COMMERCIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
SCHOLARLY REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
COMMERCIALIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
IN THEORY, HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY INDIAN POLITICS
by
Professor Amit Bhaduri
Independent Researcher
Date: 8th February 2021
Time: 4.00 PM
Abstract:-
The term commercialization which overlaps with the Marxist notion of ‘commoditization’, is a process by which the logic of the market extends gradually its domination over production and distribution. The talk unpacks the layered histories of the Indian agrarian economy by exploring linkages between land, labour, capital, informal economy, markets and indebtedness. This historical lesson has assumed paramount importance in India in recent times. The three farm laws rushed through the parliament without consultation by the central government in power intends to commercialize the product market for wheat and rice without any minimum support price without dispute resolution by civil laws over price. The two biggest industrial houses are waiting in the wings as the market price will be settled by the vastly asymmetric market power of those large industrial houses as buyers and individual farmers as sellers. It is clearly a no win situation for the farmers, and the small farmers are afraid of losing their land through indebtedness and unviability of farming at low selling price.
Bio:-
Prof. Bhaduri was educated in Presidency College, Calcutta, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A and Cambridge University, U.K, and received Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1967. He has taught in various universities around the world as professor/ visiting professor including Presidency college, and Institute of Management, Calcutta., Delhi school of Economics and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi., Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum., El Colegio de Mexico, Stanford University, U.S.A., Vienna and Linz University , Austria., Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Bremen University., Germany, and Bologna and Pavia University, Italy. His major publications include: The Economic Structure of Backward Agriculture (1982, Academic Press, London), Macroeconomics: The Dynamics of Commodity Production (1986, Macmillan , London), Unconventional Economic Essays (1993, Oxford University Press, Delhi), Employment and Development (Oxford University Press, Delhi 2006) and The Face You Were Afraid to See (Penguin, India,2009). Prof. Bhaduri was internationally selected professor (of ‘clear fame’) in Pavia University (2004), Italy until 2009, and Professor Emeritus (resigned, 2020), in JNU, New Delhi, and also visiting professor at CMDR, Dharwad.