Responses to Livelihood Precarity in Dryland India: Diversifying Out of Agrarian Distress

Abstract

Scholars of critical agrarian political economy see agriculture in liberalization-era India as a form of disguised unemployment, part of wider agrarian distress. This article engages with literature differentiating the class/caste responses to agrarian and non-farm livelihood distress in India to understand the different diversification options that households have available. The article draws on research carried out in a village in dryland, Bt cotton-dependent Telangana in south India to show these variegated practices. While Other Backward Caste households invested in livestock to cope with heavy Bt cotton investments and losses, Scheduled Caste households focused on the educated rural youth, relying on their non-farm wage labour in jobs such as taxi driving. Despite rural–urban migration and higher levels of education, under/unemployment remains persistent for rural youth. In this context, Ryuthu Bandhu, a cash transfer programme pioneered in Telangana in 2018, proved crucial for rural livelihood survival in the study village, contributing up to 22 per cent of annual household incomes. However, negative average net incomes across all households show that attempts to diversify out of distress have been largely unsuccessful.