Rural capital accumulation and simple reproduction in neoliberal India: a comparative study of the agrarian questions of capital and labour in two regions of Punjab

Bansal, Gaurav (2025) Rural capital accumulation and simple reproduction in neoliberal India: a comparative study of the agrarian questions of capital and labour in two regions of Punjab. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis critically examines the narratives of economic distress, environmental degradation, and social upheaval that have come to characterise Indian Punjab since the early 1990s. It advances our understanding of these crises by centring the relatively understudied phenomenon of rural capital accumulation that has continued amid broader agrarian distress. Grounded in Agrarian Political Economy, this research first undertakes a novel ‘conjugated class-caste analysis’ of rural households to arrive at the concept of ‘conjugated privilege’—through an adaptation of ‘conjugated oppression’—that frames our analysis of rural capital accumulation as embedded within social structures of caste, religion, and gender. Through twelve months of intensive comparative fieldwork in a village and town in two distinct socio-political regions of Punjab—Malwa and Majha—this thesis reveals the diversity in the bases and patterns of capital accumulation and differentiation in rural Punjab. The Majha study region exhibits a growing trend of economic diversification among rural landowning Jutt Sikhs, while in the Malwa study region, land and agriculture remain the most important sources of capital accumulation and differentiation. To explain these differences, this thesis also demonstrates the centrality of examining the factors beyond the village and agriculture. Majha study region’s proximity to Amritsar and its integration within global production networks have contributed to dynamic economic growth, which, alongside the lack of entrenched monopoly by the Hindu trading castes in the aftermath of the political crisis of the 1980s, has provided an outlet for rural landowning Jutts—both classes of capital and petty commodity producers—to diversify their accumulation. This was not the case in the Malwa region, where capitalist growth remains relatively muted and trading castes’ have reproduced their domination in the non-farm economy. The evidence presented allows us to contribute to the debate on the resolution, or bypassing, of the Agrarian Question(s) of Capital (AQC) at a sub-regional level under neoliberalism.

While maintaining its focus on rural capital accumulation and AQC, this thesis also explored its profound implications for the ‘classes of labour’ and Agrarian Questions of Labour (AQL). CoL in the more dynamic, high growth Majha region witnessed an adverse incorporation in this diversified, predominantly informal economy, exhibited through their hyper exploitation brick kilns, construction sites, factories, and urban businesses, heightened socio-economic and spatial fragmentation of livelihoods, and segmentation on caste and gender lines. Conversely, in the less dynamic Malwa region, many within classes of labour, especially Dalit women, were excluded from direct labour exploitation and relegated mainly to the sphere of social reproduction and petty commodity production, contributing to higher levels of economic distress among CoL here. Finally, this thesis reflects on the scope and practice of progressive, emancipatory rural politics in both regions, examining both the farmers’ protest movement 2020-21 and the movement for land rights and dignity led by Dalit women.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
Depositing User:	Nicola Veasy
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2025 12:44
Last Modified:	05 Nov 2025 12:44
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100906
DOI:

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