Q: Examine the factors responsible for the rural unrest in contemporary India.

Model Answer:

Rural Unrest in Contemporary India

Rural unrest in contemporary India refers to recurrent protests, agitations, insurgencies and everyday resistance in the countryside around land, livelihood and dignity. It is sociologically significant because, as A.R. Desai argued, the agrarian question lies at the core of India’s wider class and democratic struggles.

Structural and agrarian factors

• Incomplete land reforms and persistent inequalities in landownership have produced enduring tensions between landlords, rich peasants, smallholders and landless labourers. Utsa Patnaik and Bardhan show how capitalist farming sharpened this class differentiation instead of dissolving it.
• The Green Revolution created a “prosperous farmer” (Bhalla, Chadha) but also regional and intra‑village polarisation, fuelling wage disputes, bonded labour conflicts and protests by agricultural labourers, especially in Punjab and western UP.
• M.N. Srinivas’s “dominant caste” thesis explains how land‑rich intermediate castes control panchayats and resources, provoking conflicts with Dalits and OBCs over land, common property and political power.

Economic and policy-related factors

• Neoliberal reforms have reduced state support: volatile crop prices, input cost inflation, shrinking public procurement and indebtedness contribute to farmers’ suicides and large‑scale protests (e.g., 2020–21 farm law agitation).
• Mechanisation and declining farm sizes generate underemployment and seasonal migration. For youth exposed to consumerist aspirations, this “blocked mobility” (Jodhka) produces frustration and receptivity to protest and extremism.
• Land acquisition for SEZs, mining and dams (Narmada, Singur, POSCO, Niyamgiri) displaces peasants and adivasis, transforming “development” into a source of dispossession and militancy.

Socio‑cultural and political factors

• Caste atrocities in rural India often centre on land, wages and assertion of dignity by Dalits and adivasis (Gail Omvedt). Honour killings, khap diktats and attacks on inter‑caste marriages express resistance to status equalisation.
• Identity‑based agitations by Jats, Patels, Marathas and Kapus for reservations reflect anxieties of erstwhile dominant peasant castes facing agrarian stagnation and declining returns.
• Left‑wing extremism in central India, as Oommen notes, emerges where class, ethnicity and regional deprivation intersect, amid state neglect and coercive policing.

Ecological and demographic factors

• Climate change, groundwater depletion and crop failures intensify agrarian distress.
• Rising population pressure and fragmentation of holdings make agriculture non‑viable, reinforcing a sense of crisis.

Rural unrest will persist unless structural agrarian inequalities, precarity of farm livelihoods and exclusionary development are addressed through inclusive reforms and empowered local democracy.