Saturday 21 May 2011

The book in progress, Narratives of Peasantry: Culture and Crisis

 The book in progress, Narratives of Peasantry: Culture and Crisis

The book reads in a number of story narratives, mostly non canonical, in Hindi and regional Indian languages (translated into Hindi) and  dealing with rural India, astute understanding of the complex structural processes operating in the  colonial, colonial, post-colonial and the contemporary times that constituted and normalized certain forms of cultures and politics--expressions of subalternity.  As locations of the subaltern, the narratives of Phanishwarnath Renu, Uma Shankar Joshi, Pannalal Patel, Prabhas Kumar Choudhary, Mahasweta Devi, Shrilal Shukla, Markandeya, Shilendra Ranjan, Tarachand Viyogi, Damoder Dutta Dixit, Subhash Kushwaha, Harnot and several others not  only articulate the daily struggle of billions of small and middle level peasant families for subsistence but also reveal their intense urge for better lives amidst the growing disarray of the agricultural sector in a world fast changing. We find  revealed  to us the contingencies and difficulties of farming,  the dynamics of chronic poverty, usury, bank and credit, landlessness, tenancy, inept educational facilities, unimplemented development programs, large scale corruption and oppression-- exacerbated by caste discrimination and electoral concerns, crises in job prospects, mass migration, dearth of medical care, addiction etc. Reading them with reference to the relevant discourses, contexts and concurrently various reports and debates enable us to figure out how the gradual disintegration of peasantry in India is implicated in the politics of tradition, democracy as well as capitalism.

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