Economic Change in the Lower Cauvery Delta

The essays in the book explore the nature and direction of socio-economic change in the lower Cauvery delta. They draw primarily on the results of two census-type, schedule-based surveys of all households conducted in the villages of Palakurichi and Venmani in Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu, in 2018–19. The region in which the villages are located is historically associated with large agricultural surpluses from rice cultivation, in turn sustained by punishing forms of caste and class oppression. Recent decades, however, have seen great changes to the crop regime and to relations of agrarian production. The sharp decline in the supply of Cauvery water for irrigation to the region in the last two decades has accelerated this change and given it new dimensions.The analyses and findings presented in the book discuss the manifold stresses on the socio-economic fabric of the region with the decline of the delta as a hub of rice cultivation. The gains achieved in the 1980s from the Green Revolution weakened, and no major new sources of non-agricultural production emerged within villages.