TY - JOUR
T1 - Responses to Livelihood Precarity in Dryland India
T2 - Diversifying Out of Agrarian Distress
AU - Karamchedu, Ambarish
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Development and Change published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Social Studies.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Scholars of critical agrarian political economy see agriculture in liberalization-era India as a form of disguised unemployment, part of wider agrarian distress. This article engages with literature differentiating the class/caste responses to agrarian and non-farm livelihood distress in India to understand the different diversification options that households have available. The article draws on research carried out in a village in dryland, Bt cotton-dependent Telangana in south India to show these variegated practices. While Other Backward Caste households invested in livestock to cope with heavy Bt cotton investments and losses, Scheduled Caste households focused on the educated rural youth, relying on their non-farm wage labour in jobs such as taxi driving. Despite rural–urban migration and higher levels of education, under/unemployment remains persistent for rural youth. In this context, Ryuthu Bandhu, a cash transfer programme pioneered in Telangana in 2018, proved crucial for rural livelihood survival in the study village, contributing up to 22 per cent of annual household incomes. However, negative average net incomes across all households show that attempts to diversify out of distress have been largely unsuccessful.
AB - Scholars of critical agrarian political economy see agriculture in liberalization-era India as a form of disguised unemployment, part of wider agrarian distress. This article engages with literature differentiating the class/caste responses to agrarian and non-farm livelihood distress in India to understand the different diversification options that households have available. The article draws on research carried out in a village in dryland, Bt cotton-dependent Telangana in south India to show these variegated practices. While Other Backward Caste households invested in livestock to cope with heavy Bt cotton investments and losses, Scheduled Caste households focused on the educated rural youth, relying on their non-farm wage labour in jobs such as taxi driving. Despite rural–urban migration and higher levels of education, under/unemployment remains persistent for rural youth. In this context, Ryuthu Bandhu, a cash transfer programme pioneered in Telangana in 2018, proved crucial for rural livelihood survival in the study village, contributing up to 22 per cent of annual household incomes. However, negative average net incomes across all households show that attempts to diversify out of distress have been largely unsuccessful.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85204705634&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/dech.12858
DO - 10.1111/dech.12858
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85204705634
SN - 0012-155X
VL - 55
SP - 1289
EP - 1314
JO - DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE
JF - DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE
IS - 6
ER -