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The insistent push towards privatisation of the agrarian sector is epitomised in the now repealed farm laws, and field data from thirteen Bhojpuri villages in Bihar, reveals that they would have further weakened the vulnerable position of marginal and small farmers. These laws would have enabled private traders and the corporate sector to manipulate the agriculture market in their favour. This article states that the new farm laws, rather than bringing about positive changes in agriculture, as proclaimed by the government, would aggravate rural conditions further and enhance the process of de-peasantisation.

Paramjit S. Judge, Making of Modern India: Sociological Explorations into Postcolonial Indian Modernity. Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2019, 239 pp., ₹995 (hardback). ISBN: 978-81-316-1008-4.

This article is an engagement with the socio-cultural, economic and political life-world of a Scheduled Caste, namely the Musahars, in light of official records and field data collected from four villages in Bihar. Against the background of Brahminical, colonial and post-colonial understandings of Musahars, the article presents an ethnographic account of Musahars by reflecting on their life cycle, culture and educational, health, political and economic conditions. They have remained as usual a poor, landless, marginalised and excluded caste group in the state of Bihar. The discourses representing Musahars in a negative manner have continued to remain as deeply embedded forms of structural violence against Musahars. The article finds that the Naxalite movement in Bihar has generated a somewhat socio-political awareness and aspiration among the Musahars and is equipping them to fight against the system for their well-being.

D. N. Dhanagare, Populism and Power: Farmers' Movement in Western India, 1980–2014. London: Routledge, 2016, xvii + 264 pp. Figures, tables, abbreviations, glossary, notes, references, index, ₹895 (hardback). ISBN 978-1-138-66858-4

This article is an engagement with the issues of caste and dominance in the light of field data collected from five villages of western Uttar Pradesh. Against the background of some empirical and conceptual studies, the article presents an analysis, in terms of caste, of the ownership of land and agricultural assets, occupational and educational achievement and khap-based solidarity. The analysis shows that the resources available in the villages are highly concentrated in the hands of the Jats. Being the most powerful or dominant caste, the Jats control the village level affairs and use various means such as labour hiring and wage payment arrangement, the provision of natural fodder and lavatory facilities, informal credit arrangement and the institution of panchayat, to control the life of the villagers. The article narrates various acts of dominance of the Jats over the Scheduled Castes or marginalised castes. It ends with the observation that regardless of aggressive political mobilisation among the Scheduled Castes or marginalised castes in the recent years, no caste or community has developed the capacity to object to the dominance of the Jats in the villages.

M.N. Srinivas described rural India as characterised by the presence of locally influential 'dominant castes'. This article is an empirical engagement with the concept of 'dominant caste' in the context of electoral politics in a district of Bihar. An analysis of the patterns of caste interactions in this region shows that there is no settled 'dominant caste'. Numerical as well as economic and political strength is shared between several castes. Not only do the major castes compete and manoeuvre for power, even the minor castes challenge the major castes' attempts at establishing dominance, by approaching the courts and, in the case of disputes, making strategic alliances with one major caste in order to oppose another. This article examines the dynamics of these shifting caste responses and alliances in order to illustrate the fluidity of caste equations in contemporary Bihar. It also highlights the role of state institutions such as the police and the courts, but most significantly, electoral representation itself, as an instrument for fostering social change and political dynamism.

This article seeks to contribute to the conceptual understanding of caste in the light of field data collected from four villages of Bihar. Against the background of two major theoretical positions, the 'hierarchy' thesis and the 'difference'thesis, the article confirms the empirical validity of the 'difference' thesis by demonstrating that castes in these villages have their own ideologies, revealed mainly in diverse and discrete origin tales that contest their hierarchisation on a continuous vertical scale. This does not mean that castes do not hierarchise themselves in respect to one another, but that each caste has a discrete notion of caste hierarchy. Caste members are proud of their caste ideology, and it is this which gives salience to their identity. The phenomenon of caste conflict and struggle for power makes quite clear that castes operate in the villages as separate groups, independent of an all-encompassing caste hierarchy. This apart , there is no specific relationship between caste and occupation , calling into question attempts to hierarchise castes on the basis of occupation. This has implications for the prevailing understanding of the jajmani system.