Reflections on the agrarian question and the development of capitalism in India
Patnaik, U.
Man and Development 7(2): 38-65
1985
Document Number: 262948
The article represents the first Daniel Thorner Memorial Lecture which was delivered on 20 April 1985 at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, India. It develops some of the themes that Thorner initiated during his studies of class in rural India: the precise nature of the 'built-in depressor' (that complex of agrarian relations which makes it economic for landlords to live on extracting rent, usurious interest and trading profit out of an impoverished peasantry, rather than making productivity-raising investments); the circumstances of and reasons for the cessation of the operation of the 'built-in depressor' at least in certain cropping regimes in certain parts of the country; ways in which the development strategy followed under National Plans in the last 30 years has impinged upon and altered agrarian relations; and the reciprocal effects of the change in agrarian relations on the rate and structure of industrialization. Finally, the way in which the 'mode of production' controversy in India can be viewed after 25 years of the growth of the capitalist tendency is considered.