Raising Cane

Donald W. Attwood first visited India in 1966, a time of agricultural crisis and general pessimism concerning the country's future. After a quarter-century of observation (including five years living in India and Nepal), he is impressed by changes that have occurred since the 1960s. In 1969 he began studying the cooperative sugar factories in western India, and he has continued working on this subject ever since. Author of numerous articles and co-editor of several books, Attwood is now completing a two-volume report on cooperatives and rural development in India—the result of a team research project organized with B. S. Baviskar, his Indian mentor and colleague. He has also started research on enterprising peasants and local organizations in Costa Rica. Educated at the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and McGill University in Montreal, where he is now an associate professor of anthropology, Attwood received his first lessons in irrigation, cooperation, and much else at Deep Springs College in California.

• Introduction -- The Problem -- The Setting -- Sugar Production Before Independence -- Irrigation and Imperialism -- Peasants Versus Capitalists -- Malegaon Village, 1900-1950 -- Old Elites and New Entrepreneurs -- Migration and Economic Mobility -- The Pattern of Inequality and Mobility -- Cooperative Sugar, 1950–1985 -- The Politics of Sugar -- Performance and Impact of a Sugar Co-op -- Why Do Some Cooperatives Work? -- Conclusion -- Revolution from the Middle -- Appendix on Methods