petty commodity producers, class of wage labour, Marx’s theory

About the authors

Henry Bernstein, Professor of Development Studies of the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development Studies of China Agricultural University, Beijing; coeditor of Journal of Agrarian Change.
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom.
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Irina V. Trotsuk, D. Sc (Sociology), Associate Professor at the Sociology Chair of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia; Senior Researcher at the Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
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