F. Tomasson Jannuzi - Böcker

Although much has been written on agrarian reforms in India, there are few in-depth studies of specific states and none concerning the relevance of agrarian reforms to the economic development and political stability of Bihar- a state containing one-tenth of the people of India, a population comparable in magnitude to that of the United Kingdom or France. F. Tomasson Jannuzi's field research in Bihar, beginning with village-level surveys and interviews in 1956 and extending through repeated visits through August 1970, has enabled him to provide a unique perspective on events and issues associated with the continuing struggle to transform Bihar's agrarian structure. Agrarian Crisis in India is at once a history of post-independence agrarian reforms in an important state of India, a detailed critique of the statutory loopholes that have frustrated successive land-reform measures, and a penetrating analysis of the economic, political, and social implications of the failure of agrarian reforms to be implemented in twentieth-century Bihar. The author's analysis of the case of Bihar provides insights not only into the agrarian crisis in Bihar but also into other agrarian societies in the midst of social and economic transformation. Experts in the field of economic development traditionally have held that the goals of increased production and distributive justice must be approached in sequence. It has been considered almost axiomatic that economic growth will result initially in growing inequalities among classes within a region and among regions within a country. Professor Jannuzi suggests that in Bihar a compelling alternative to this conventional wisdom is an economic-development strategy based on the recognition that the agricultural-production and distributive-justice goals are inseparable and must be addressed simultaneously. He suggests that economic growth in rural Bihar may become impossible if distributive justice continues to be denied to significant sections of the peasantry and, conversely, that distributive justice will prove an illusory target unless economic growth can be assured. Professor Jannuzi recommends the implementation of specified agrarian reforms in Bihar as the prerequisite for meeting the agricultural-production and distributive-justice goals.

In this book, the author makes some generalizations about contemporary India and the years immediately ahead daring to set forth some of his personal concerns for critical review by those in the United States and in India who share in varying degrees his concern for India's future.

This study shows that the failure of successive Indian governments to effect meaningful agrarian reforms has led to a political economy in rural India that is shaped, as it was prior to independence, largely by the interests of an elite minority of landholders. This group, Jannuzi argues, has worked both to deny the socioeconomic changes promised by modern India's own founders and to thwart the needs and interests of the rural majority who continue to lack secure rights in land. Examining the government's inability to establish a coherent national program for agrarian reform, the author focuses on the failure of a process that, on the one hand, has guaranteed India's landholding elites strong and continuous representation in the shaping of such agrarian reforms as were legislated and partially implemented and, on the other, has given no meaningful voice to the people at the base of what he calls "the hierarchy of interests in land" in rural India. The author skillfully interweaves three major themes: (1) the remarkable continuity in the thinking of policy makers in both colonial and independent India as they struggled to articulate and promote agrarian policies; (2) the persistence of economic arguments for agrarian reform that emphasize the idea that large units of cultivation offer inherent productive efficiency advantages over small holdings; and (3) the role of both British and Indian decision makers in maintaining a conceptual dichotomy between the issue of increasing productivity and the issue of distributive justice. Noting the expanding political participation of India's rural poor as well as the continuing need for increased agricultural productivity, Jannuzi asserts that future Indian leaders must emphasize the complementarity of the goals of productivity growth and distributive justice. As they seek to form a political nexus with the rural majority, future leaders will be challenged to implement agrarian policies that actually transform the political econ

In this book, the author makes some generalizations about contemporary India and the years immediately ahead daring to set forth some of his personal concerns for critical review by those in the United States and in India who share in varying degrees his concern for India's future.

This book shows that the failure of successive Indian governments to effect meaningful agrarian reforms has led to a political economy in rural India that is shaped, as it was prior to independence, largely by the interests of an elite minority of landholders. .

The relationship between the agrarian structure of Bangladesh and its problems of rural development is established in this study based on four years (1975-79) of field research. The authors suggest that the concentration of land in the hands of a rural elite is the principal impediment to the participation of weaker sections of the peasantry in economic progress. Tracing the failure of local attempts to change Bangladesh's agrarian structure by legislative means, they outline a modified program for rural development that is linked to agrarian reform. Agrarian reform, Drs. Jannuzi and Peach argue, is the prerequisite for a rural development strategy that provides for both economic growth and improved income distribution; thus, approaches to rural development in Bangladesh that place reliance on new agricultural technology without first changing the institutions that determine peoples' relationships to the land are not viable. The authors' policy recommendations, grounded in new data on the relative proportions of owners of land, sharecroppers, and the landless, are supplemented by a theoretical analysis of the institution of sharecropping and detailed field work methodology.