Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of the ‘Rural Middle Class(es)’
- 1 Trajectory of the Indian Middle Class: Its Size and Geographical Variations
- 2 In Search of the Rural Middle Classes: From Village Stratification to Rural Household Variations
- 3 Marx: Capital, Labour and the Rural Middle Classes
- 4 Weber: Marketable Capital, Status and the Rural Middle Classes
- 5 Bourdieu: Cultural Capital, Self-perception and the Middle-class Identity in Rural India
- Conclusion: Understanding the Rural Middle Classes
- Appendix A1 Non-farm Occupations in Rahatwade and Nandur
- Appendix A2 Caste and Occupations: The Urban Middle-Class Labour Market
- Appendix A3 Caste and Occupations in Rural India since 1991
- Appendix A4 Caste and Income Distribution
- Appendix A5 Caste and Socio-economic Indicators in Rural and Urban India
- Appendix A6 Caste Composition of Urban Middle Classes in India
- Appendix A7 Caste Composition of the Rural Middle Classes in Maharashtra
- Appendix A8 Household Survey Questionnaire 1
- Appendix A9 Household Socio-economic Survey Questionnaire 2
- References
- Index
3 - Marx: Capital, Labour and the Rural Middle Classes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Maps
- List of Tables
- List of Abbreviations
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Problem of the ‘Rural Middle Class(es)’
- 1 Trajectory of the Indian Middle Class: Its Size and Geographical Variations
- 2 In Search of the Rural Middle Classes: From Village Stratification to Rural Household Variations
- 3 Marx: Capital, Labour and the Rural Middle Classes
- 4 Weber: Marketable Capital, Status and the Rural Middle Classes
- 5 Bourdieu: Cultural Capital, Self-perception and the Middle-class Identity in Rural India
- Conclusion: Understanding the Rural Middle Classes
- Appendix A1 Non-farm Occupations in Rahatwade and Nandur
- Appendix A2 Caste and Occupations: The Urban Middle-Class Labour Market
- Appendix A3 Caste and Occupations in Rural India since 1991
- Appendix A4 Caste and Income Distribution
- Appendix A5 Caste and Socio-economic Indicators in Rural and Urban India
- Appendix A6 Caste Composition of Urban Middle Classes in India
- Appendix A7 Caste Composition of the Rural Middle Classes in Maharashtra
- Appendix A8 Household Survey Questionnaire 1
- Appendix A9 Household Socio-economic Survey Questionnaire 2
- References
- Index
Summary
The arrival of factories in our village has provided us with many different sources of income. The standard of living of the village population has progressed. Some in the village have started their own business, handling trucks, cranes rentals and transport. Some people have invested in buying and then hiring JCB tractors, and most importantly, many now have industrial jobs. There are many other sources of income too. We still have our farming activities, but working in farms has become less popular because of these factories: with our income from factory employment we are now able to hire labourers to take care of our agriculture. Working in industries and entrepreneurial activities are the new trends now. The average income of factory workers is 20,000 rupees to 25,000 rupees per month [2015]; hence there is no hurdle in the way of developing our standard of living and providing proper education for our children.
—Ramchandra Gh., personal interview (2016)The statement above by Mr Ramchandra, the former sarpanch of Nandur, who described himself as a ‘farmer’, a ‘businessman’ and a ‘politician’, provides anecdotal evidence of the diversified modes of generating livelihoods in rural India. In Rahatwade and Nandur, as in many parts of India, the processes of industrialisation have created new forms of economic diversification and significant class differentiations. This chapter is an attempt to examine the relations of production in the current phase of rural industrialisation, and to locate the middle class. Is rural India a capitalist economy, and if so, how many classes does it contain? These are important questions to have in mind when we talk about class formation in a Marxian tradition, but not very straightforward to answer. As we shall see, an overwhelming proportion of the rural population is still involved in some type of self-employment. However, despite the persistence of petty commodity production, there is a relatively high degree of capital accumulation, when the purpose of production is not solely the satisfaction of needs but the generation of profit, extracted from the labour power of others. In what follows, I first examine the dynamics of rural economic transformation over the past three decades, and then provide a classification of means of accumulation that exist in rural India.
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- Contested CapitalRural Middle Classes in India, pp. 65 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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