GDI Lecture: Class, Politics, and Agrarian Policies in Post-Liberalisation India
| Dates: | 16 April 2025 |
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| Times: | 16:30 - 16:30 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | Global Development Institute |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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Speaker: Sejuti Das Gupta (Michigan State University)
India entered a new political and economic phase in 1991 with adoption of the structural adjustment programme. Since then, studies have tended to focus on global and national factors to understand ongoing political processes in the country. With cultural nationalism and symbolic politics holding the media attention, the significant transformation of India’s political economy and the changing political settlement have been under-researched despite their contribution to victory of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 elections.
In Class, Politics, and Agrarian Policies in Post-Liberalisation India, Sejuti Das Gupta argues that the period after liberalisation cannot be regarded as a continuous period as far as India’s political economy is concerned. In fact, an assessment of the political settlement operating in states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Karnataka brings back the role of subnational actors, particularly classes, in shaping policies. Hence, a new phase begins from here which contributes to the victory of BJP in 2014. A peculiar combination of dominant class and state relations emerges in these three states, which play a decisive role in how agrarian policies and politics have advanced since. This lecture will explain the arguments and academic reference points for the book in detail, which challenges the notion that all farmers in India are in agrarian distress and shows that some classes of farmers have gained. It helps understand why the farmer movement has weakened and control of industrial capitalist class has been bolstered. The book discusses the growing presence of petty bourgeoisie with both old and new fractions thriving.
Sejuti Das Gupta is an associate professor in the Comparative Cultures and Politics field. She completed her doctoral studies at SOAS, recieving the Felix Scholarship to conduct her research in Development Studies. Her areas of interest are capitalism, colonialism, agrarian political economy, public policy, class-caste and state-society interactions.
Sejuti’s core interest is in combining theory and practice for a better understanding of social science. Following her Ph.D., she joined the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India, where she served as the academic coordinator for Master’s in Development Practice under the Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellows' Scheme. She has worked at the grassroots in India on issues of mining, land acquisition and displacement. Her current research focus is the impact of COVID on women and their work in Lansing. She was recently awarded a Regional Economic Initiative grant to conduct research on the pandemic’s effect on women’s work in Michigan on a formal-informal continuum.
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