The Displaced Threshing Yard: Involutions of the Rural

Abstract

In understanding contemporary rural India, it is important to go beyond rendering the rural as synonymous with villages and agriculture or focusing on the ‘agrarian question’. Given the multiple contradictions that the varied ruralities of India are exhibiting, it may be relevant to locate the rural as being constituted by the triangulated structures of reproduced caste, an economics of neglect, and a politics of rescue. The result of such triangulation is evident in the range of involutions that are manifesting across rural India. These include not only a sharpened differentiation of classes and households, but also forms of separation-integration of key rural institutions and structures, and the erosion of rural citizens. All these have implications for liveability and the nature of democracy in rural areas.