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Acknowledgements -- Introduction: internal migration in contemporary India : an overview of issues and concerns / Deepak K. Mishra -- Nature of migration and its contribution to India's urbanization / R.B. Bhagat -- Women's mobility and migration : an exploratory study of Muslim women migrants in Jamia / Nagar, Delhi, Meenakshi Thapan, Anshu Singh and Nidhitha Sreekumar -- Migration and marginalization : a study of north east migrants in Delhi / Babu P. Remesh -- Labour migration in the North East / S. Irudaya Rajan and Rikil Chyrmang -- Educational migration among Ladakhi youth / Elizabeth Williams-Oerberg -- Migration in agrarian classes : a study based on nine villages in Andhra Pradesh / R.Vijay -- Migration from contemporary Bihar / Amrita Datta -- Migration and Punjab : some perceptions / Surjit Singh -- Seasonal migration from Odisha : a view from the field / Deepak K. Mishra -- Internal labour migration in India : emerging needs of comprehensive national migration -- Policy / Anjali Borhade -- About the editors and contributors -- Index

This article aims to analyse the plight of the migrant workers in India during the Covid 19 pandemic from a political economy perspective. While taking note of the disruptions and uncertainties during the drastic lockdown that was announced suddenly, it is argued that the vulnerabilities of the migrant labour force are deeply embedded in the long-term changes in the political economy of development in India. These changes, on the one hand, have resulted in the gradual weakening of state support to the working classes, and on the other, have resulted in the normalisation of 'cheap labour' as a legitimate objective of neoliberal capitalist development. Locating the conditions of the migrant working class on the specificities of the manifold restructuring of the Indian economy under neoliberal globalisation, the study attempts to emphasise the structural dimensions of the current crisis faced by the migrant labourers. JEL Codes: J46, J61, O15, O17, P16

B. B. Mohanty, Agrarian Transformation in Western India: Economic Gains and Social Costs. New Delhi: Routledge, 2019, 386 pp., ₹1,495 (hardback). ISBN: 978-0367247294.

The process of livelihood diversification could be highly complex and conflict-ridden, particularly because of unequal access to crucial livelihood resources. Based on mountain regions of north-east India in general and Arunachal Pradesh in particular, this paper attempts to analyse the livelihoods diversification in a forest-dependent economy. Along with the manifold transformation of the economies in the region, gender relations have also been altered in a diverse and complex manner. This is primarily because gender relations are deeply embedded in the economy and the politics of control over resources-a dimension which is often neglected in the mainstream discussions on economic development and change. Largely drawing upon micro-studies by the author and others, these interconnections have been examined in relation to few critical issues. They include the changing nature of ownership and control over forests having significant gendered implications. As forest products get commercialized, the way forests and forest-related activities are viewed by the forest dependent population also change. The shift from family and community labour to wage labour for extraction of forest products for market use as well as the interdependencies between farming and forest related activities alters the intra-family distribution of work as well as opportunities for men and women. Finally, the paper also take into account the impact of deforestation and commercialisation of forest products on women's work burden.

"Much ink has been spilled on poverty measurements and trends, at the expense of revealing causality. Assembling multi-disciplinary and international contributions, this book shows that a causal understanding of poverty in rich and poor countries is essential. That understanding must be based on a critical interrogation of the wider social relations which set up the mechanisms producing poverty as an outcome. Processes that widen/strengthen crisis-ridden market relations, that increase income/wealth inequality, and that 'enhance' the policy-biases of nation-states and international institutions toward the affluent-propertied strata cause global poverty and undermine poor people's political power. The processes concentrating wealth-creation are poverty-causing processes. Through theoretical and empirical analyses this volume offers important insights and political prescriptions to address global poverty. Contributors are:Raju J. Das, Deepak K. Mishra, Steven Pressman, Michael Roberts, Jamie Gough, Aram Eisenschitz, Anjan Chakravarty, Mizhar Mikati, Marcelo Milan, Tarique Niazi, John Marangos, Eirini Triarchi, Themis Anthrakidis, Macayla Kisten and Brij Maharaj, David Michael M. San Juan, and Thaddeus Hwong."

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Political Economy Land and Livelihoods in Contemporary India -- Chapter 2 Land Titling or Land Reforms: India's Policy Dilemma -- Chapter 3 Ownership v/s Control: The Changing dynamics of land use in Liberalised Agricultural Context of India -- Chapter 4 Contextualizing Land Question in a Green Revolution Area: Agrarian Transformation and Politics in Western Uttar Pradesh -- Chapter 5 Landowners as Non-farm Workers – A Case of Small Farmer Migrants in Karnataka -- Chapter 6 Globalising Agrarian Markets and Changing Production Relations: Village-level Evidence from India -- Chapter 7 -- Land, Caste and Class in Rural West Bengal -- Chapter 8 Agricultural Land Markets in India: A Case of Maharashtra -- Chapter 9 Dispossession, Neoliberal Urbanism and Societal Transformation: Insight into Rajarhat New Township in West Bengal -- Chapter 10 Land, Labour and Industrialisation in Rural and Urban Areas: A Case Study of Reliance SEZ in Gujarat -- Chapter 11 Neoliberal Governing as Production of Fantasy: Contemporary transformations in Ahmedabad's landscape -- Chapter 12 The Expressway to Agra-Two Roads, Same Destination: Land Acquisition under Old and New Land Acquisition Regimes -- Chapter 13 LARR 2013: What Does It Deliver? -- Chapter 14 Land Issues and Liberalisation in Northeast India -- Chapter 15 The Gendered Transformation of Land Rights and Feminisation of Hill Agriculture in Arunachal Pradesh: Insights from Field Survey.

The book discusses important developments emerging around the land questions in India in the context of India's neoliberal economic development and its changing political economy. It covers many issues that have been impinging the political economy in land and livelihoods in India since the 1990s, examining the land question from diverse methodological standpoints. Most of the chapters rely on evidence generated through primary surveys in different parts of the country. The book, via its diversity of approaches and methodologies, brings out new and hitherto unexplored and/or less researched issues on the emerging land question in India. The range of issues addressed in the volume encompasses the contemporary developments in the political economy of land, land dispossession, SEZs, agrarian changes, urbanisation and the drive for the commodification of land across India. The authors also examine role of the state in promoting the capitalist transformation in India and continuities and changes emerging in the context of land liberalisation and market-friendly economic reforms.

A substantial section of India's migrant labour force is pushed into precarious livelihoods in the informal economy. The circular dynamic of seasonal migration, taken to fill the recurrent voids in earnings and employment, is the only distress-ameliorating strategy of marginalised households and should not be equated with accumulative and aspirational forms of livelihood diversification. We analyse the processes behind the emergence of a mobile labour force in the backdrop of the declining viability of agriculture. We have documented illustrations of livelihood distress of two villages using data from a primary field survey conducted in the northern region of West Bengal. Our findings show that the multiple modes of migration in both villages were outcomes of migrants' relentless efforts to continuously evolve and explore new routes for livelihood and, in the process, develop ways to minimise risks and social costs. With rising employment insecurity in the urban economy, migrants were building resilience against different forms of vulnerability and redundancy from traditional modes of reproduction. The linkages between the crisis of survival of the agrarian classes in rural India and the continued vulnerability of the seasonal and circular migrant workers point to the specific ways in which labour is getting absorbed, most often in adverse forms, in a rapidly globalising Indian economy.