#zamindari system

[faithfullynimblespire]

Land Revenue Policies and Their Impact on India's Agrarian Structure | Sociology Optional Coaching | Vikash Ranjan Classes | Triumph IAS | U

Explore how colonial and post-colonial land revenue policies have shaped India's agrarian structure, impacting land ownership, agricultural

[pyotra]

Secondly, the change from traditional bonded labour to wage labour challenges the vetbigari system, which is based on exploitative ‘physical and mental’ labour (Guru, 2000:124). However, Dalit resistance for a fair wage along with ‘a fixed and regulated notion of time’ (Guru, 2000:124) creates tensions and conflicts in agrarian relations between landowning thakurs/Rajputs (and the newly prosperous ‘upper’ Backward Castes) and the non-landowning Dalits, and a reason for violent action by landowning caste-groups towards rural Dalits, their families and communities. The story heard from a Bhumihar villager from Jehanabad district is different: ‘We (Bhumihar Brahmins) are giving them (referring to Dalit labourers) 3 kg of rice a day and half a kg of food but they don't want to work and they want to wear slippers and walk past our homes without lowering their heads.’ (Jha, 1999:3). Three ideas are interlinked in this statement. First, the landowners, who also own the produce of the land, would rather pay the Dalits in kind since it protects them from any market fluctuations in the price of their produce. Second, it is a more convenient way of paying the Dalits as the landowners don't have to sell their land-produce in order to pay in cash. Third, it enables the landowners to maintain an exploitative tradition of payment in kind whereas a cash economy would provide an opportunity for the Dalits to elevate their economic status.

Suruchi Thapar Björkert // Women as arm-bearers: Gendered caste-violence and the Indian state