Cornell-Syracuse South Asia Consortium Conference Tackles Current Issues in Agrarian India

The Cornell-Syracuse South Asia Consortium will hold their annual conference at Cornell University on April 5 and 6, 2013. The focus of the conference this year will be on current debates about agricultural in India.

There have always been agrarian crises in India - for individuals, whole classes, sectors, districts, for some crops, in some years. Our conference investigates current characterizations of crisis in both media and political circles. The Prime Minister has called the armed insurrection of 'Maoists' the gravest threat ever to Indian security; many accounts link radicalism to desperation and landlessness. Probably the most dominant symbol of agrarian crisis is reportage of unusually high farmer suicide rates.

Characterizations and causes of crisis in academic and popular studies are multiple and divergent. Bt cotton receives prominent coverage. Debt resulting from liberalization of farm credit runs through others. Crop failures figure prominently, whether from failure of government monitoring of counterfeit or risky seeds or biological changes in specific agro-ecologies. Water shortages are held to reflect some combination of climate change and a tragedy of the commons built by populist political competition. The rate of growth in factor productivity has declined sharply, even as cuts in input subsidies have narrowed the margin between costs of production and value of output. State acquisition of farmland by eminent domain works with market diversion of land from farm to consumption in some accounts. Running through these multiple causes for crisis is absence or misdirection of state response. How should we understand the framings of crisis? If there is crisis, how do we understand the political impotence of those afflicted in a vigorous democracy?

Please see the conference website to see the schedule and to pre-register.