Rural Urbanism in Tamil Nadu Notes on a "Slater Village": Gangaikondan, 1916–2012

John Harriss, J. Jeyaranjan and K. Nagaraj
Additional contact information
John Harriss: School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, jharriss@sfu.ca.
J. Jeyaranjan: Institute for Development Alternatives, Chennai.
K. Nagaraj: Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.

Journal, 2012, vol. 2, issue 2, 29-59

Abstract: Gangaikondan, a village outside Tirunelveli in southern Tamil Nadu, was the subject of one of the village surveys conducted by the students of Professor Gilbert Slater from the University of Madras in 1916, and re-studied in the mid-1930s, the 1950s, and 1984, and most recently by the authors in 2008. The paper presents the findings of the most recent study and traces the story of agrarian social change in the village through the 20th century, drawing on the successive surveys. At the beginning of the century Gangaikondan was dominated by Brahman landlords; by its end the most numerous Dalit/Scheduled Caste community, the Pallars, had more land in aggregate than any other single caste, though most owned only small holdings. They were also pre-eminent in the electoral panchayat institutions of the village. The agricultural economy of the village has declined fairly steadily, and it might be described as being now "post-agrarian" in the sense that only a small minority of households depend primarily upon agriculture.

Keywords: village studies; caste relations; landlords; diversification; non-farm employment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://ras.org.in/index.php?Abstract=rural_urbanism_in_tamil_nadu

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fas:journl:v:2:y:2012:i:2:p:29-59

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal from Review of Agrarian Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Prof. VK Ramachandran ().