Political economy offers an insightful way of analysing the influence of proprietary classes on agrarian policy-making and effective class formations in post-liberalisation India. The objective is to identify the key classes dominating the relations of production and their means of production and accumulation, and assess if these means have undergone a change or alteration over the past two decades under the impact of the state policy. Once the economic interest of the proprietary classes is ascertained, their relationship with the state is examined. Intervention by classes and representation of their interests in policy-making is usually covert, if it exists, and nearly impossible to study. Instead, their role in policy-making is construed through a study of formal and informal contact, proximity, and relation with the political leaders and bureaucracy.

Identifying the framework

This section discusses two conceptualisations of social group and state relations – the Marxist theory and the ‘political settlement’ theory – and weaves them into a framework for the study.

The Marxian view on class and state

In the 1970s, two schools surfaced within Marxism with respect to analysis of the capitalist state. Ralph Miliband and Nicol Poulantzas personify the ‘instrumentalist’ and ‘structuralist’ positions, respectively. Miliband's position on the state is based on the Communist Manifesto, while Poulantzas draws on Das Capital and writings of Gramsci (Barrow, 2000). Both scholars are influenced by Gramsci's analysis of the coercive and ideological apparatus of the state and civil society. Miliband argues that the state is directly controlled by capitalists, rather than by capital. Therefore, the state is reduced to an instrument in their hands. The ruling class of a capitalist society is ‘that class which owns and controls the means of production and which is able, by its virtue of the economic power thus conferred upon it, to use the state as its instrument for the domination of society’ (Barrow, 2000: 23). He draws on historical instances to understand state functioning.

On the other hand, Poulantzas’ understanding of class is more nuanced, wherein he incorporates political and ideological relations in what is otherwise seen as a purely economically determined category. He argues that in the capitalist mode of production, the direct producers are dispossessed from the means of production. Economic power is concentrated in the hands of the owners of the means of production – the capitalists.

This book raised several questions. The task was to investigate state–class relations as an operating political settlement and examine the extent of state's autonomy from these classes. The way to do that was by scrutinising particular policies and their effect on classes. The book's focus has been on four fractions of rich farmers – big farmer, landlords, gentleman farmers, and capitalist farmers – and their sources of accumulation and political bargaining. The study adopted a political economy approach to understand the relations between class and state. The research drew on fieldwork in three Indian states – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Karnataka – bringing out the richness of a comparative study. The reason for choosing agrarian and land policy was their utmost relevance for the classes under scrutiny. The aim was both to understand the differentiated effects of class on state apparatus and, therefore, on agricultural and land policy formulation, and the effects of these policies on the agrarian classes, that is, the class(es) that profited as a result of the policies. These are referred to as ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ linkages to policy, respectively.

Agriculture is a state subject as per the Indian Constitution and, therefore, the unit of analysis in the study is the state. A three-state comparison has been drawn here, and the states were chosen on the basis of one overarching similarity and a crucial difference. Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Karnataka have largely been under the BJP's rule since 2000 and have had fewer years under the Congress. While there has been an ideological continuity between their state governments and politics, their economies differ substantially. While Chhattisgarh is primarily dependent on agriculture, the economies of Gujarat and Karnataka are driven by manufacturing and services sector, respectively.

Theoretically, the book builds on the work of Poulantzas, Jessop, Bardhan, Mitra, and Khan. It rests on the premise that class is as much a political category as it is an economic category. Chapter 2 provided theoretical insights from these five key thinkers. Given this understanding of class, what is the influence of class interest on state functioning in India? A class which cannot exert political power is neither a class for itself nor a class as Poulantzas defined.

India has been rapidly changing since liberalisation. Several characterisations have been attributed to India's transformation. Some prefer to talk about rapid urbanisation and fast growth with incoming global investments, the IT boom, and expanding middle class while others would rather talk about agrarian crises, farmers’ suicides, food insecurity, and corruption under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) led by the Congress. Corruption came to light, particularly with numerous mining projects and the 2G scam. Mining has also been linked to land acquisition, both legal and illegal, and movements such as the Narmada Bachao and Singur–Nandigram. Many depict the rural population of India as losers in the new era. However, newspapers report that 40 per cent of India's rich live in these rural areas and hence, the pressing need to capture these markets. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) lost in 2004 on the India Shining campaign, but the Modi wave helped the BJP win the election in 2014. A part of the wave was the much-talked-about ‘Gujarat model of development’ with rapid agricultural and industrial growth that successfully diverted attention from Godhra. The 2014 victory bears testimony to how the promise for rapid development can be used as a ploy to overlook political killings and communal riots in ‘new India’. It sounds rather perplexing, a politically fragile yet economically robust country. By employing an interdisciplinary perspective, the book argues that all of these attributes are about ‘one India’ as much as it seems like referring to two distinct entities. It attempts to make sense of these apparent divergent changes by scrutinising the underlying shifting class–state relations in the neoliberal era through the frame of agrarian politics, class formation, and policies.

Based on post-liberalisation India, this book analyses the political economy of agricultural policy and the class–state relations operating in India, scrutinising the tenets of agricultural policies of three states in India – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Karnataka. It analyses the effect of agrarian policy on class and class impact on policy-making and addresses three primary concerns in this regard. First, whether agrarian policies, since liberalisation, have been continuous or there has been a shift in them; if so, what political economy factors have triggered such a change?

A discontinuous period for agrarian policies since 1990

The study of Indian class relations and their interaction with the state policy necessitates an overview of Indian polity in the post-liberalisation era. Liberalisation of India's economic policies started in 1991, aiming to make the economy more market oriented and expand the role of private and foreign investments. That decade was a period of economic, social, and political flux, from which India took about eight years to stabilise. Kohli (2001) points out that between 1947 and 1990, India had five general elections, while five general elections were held during the 1990s alone. Following this, the BJP-led NDA held power for two terms (1998–2004). The period between 1997–98 and 2004–05 registered low agricultural growth at 1.6 per cent per annum, which recovered to 3.5 per cent between 2003–04 and 2010–11 (Dev, 2012). The late 1990s witnessed the lowest agricultural growth. The period since 1997 has been characterised by agrarian distress culminating in farmer suicides (Patnaik, 2003). Political commentators argue that in view of the agrarian distress across states, the NDA lost support of India's rural voters, which proved to be the NDA's undoing. Against this backdrop, the UPA with the Congress at its helm came to power (Birner, Gupta, Sharma, 2011; Bose, 2006; Mooij, 2005) in the 2004 general election. The rise in agricultural growth right after that makes the problem worth thinking about. The various regional parties that had mushroomed during the 1970s and 1980s came to play a determining role in the formation of governments at the centre, because the national parties were unable to attain a simple majority on their own. Be it the BJP-led NDA or the Congress-led UPA, the coalition had to include regional parties to form governments.

Until 2014, the UPA held power at the centre, while governments changed hands at regional levels. The three states studied here – Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, and Karnataka – have mostly been under the rule of the BJP since 2000. Since its formation in 2000, Chhattisgarh has had a BJP government till date. Karnataka was governed by the Congress until 2004, and has had the BJP in power since then. Meanwhile, politically, Gujarat had a tumultuous time until 2000, with the continuous entry and exit of different leaders and parties who seldom completed a full term.