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This chapter examines Prince Ferdinand's personal rule as Bulgaria's monarch during the period 1896-1912 and the political, social, and economic problems faced by Bulgaria under his regime. The restoration of relations with Russia in 1896 meant that at last Bulgarian political life could return to some form of normality and stability. Politicians exiled for their opposition to Prince Ferdinand and his minister president Stefan Stambolov were allowed to return and in 1898 the contentious issue of the pro-Russian Bulgarian officers who had left the country in 1886-1887 was at last solved. Their return was greeted by the population at large, but resented by many army officers who had remained in Bulgaria and who regarded their former colleagues as little more than deserters, nor could they be unaware that because many of those who had left held senior ranks, their return would produce promotion congestion.

This chapter examines the demesne farm of Wisbech Barton during the early 14th century, a period often viewed as the demographic and economic turning point of the Middle Ages. It reveals that reeves responded to the challenges of this time, including the agrarian crisis of 1315-22 and the price deflation of the 1330s and 1340s, with remarkable flexibility and proficiency. Annual changes to the acreage sown with cash crops were determined by actual and relative prices and this sensitivity to market forces helped keep farm income buoyant. Most importantly, the intensity with which land was farmed was deliberately reduced as economic conditions deteriorated, with the effect that crop yields were reduced. Soils at Wisbech may well have been less fertile on the eve of the Black Death, but the responsibility for this lay not with the overuse of land or a lack of technological knowledge, but rather with rational decision-making.

This chapter examines the nature and factors contributing to the agrarian crisis and rural distress in India. It shows that the Indian economy remains predominantly rural, with urbanization taking place slowly, but that rural-urban disparities in income and living standards continue to widen. As the most important source of livelihood in the countryside, agriculture accounts for a disproportionately high share in the total workforce while its share in the gross national product continues to dwindle. The chapter also investigates the structural changes in employment across various sectors and within rural areas, the political economy of the technological transformation in agriculture, the nature of economic reforms and their impact on agriculture and farmers, and suicides brought about by the agrarian crisis. Finally, the chapter addresses the sustainability of farming in the context of reforms and considers ways in which to solve the agrarian crisis.

This chapter examines agrarian distress, debt, and farmer suicides in three villages in Wayanad and Idukki districts of Kerala. Agriculture and plantations account for about 35 per cent of the total income in both districts and about 50 per cent of the labour force. Since 2000, Wayanad and Idukki faced severe agrarian crisis resulting in farmer suicides. A marked decline in prices of plantation crops such as coffee, tea, pepper, and cardamom was accompanied by a decline in yields due to pests and poor weather conditions. Compounding the situation were trade liberalization, particularly the free trade agreement with Sri Lanka, and declining state support.

This chapter presents an account of farmers' suicides in the state of Andhra Pradesh starting in 1996. Based on a survey of several studies, it shows that farmers' distress in the state can be attributed to the increasing fragility of resources, particularly the groundwater resources, as well as unsustainable and inappropriate cropping practices, notably in resource-poor areas. A number of factors were responsible for the agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh, including growing input costs, falling farm incomes, increasing dependence on unstable groundwater resources, and volatility of output prices. Another cause was heavy household investment in groundwater, with farmers borrowing from informal sources at high interest rates, causing them to pile up debts. This chapter also discusses the economic reforms in Andhra Pradesh in relation to agriculture, along with institutional retrogression and rural distress.

Karnataka is a drought-prone region with a large proportion of wastelands, high outstanding agricultural credit from scheduled banks, and high density of marginal and small farmers. These conditions could trigger a serious agrarian crisis. In addition, Karnataka is dominated by rain-fed agriculture but has poor irrigation. Under these circumstances, the narrow techno-centred green revolution strategy gave rise to inappropriate cropping patterns in many parts of the state. Agricultural distress is acute in Karnataka's northern dry regions, while the incidence of suicides has been very high since 1997. Aside from indebtedness, farmers' distress in Karnataka can be attributed to lack of proper marketing facilities, increasing stress on natural resources, poor extension services, frequent failure of monsoon and droughts resulting in crop losses, and absence of institutions where farmers could seek counselling.

This chapter analyses the reasons underlying the revival of communalism in western UP in the 2000s, culminating in one of the most extremely violent riots in recent decades in UP in Muzaffarnagar and adjoining districts in 2013. Two longer-term developments played a key role: sustained construction of everyday communalism by the BJP–RSS at the grass roots from the early 2000s, followed by the long and divisive electoral campaign for the 2014 national elections under Narendra Modi; a deepening agrarian crisis which contributed to the breakdown of the relatively harmonious, socioeconomic relationship between Hindus—primarily Jats—and Muslims in the rural areas, making them highly vulnerable to communal feelings. These shifts allowed the BJP through well-organized and sustained mobilization to deepen the sociopolitical divide between these communities, leading to communal tension and riots. While the former constitutes the political and aggressively visible form, the latter constitutes the underlying political economy aspect.

