AGRARIAN CLASS STRUCTURE IN INDIA

Agrarian Society

An agrarian (or farming) society is dependent on the production of food using plows and domestic animals. It focuses mainly on its economy primarily on agriculture and the cultivation of large fields. The society may recognize different methods for business or livelihood, this distinguishes it from the hunter-gatherer society, which produces none of its own food, and the horticultural society, which produces food in small gardens rather than fields. But they share in common the focus on the significance of agriculture and cultivating. Agrarian communities have existed in various parts of the world as far back as 10,000 years ago and keep on surviving today. They have been the most widely recognized type of socio-economic setup for the more significant part of recorded history.

Agrarian Class Structure in India
The concept of ‘agrarian class structure’ refers to the type of the class structure that prevails in an agricultural society or set up. Scholars such as S. Bhargava, D.R. Gadgil and others have stated in their studies that the agrarian classes did exist in pre-independent India. The agrarian social structure consists of agrarian classes which represent different social groups in rural India.

Daniel Thorner has suggested that one could divide the agrarian population of India into different class categories by taking three criteria:

a.       Income obtained from land that is, through rent, one’s own cultivation or ‘wages’.

b.      The nature of right that is, ownership rights, tendency right, share-cropping right, or no right at all.

c.       The extent of fieldwork actually performed that is, doing no work at all, doing partial work, doing total work, and doing work for others to earn wages.

The three agrarian classes which Daniel Thorner spoke of are (a) Malik, (b) Kisan, and (c) Mazdoor. According to Thorner, prevalent agrarian relations can also be analyzed in terms of three specific terms.

i.     Maliks or Landlords. The term ‘Maliks’ refers to the big landlords and considerably rich landowners who constitute the relatively affluent class in the village set up. Whose income is derived primarily from property right in the soil and whose common interest is to keep the level of rents up while keeping the wage-level down. They collect rent from tenants, sub-tenants and sharecroppers. They could be further divided into two categories, -

a.    Absentee landlords or the big landlords. These Maliks are normally big landlords who have the rights over large tracts extending over several villages; they are absentee owners or rentiers with absolutely no interest in land management or improvement.

b.   The rich residential landowners. Those Maliks who reside in the village in which they own land. These people also do not work in the land personally but get the cultivation work done by others.

ii.   Kisans or working peasants. The term ‘Kisans’ refers to the working peasants. They own small plots of land and work mostly with their own labour and that of their family members. They own much lesser lands than the Maliks. They too can be divided into two sub-categories –

a.    Small landowners. They have sufficient landholding to sustain the family. Members of the family are responsible for cultivation. They neither receive rent nor employ outside labour unless it becomes absolutely necessary in a season.

b.   Substantial tenants. These are the tenants holding who may not own any land but cultivate a large enough holding to help them sustain their families without having to work as wage labourers.

iii. Mazdoors or labourers. The term’Mazdoors’ refers in the rural context to the landless villagers who work as labourers on a wage basis. They obtain their livelihood primarily from working on other people’s land. The class of Mazdoors may consist of –

a.    Poor tenants. They have tenancy rights but that is not secure. Holdings too small to maintain a family and income is too limited.

b.   Sharecroppers. They are either tenants-at-will, taking lease without security or cultivators in other’s land on sharecropper basis. This implies they earn a share of the crop produced.

c.    Landless labourers. These people engage themselves as labourers in other’s land on a temporary basis and without any specific conditional relation with the landlord.

Agrarian class structure in India varies from one region to another; the relations among classes and social composition of groups that occupy specific class positions in relation to land-control and land-use in India are so diverse and complex that it is difficult to incorporate them all in a general scheme. They have emerged out of multidimensional forces and their bearing in space and time.