Special issue on rural relations in India - Introduction

This volume is the outcome of the Workshop on 'Rural Labour Relations In India Today' held in London in 1997. The aim was to analyse the emerging development trajectories of rural labour relations and labour struggles in India, based on studies from its different states. The organisers wished to see examined, inter alia, how accumulation patterns and the balance of power between classes facilitated and shaped labour relations. Important was the extent to which agricultural employment was being substituted by non-agricultural employment, and whether, consequently, rural labourers were being de-linked from their old masters in ways which broke previous exploitative relations; or whether such relations were being maintained, or even extended to new groups. Discussion of the role of the state in rural labour relations was also called for. It is argued that the papers show that politicisation among rural labourers is taking place. However, the papers also point to a range of elements that qualify the politicisation process when it is evaluated from a class perspective, nob the least being that rural labour politicisation may strengthen or even depend on intraclass divisions such as gender and caste.