| Chapter 1: | Introduction: Seeking Success, Finding Farmers |
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useful to understanding the class dimensions of contemporary agrarian politics. Given that all rural classes are sought to be included within these movements, the separate interests of small farmers have not been articulated here. Instead, the needs of relatively large landowners are usually paraded as being consistent with the needs of all sections of rural society. Summarizing the landscape of agricultural social movements in India, Brass (1994) argued that while previous agrarian movements were focused on issues of land redistribution, new farmers' movements have mostly focused on obtaining higher prices for agricultural produce. Contemporary agrarian politics in India can thus be linked to the decline of the Green Revolution, with landed rural segments seeking to maintain the profitability of their enterprises against the encroachments of multinational capitalist interests, while evading the question of whether this aim is sufficient to address the needs of all rural classes. Thus,
Moreover, new farmers' movements have also proved willing to form opportunistic alliances when the possibility of gaining benefits through access to corporate and state power has presented itself. As such,
In contrast to this emphasis on the conservative nature of agrarian politics in India, Omvedt (1993) considered farmers' movements as the embodiment of progressive rural orientations, and sought to show that