'Agrarian class structure has been undergoing changes due to modern forces.' Critically examine

The older map

Zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari produced different mixes of rent, revenue and labour. After zamindari abolition, intermediaries were legally thinned, but ceiling evasion, benami, and tenancy insecurity left a class of surplus-appropriators. In wet rice and canal regions, a rich peasant / capitalist farmer layer grew. In dry regions, smallholders and labourers remained exposed. Kathleen Gough, Béteille and village ethnography showed class sitting on caste: landowning dominant castes, tenant middle groups, and Dalit labour.

Modern forces

Land reform was regionally uneven (Kerala and West Bengal versus Bihar’s delayed theatre). The Green Revolution (Punjab, Haryana, west UP, parts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra) differentiated a tractor-and-tube-well class from hired labour, raised yields, and later fed a crisis of water, debt and surplus youth. Commercialisation and contract farming insert companies into cane, poultry and vegetables. Reverse tenancy appears where small owners lease to machine-owning farmers. MGNREGA and PDS shift the bargaining power of labour, especially women, without creating a full rural proletariat in Marx’s sense. Migration—circular, Gulf, factory—turns the village into a labour-exporting household. Corporate land acquisition and peri-urban real estate create a rentier layer of non-cultivating owners.

Caste still organises who owns the tubewell and who does the weeding. Jats, Reddys, Patidars, Vokkaligas illustrate agrarian class as status group. Farmer protests mix price politics with that status. At the bottom, landless Dalit and Adivasi labour remain the most proletarianised, now also in brick kilns and construction. Women do a large share of field work yet rarely hold title, so class maps are gender-blind unless we name unpaid family labour.

APMC markets, corporate retail, and the brief farm laws conflict showed that “modern forces” include the state as price-maker, not only the tractor. Dairy cooperatives and contract poultry create petty commodity producers who look independent and remain tied to companies. NITI and insurance schemes treat the farmer as an entrepreneur; village ethnography still finds debt, honour, and jati in the same ledger.

• The critical point: modern forces have pluralised agrarian classes—petty commodity producers, capitalist farmers, absentee landlords, migrant labour—rather than delivering one national kulak versus one national labourer.