This chapter analyses the underlying causes of the agrarian crisis in Punjab, one of the most prosperous states in India. It shows the pronounced deceleration in agricultural growth since the early 1990s and the decline in profitability in agriculture because the cost of inputs has been increasing faster than output prices, coupled with poor or stagnant yields. Other factors responsible for the decline in income from agriculture are the increasing cost of capital equipment such as tractors, the rising cost of irrigation as a result of the sharp drop in the water table, and significant idle capacity in capital equipment. Although farmers' suicides can be attributed to many factors, the main culprit is economic stress due to indebtedness.

Although the crisis in agricultural growth and agrarian crisis are overlapping perspectives, they give rise to contrasting diagnoses of the problems in Indian agriculture. This chapter describes farming communities in India as a three-tier pyramid created by government policies over time. Poverty-stricken farmers make up the base of the pyramid, the so-called upwardly mobile farmers (that is, farmers struggling to move up the productivity level but often relegated to the middle) are in the middle, and a small section lobbying for subsidies, and seeking rents or unproductive profits instead of utilizing their potential for entrepreneurship for agricultural growth are at the top. The chapter argues that by providing state support to the upwardly mobile farmers, growth is possible even for those situated at the bottom of the pyramid. It examines case studies of farmers' suicides in five states and suggests critical interventions in terms of credit, extension services, and institutional structure.

This chapter examines the socioeconomic and political consequences of the agrarian crisis triggered by the Black Death and how the Black Death was related to the dynastic unions during the later Middle Ages. It first considers the origins of the union by focusing on the dynastic and political aspects of the Black Death, and in particular the renewed Scandinavian integration during the period 1261–1397. It then discusses the Kalmar Union and the conflicts over it between monarchy and aristocracy in 1434–1523, as well as the reasons for the collapse of the union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms. It also explores state formation in Scandinavia in the later Middle Ages before concluding with an analysis of the Reformation and its consequences during the years 1523–1537.

Chapter 7 closes the book by summarizing key findings and arguments advanced and their relevance for the literature on agrarian economy, development, and suicide. It reiterates that crisis of dry-land production has forced farmers across classes, particularly small and marginal farmers, to take more risk in trying to switch to remunerative horticulture. It has also set up a contradiction between weak production capacities, low incomes, and life cycle specific aspirations for high social and economic mobility through expanded consumption. This plays an important role in aggravating rural indebtedness. There is a concurrent entrenchment of individualism and self-interest as the guiding principle in domestic relations, which is opening up new spaces for familial friction and stress in a cultural system where hierarchical authority in family has been the norm. The chapter argues that rural suicide, whether farm-related or other types, represents a synchronization of anomic and egoistic states in a cultural field that valorizes strong masculinity.

This chapter describes how, over the last decade, hundreds of monkeys captured in Delhi and small towns in Uttarakhand have been released into forests across this region to keep them out of contact with people. However, these monkeys are resolutely urban creatures accustomed to living with humans, and soon make their way to the nearest village in search of people and resources. The chapter recounts how the sharp rise in instances of monkey-human conflict has become an urgent social and political issue in Uttarakhand over the last decade. These anxieties about marauding monkeys who are not from the mountains speak volumes about the contemporary politics of belonging in this region. As mountain villagers are dispossessed of their land by outsiders from the plains and face growing unemployment, they relate their status to that of mountain monkeys who are, they argue, similarly driven off their homes by interlopers. What sets these conversations in the Central Himalayas apart from anxieties about invasive species elsewhere in the world, the chapter argues, is a recognition of these outsider monkeys as distinctive individuals within a species, with their own tendencies and desires that sets them apart from local, mountain monkeys.

This chapter examines how Xiaocheng Folk Art Village in Yan'an was transformed into a container of tradition and the practice of paper-cutting into an intangible cultural heritage. It first considers the origin narrative of Xiaocheng Folk Art Village before discussing how China's urban intellectuals in the fields of folklore, religious studies, and anthropology have sought to re-understand the meanings of their work in the broader national and international framework. It then explains how Xiaocheng Folk Art Village emerged as a site of local, national, and international interests, with particular emphasis on the birth of creative rural subjects, reconfigured domestic relations, and a new public life in the village. It also describes the village's democratic struggles over folk art and concludes with an analysis of the politics of cultural authenticity and the invention of tradition in the broader context of intense urbanization and agrarian crisis in China. The chapter argues that heritage making in China is a process of “narrative battle” in which various actors construct differentiated meanings of history and tradition against the official party-state narrative.

This chapter analyses the movements in the prices of cotton and non-cotton fibres since 1980–81. It attempts to identify the various determinants of prices of these fibres and analyses their impact on the relative price movements during the period. The core argument in Chapter 2 is that the stimulus for the substantial shift from demand for cotton textiles towards synthetic and blended textiles was provided by the changes in the relative price of cotton vis-à-vis synthetic fibres and filament yarns. While the prices of synthetic fibres declined substantially during the 1990s due to reductions in customs duties on the intermediates and raw materials for synthetic fibres, price of cotton continued to remain high as a result of a deep agrarian crisis caused by the movement of international cotton prices and a decline in public investment in agriculture.