Changing Risk for Landless Populations: How Structural Transformation Influences Communist Success in Rural India

Abstract

What explains the pattern of communist vote across rural India? One explanation is that landless populations will vote for left parties because they are more willing to engage with risky groups. But does land reform change the risk structure for rural voters and how does this change affect the viability of left parties? This article uses Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to understand what percentage of communist vote can be explained by landlessness in three of India’s Lok Sabha elections. Analysis finds that landlessness is still a significant explanation of communist vote across India but not when controlling for left strongholds in West Bengal and Kerala, meaning that structural variables are moderated by the duration of communist regime. This finding lends evidence to the idea that long term communist regimes can successfully redistribute wealth in a society to reduce structural differences among peasants. Changes in land tenure increase economic risk for peasant voters, and as recent elections have shown, decrease the viability of communist parties. To further this point, I supplement my results by case study analysis of West Bengal and Kerala, thus explicating the mechanisms leading to the more recent upheaval of communist support.