Agricultural performance among the social groups in India

• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Author: Kiran Kumar Karnati
• Date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2465

ACADEMIC PAPER

Agricultural performance among the social groups in India

Kiran Kumar Karnati

School of Economics, University of Hyderabad,

Hyderabad, India

Correspondence

Kiran Kumar Karnati, School of Economics,

University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India.

Email: kirankumarkarnati40@gmail.com

Present study explores the agriculture performance among the socialgroups who culti-

vate the various crops. Growth of the Indian villages depends typically on the caste.

Caste is a prime factorfor personal development of any individual and community. The

village's castesare classified based on the educational,social and economic status such

as Scheduled Castes(SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs),Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and

Others Castes. Indianpolitics, welfare programs and policy makings revolve over these

classifications. In this study, one village was selected as a case study to understand the

village structure and agriculture performance among the social groups. Results of the

study reveals that distribution of the land is unequal among the social groups. Agricul-

tural performance of the marginalized caste groups farmers is pathetic and disadvan-

taged to all type'sbenefits. Structural differencesin the society it pursued and affected

each person and farmersof different social groups.

1|INTRODUCTION

Backbone of the Indian agriculture is rural areas, agriculture and allied

sectors play an important role in providing employment opportunities

for 70% of its rural households. Stilla large portion of farmers depends

on the traditional method of agriculture practices. In India, more than

80% of the farmers are marginal and small farmers. India's agriculture

not only cannot be seen in the point view of size-wiseclassification of

farmers like marginal, small, medium and large, but contrary to that it

can be observed in the point of caste wisedivision of the farmers, that

is, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other BackwardClas-

ses (OBCs) and Other Castes or Others. Historically in India, Other

Castes or Upper castes dominated the village structure through the

political power and land, and also these caste groups are controlled

and supervised remainingcaste groups on the base of what have to do

and what not have to do. Hence remaining (SC, STs and OBCs) caste

groups remained as the wage laborer, contract laborer, tenant farmers

and sharecroppers. In this villages, it appearslike land is unequally dis-

tributed among the social groups,less proportion of Other Castes con-

trolled the large proportion of area and large proportion SC, ST and

OBC caste groups controlled the small proportion of area. As far as

Inter-groups disparities in terms of land ownership is concerned, Non-

SC/ST/OBC households(Other households) with a households propor-

tion of 19.73% controlled 50.28% of land, while SC and OBC house-

holds with a household proportionof 80.27% controlled 49.7% of land

out of the total area ownedindicating a clear disparity and skewed dis-

tribution among socialgroups during 1980–1981 (Kumar, 2015). These

types of village structurestill prevailed across the country even though

there have been significant land reformsthrough the various phases in

the country. In the rural areas' agricultural practices and production,

credit and so on depends on the caste-based structure. In this context,

the presented outline is mainly concentrated, to studythe Agricultural

relations among the caste groups in the villages, by taking the one

village as a case study.

2|REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The practice of caste as a hegemonized and obstruct attention of

other political and social institutions and particularly, make the voice-

less and subordinate of the subalterns (Inden, 1990). The pervasive-

ness of classified thinking of caste difference instructs that caste in

India may be a more authoritative, strong and flexible cultural phrase

for the utterance of class values than most forms of ethnic identity in

Europe and North America. But and as is the case with ethnicity, the

specific sense of balance between hierarchical and egalitarian princi-

ples of variance will vary contextually (Jeffrey, 2001). The member-

ship of a caste implies that a person becomes part of a person-based

social network which controls insider's information about economic

opportunities, transmits skills and provides varied types of human and

Received: 1 June 2020 Revised: 23 August 2020 Accepted: 3 September 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2465

J Public Affairs. 2022;22:e2465. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1of11

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2465