Indian agriculture is widely believed to be in crisis. There is broad consensus among scholar, policymakers and activists that economic hardships and the changing climate have made sustaining a... Show moreIndian agriculture is widely believed to be in crisis. There is broad consensus among scholar, policymakers and activists that economic hardships and the changing climate have made sustaining a livelihood through farming increasingly untenable. There is a strong sense that something has to be done to help farmers deal with the crisis, and in recent years agricultural insurance has been presented as a possible fix for rural distress. This dissertation studies how a new agricultural insurance scheme called PMFBY becomes part of everyday social interactions and experiences. Insurance companies often assert that quantified procedures can accurately - and fairly - calculate the extent of agricultural risk, attach a price tag to it and protect against it. Can quantification really be the antidote to crisis? To answer this question I explore how insurance numbers translate to the everyday experiences of rural people in central Maharashtra. I find that, when seen from the perspective of those encountering them in their daily lives, the numbers are anything but straightforward. The effects of quantification were often arbitrary, and despite promises of transparency, they had a tendency to obscure rather than clarify. In short, the numbers turned out to be inconsistent and ambiguous. The dissertation describes how people attempt to make sense of this ambiguity through their moral understandings. It focusses on the (often heated) discussions, the collective pondering such discussions led to, the personal dilemmas it posed as well as the dreams and aspirations numbers became entwined with. I explore how such quandaries unfold and argue that a focus on the morality of quantification brings to light the social life of numbers beyond their 'objective' factuality. Show less
This article discusses local expressions of crisis in Beed district, central Maharashtra. Both in public and academic discourse crisis has become the term of choice for the many structural... Show moreThis article discusses local expressions of crisis in Beed district, central Maharashtra. Both in public and academic discourse crisis has become the term of choice for the many structural deficiencies which make agriculture an increasingly precarious livelihood in India. While most voices subscribe to the explanation that the current state of distress can be attributed to the unprofitability of agriculture, a wide range of structural explanations are suggested as to why this might be the case. Consequently, in some debates agricultural crisis runs the risk of moving the experiences, agency and postionalities of those imagined to be living through its consequences to the background. This paper counterbalances such causal explanations by empirically delving into the imaginaries of agricultural crisis as they are articulated, negotiated and employed by farmers in Maharashtra. Based on twelve months of ethnographic research, the paper examines how ideas of crisis are entangled with colloquial understandings by taking experiences of ‘tension’, an Anglicised term used to express feelings akin to stress, as object of inquiry. I argue that by claiming crisis through invoking feelings of tension farmers mobilise a plurality of meanings, narratives and moral evaluations about what is wrong with agriculture in this part of India. Show less
