Abstract
Increasing perception of the decline of rural as a community space and farmers loosing the traditional sense of friendship, support and allies, politics has also undergone a change. In the recent past India has witnessed massive farmer mobilization on the issues of Minimum Support Price, the role of state and market in agriculture, etc. Question of rural and farmer identity is central to such protests. The rural youth looks at rural society differently. This chapter analyzes the recent farmer agitations in India in view of the question of psychological change in the rural areas. It is also argued here that the conditions of distress get manifested in various forms (referred here as rural distress).
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Notes
- 1.
Personal Interview, Banda, UP.
- 2.
Sainath, P. The slaughter of suicide data. Frontline, August 21, 2015.
- 3.
Personal Interview with the author, Attarra, Banda.
- 4.
Personal interview with author, November 2017, New Delhi.
- 5.
Navneet Sharma, 2017. “Dissent central? Punjab, the land of agitations, saw 32 protests a day in 2016” Hindustan Times, September 5, 2017. Available on link https://www.hindustantimes.com/punjab/dissent-central-punjab-the-land-of-agitations-saw-32-protests-a-day-in-2016/story-ooP0pPNDzqKJtp8QMduSEO.html.
- 6.
Personal Interview with author. June 2016. Nagpur.
- 7.
Personal interview with author, November 2017, New Delhi.
- 8.
Personal interview with author, November 2017, New Delhi.
- 9.
Interview with Yashwant Kumar (Age 38) from the Baman village, Tehsil Akkalkuwa, a village of Maharashtra located on the banks of Narmada river. A young boy from the same village also said that they need to come and fight for others as well, especially for the villages of Madhya Pradesh who were submerged in the Sardar Sarovar Dam.
- 10.
Personal interview with author, June 2017, Donoda, Yawatmal.
- 11.
Kapoor, Abir. 19 October 2016. Agrarian Riots and Rural Distress: Is India’s Countryside Burning. Available online https://thewire.in/agriculture/is-the-countryside-burning.
- 12.
Personal Interview with the author, Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, August 2016.
- 13.
Personal Interview, February 2017, Mansa, Punjab.
- 14.
Personal Interview, Mansa, Punjab.
- 15.
Personal Interview, Siklodhi, Attara.
- 16.
Dipti, Jain. 28 January 2018. “Six Charts that show the seriousness of Punjab’s drug problem” Live Mint. Available on https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/CbtQvesZxzWezejNXECV8K/Six-charts-that-show-the-seriousness-of-Punjabs-drug-proble.html. Accessed on March 10, 2018.
- 17.
Personal interview, March 2017, Mansa.
- 18.
Personal interview with author, February 2018, New Delhi.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
As per some reports there has been a 6% yearly decline in unorganized sector jobs since 2004–2005. This went up to 40% immediately after demonetization. Reports have also shown that there is a reverse migration after demonetization was announced. See Souparna Maji and Pritam Saha. 8 Nov 2017. “Unprecedented Job Losses, Wage Decline in Unorganized Sector Post Demonetisation”. The Wire.
- 21.
Personal Interview with the author, Trivedin Purva. Banda, 28 December, 2016.
- 22.
Personal interview with author, February 2018, New Delhi.
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Suthar, S.K. (2022). Contemporary Farmer Agitations: Rural Distress and Identity Quest. In: Dilapidation of the Rural. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3892-4_7
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