Life for peasants in India has always been challenging, but the developments of the last three decades, particularly the post-liberalization era, has created an existential problem for those peasant families who are solely dependent on agriculture. The Indian villages are going through a colossal change due to the impact of a constitutional decentralization mechanism (Panchayati Raj System), increasing educational level in the villages and the rise of technology driven life. The book under review presents a comprehensive anthropological study of the changing life of a village, Khanpur of Western Uttar Pradesh.
Different castes and communities constitute the site of the ethnographical study of Khanpur village. The total geographical area (including agricultural land, pastures, useless land and land of habitation) was nine hundred acres in 2015. Gujjars and Yadavs are the dominant castes of this village, their proportion in the village is nineteen percent, but they own almost 50 percent land of the village. The other thirteen castes constitute 81 percent population of this village and they have ownership over the other 50 percent agricultural land of the village (p. 4).
The book challenges the traditional colonial understanding regarding the dichotomy between urban and rural life. The author, Satendra Kumar, makes an earnest attempt to go beyond the long-established understanding regarding the difference between rural and urban areas. According to this understanding, village represents tradition and city is the expression of modern dreams and eventually all rural areas will be vanquished. However, he emphasizes that we witness a different kind of development in Indian rural areas, where traditional norms related to social life, food culture, festivals, family values and aspirations etc., are rapidly changing but they are not following the urban trajectory. The new features are not fully clear but it is neither a conventional rural set up nor carrying every feature of urban life.