Peasant Class Differentiation: A Study in Method with Reference to Haryana

by Utsa Patnaik

Arguing that existing methods of classifying data are inadequate for analyzing India's agrarian structure and changes in it, this book draws on empirical work using Marxist categories to examine the development of rural capitalist production in Haryana. The author formulates an empirical
criterion based on labor use for capturing class status and applies it to farm households in the region.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published December 17, 1987

About the author

Utsa Patnaik is an Indian Marxist economist. She taught at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning in the School of Social Sciences at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, from 1973 until her retirement in 2010. Her husband is the Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik.

Utsa Patnaik obtained her doctorate in economics from the Somerville College, Oxford, UK before returning to India to join JNU. Her main areas of research interest are the problems of transition from agriculture and peasant predominant societies to industrial society, both in a historical context and at present in relation to India; and questions relating to food security and poverty.