Agrarian classes are groups of people in society that largely depend on agriculture as their main source of livelihood. In India, agrarian society was traditionally organized around caste, with the jajmani system governing agrarian relations. This system began to weaken during British colonial rule, and further changes came after independence, leading to modernization and the decline of the traditional caste-based economic system.
One notable sociologist, Daniel Thorner, divided the Indian agrarian population into three categories. First are the Maliks, whose income comes primarily from property rights over land. They collect rent from tenants and sharecroppers. They can be divided into two types: big landlords, who are often absentee owners, and rich landowners, who are usually involved in managing and improving their land.
Second are the Kisans, or working peasants, who own small plots of land and rely mostly on family labor for cultivation. They are also divided into two subcategories: small landowners with enough land to support a family and substantial tenants who do not own land but cultivate enough to support themselves without working as wage laborers.
Lastly, Mazdoors are landless laborers who earn their livelihood by working for wages on others’ land or as sharecroppers. These laborers form a significant portion of the agricultural workforce and often face poor living conditions.
Thorner’s classification was not widely popular because agrarian relations have evolved with the development of capitalist agriculture. However, the Lenin-Mao framework, which divides agrarian populations into five or six categories based on land ownership, has been more accepted. At the top are big landlords, followed by big farmers, middle farmers, small and marginal farmers, and landless laborers. Each group has different roles and levels of power in rural society, with landless laborers being the most disadvantaged.
Copyright @ Sociology IGNOU.