Abstract
Since liberalization in 1994, India’s workers and peasants have faced a rapidly deteriorating situation. Various policy prescriptions from neoliberalism to orthodox Marxism suggest that there are no alternatives to capitalistic development and therefore the proletarianization and urbanization of India’s population. These policy prescriptions have generated crises in employment and agriculture, and a void in alternatives. We discuss the struggle of Menda Lekha village in Maharashtra, India which has struggled to build an alternative development through collective farming and democratic methods. Village leaders capitalized on a wave of politicization around an anti-dam movement, to transform the village and its structures of ownership and social relations. In doing so, they created an effective model of resistance against the mainstream policies of development.
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Kerswell, T., Pratap, S. (2019). Neoliberalism vs. Village Collectivism: A Success Story from an Indian Village. In: Worker Cooperatives in India. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0384-5_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0384-5_6
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