-Hindustan Times HT has analysed unit-level data from the latest Situation Assessment of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (SAS) to answer some of these questions. Have tractors finally replaced bullock carts and private dairies the milk-animal in the Indian farmer’s house? Vigilante groups (“gau rakshaks”) claiming to be protecting cows have been making news (for the wrong reasons) in the past few years in India....

-Countercurrents.org Real life has a way of surprising theory. One of the most intensely discussed theoretical questions on the Left has been how to bring agricultural labourers and peasants, including well-to-do peasants, together in a common struggle against landlord domination in India’s countryside. Numerous Marxist gatherings have for years discussed the contradiction between peasants and labourers holding up a decisive resolution of the contradiction between the landlords and the rest of...

-Article-14.com In driving out ‘illegal encroachers’ from farms in an area smaller than Assam’s capital for an agriculture project that does not interest native Assamese, the Bharatiya Janata Party government is dispossessing productive Bengali Muslim farmers, many of whom say they bought land from locals and have been paying land taxes, some for up to 70 years. Darrang, Assam: On the day Moinul Haque, 28, was shot in the abdomen and killed...

-The Hindu Centre committed to turning the north-east into oil palm hub, says Agriculture Minister Guwahati: Arunachal Pradesh has finalised the National Mission on Edible Oils-Oil Palm (NMEO-OP) and will go “full swing” in implementing it across 1.33 lakh hectares soon, Chief Minister Pema Khandu has said. Speaking at the ‘Business Summit for North Eastern States’ on the NMEO-OP in Guwahati on Tuesday, Mr. Khandu said Arunachal Pradesh is geographically the largest State...

The newly released Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households and Land and Livestock Holdings of Households in Rural India (NSS 77th Round) establishes the fact that the farm households are more and more relying on wage incomes instead of 'net incomes from crop cultivation' for their livelihoods. In Marxian lexicon, proletarisation (a term that we can loosely use for depeasantisation) refers to the process in which the farmers/ tillers are...