Land reform and agrarian change

A village ethnography documenting changes during the first 15 years of development in the new province of Rajasthan. From the feudal conditions under a princely state of Rajputana to a modern democratic polity, this community experienced elections with universal franchise, land reform, and the Panchayati Raj program of political decentralization. An exhaustive study of 24 castes, 185 households, and partnerships at the wells of irrigation reveals the dynamics of on-going economic and political change that transformed tenants into a class of independent yeoman farmers.