Rural class formation in Bangladesh, 1940–1980

Abstract

Rural class formation in Bangladesh is not a straightforward and uniform process of polarization between expanding capitalist farmers and poor peasants/tenants who are being steadily pushed off their land. There is certainly a rise in the incidence of landlessness but it cannot simply be attributed to rural capitalist expansion or the rapid increase in population, although the latter is a significant variable. This paper argues that during the last four decades of political upheaval and development efforts in East Bengal other uses of rural capital have been more attractive than its investment in transforming and expanding the scale of agricultural production. This implies that the description of rural Bangladesh as merely consisting of millions of small peasants, destined to become uniformly pauperized unless aid is forthcoming, is also not accurate. At any one time it is of course possible to identify a high proportion of small peasant households, but their condition is not stable. The ways in which they decline varies in different regions of Bangladesh, revealing distinctive patterns of rural class relations. Each variation has sometimes been generalized to apply to the whole of Bangladesh either through the dogmas of political analysis, or because a researcher or commentator has extrapolated from studies in a particular area. The purpose of this paper is to see whether these distinctive patterns can be contained within a single framework which does justice to the common as well as varied experiences within Bangladesh. In doing so it will be necessary in this introduction to consider: the weaknesses of previous accounts; the use of class as a tool of analysis in this context; opposing analyses of class relations; a framework for analysis; and the role of unproductive capital in the processes of accumulation and polarization.