Pre-capitalist Reproduction on the Nepal Tarai: Semi-feudal Agriculture in an Era of Globalisation

Abstract

This article highlights the continued significance of pre-capitalist formations in shaping the trajectory of economic transition in peripheral regions, even in an era of neo-liberal globalisation. There is a tendency for Marxist scholars to assume the inevitable “dominance” of capitalism over older modes of production. Using a case study from Nepal's far eastern Tarai, this paper seeks to understand the reproduction of feudal social relations in a region which is both accessible and integrated into regional and global markets. The paper traces the early subordination of indigenous groups to feudalism from the eighteenth century onwards, and the political and ideological processes through which these social relations were reinforced. Through examining the historical role of feudal-colonial alliances, however, the paper notes that pre-capitalist reproduction in Nepal is a dynamic process, actively negotiated and reinforced by the external imperatives of capitalist expansion itself as well as through the entrenched political power of landed classes. Today feudal and capitalist formations co-exist and articulate, with surplus divided between landlords and non-farm employers. Understanding the complex dynamics of feudal or “semi-feudal” reproduction in an era of globalisation is crucial if one is to identify avenues for collective mobilisation against inequitable pre-capitalist and capitalist class relations.

Key words:

• Nepal
• Tarai
• Madhesh
• semi-feudalism
• pre-capitalist
• mode of production
• agrarian change
• articulation

Acknowledgements

I am, first of all, exceptionally grateful for the kind assistance that was given to me from the residents of Jhorahat, Bhaudaha and Thalaha and the surrounding villages who welcomed me warmly into their communities and gave me their time. Invaluable help in data collection was offered by Sagar Mudvari, Sachin Ghimire, Upendra Khawas and Pushpa Hamal, which I greatly appreciated. I am also particularly grateful to the theoretical guidance offered by Kumar Sanjay Singh, Simon Chilvers, and other members of the Indian Formation Collective and India Study Circle. I would like to offer additional thanks to David Seddon, Andrea Nightingale and John Cameron for their supervisory support during the research phase, and I appreciate the detailed comments by three anonymous reviewers. The study was part-funded by the generous support of the Graduate Organisation for the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, the Slawson Award for Field Studies from the Royal Geographical Society, and a grant from the Richard Stapley Educational Trust.

Notes

1. Marx refers to these characteristics of feudalism in a number of his writings, but it is dealt with most systematically in the discussion on “Rent of Land” from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.

2. As Bhaduri (1981, 44) notes: “Translated into the language of daily politics in India, our schematisation of the class structure in Indian agriculture corresponds to the coexistence of ‘feudal remnants’ (or semi-feudalism) sustained by a nexus of forced commercial relations and ‘capitalist tendencies’.”

3. The VDC is the primary unit of local government in Nepal, comparable to the Indian panchayat.

4. For the survey, all homesteads in the selected wards were given a number on a self-made map of the community. A random number table was used to select 20% of households, producing a total sample size of 180. Selected households were approached and the purpose of the study explained prior to beginning the survey. One household opted out. A further 20 households (who showed an interest in the research and were from different class and ethnic groups) were selected from the sample to participate in in-depth qualitative interviews. Several informal focus groups were also conducted and oral histories were collected from key informants residing locally.

5. This also parallels colonial accounts in 1911 from the Western Dooars, the eastern extension of the Nepal Tarai in contemporary North Bengal, a region with similar ethnic and ecological characteristics (Grunning [1911] 2007).

6. According to Singh (2007) any potential accumulation of surplus which does take place in adivasi social formations is undermined by redistributive mechanisms. It is taxation and other coercive measures of capitalism and/or feudalism which restructure this mode of production.

7. There are a series of interesting government directives from the far eastern Tarai in the late eighteenth century usefully compiled by Regmi (1971). These records indicate the feudal character of the regime, with the diversion of surplus to elite consumption within the ruling class. The Morang subba or district administrator lists the expenditures made with agrarian revenue, including gifts for distribution within royal networks, wedding and medical expenses for the royal family and salaries for artisans to maintain palaces. A later directive indicates expenses such as providing hospitality for visiting “Englishmen, Nawabs and Rajas and Wakils” (Regmi 1988, 1).

8. A set of directives from 1804–05 recorded in Regmi (1973) point to military uses of revenue. These include the use of tax revenue from Morang to purchase steel from Kolkata for the manufacture of munitions. The above two directives were also discussed in Sugden (2011).

9. Labour recruitments from Nepal increased in the later colonial era as workers migrated to populate the tea plantations in Darjeeling, the Dooars and Assam, although the British did not require territorial control of Nepal to mobilise these workers.

10. This echoes Bettelheim (1972), who suggests that the global capitalist mode of production is subject to a “twofold tendency.” First, it reproduces the relations and forces of production at the scale of each national social formation, including the reproduction of specific forms of domination between capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production. Secondly, at an international scale it reproduces the unequal relations between these social formations. The degree to which capitalism can actually achieve dominance within a given social formation is thus mediated by these relations (Bettelheim 1972).

11. Gaige (1976) notes that across the Tarai in the 1960s, high caste hill settlers had relatively good connections with the local and Kathmandu-based bureaucracy.

12. More examples of patron-client relationships involving political parties in Morang are documented in Ollieuz(2011).

13. Investment in means of production entails the investment in inputs which maintain existing levels of productivity. Under capitalism, the reproduction of the means of production is paid for out of surplus value. However, as labour has not been separated from the means of production, investment in the inputs necessary to produce enough for the family to subsist must be paid for with the product of necessary labour time.

14. The product of which is appropriated by the bourgeoisie in value form under capitalism (Marx 1974, 208–209).

15. The determination of households to secure tenancies is evident in the main Bantar village of Bhaudaha. It was revealed that seven households are farming as sub-tenants. A few “enterprising” tenants have used their social networks to rent out extra land and then sub-let it to those not fortunate enough to have the necessary contacts, making five maund (200 kg) profit as the discussants termed it, “for no extra work.” They went on to suggest that poor farmers were willing to take up sub-tenancies at inflated rates of rent given the high unemployment and landlessness.

16. With this inter-linkage of merchant and usurer capital, further inflation of interest often occurs at the time of sale, whereby the trader decreases the grain price against which repayments are calculated to below the market rate. As farmers are obliged to repay the loan they cannot sell to a different grain trader offering a better rate (see Crow and Murshid 1994; Harriss-White 1996).

17. A nexus between merchants and landlords has been found to be present in other parts of the eastern Tarai in Hatlebakk (2002). Labour-employing landlords collaborate with merchants to keep agricultural wages low.

18. A sample survey of Gulf migrants carried out by Graner and Gurung (2003) recorded a significant under-representation of indigenous Tarai communities.