IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v34y2013i4p691-709.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Liquid Debts: credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India

Author

Listed:
  • Marcus Taylor

Abstract

This paper uses an approach grounded in political ecology and political economy to explain the social and ecological foundations of groundwater overexploitation and agrarian distress within semi-arid Andhra Pradesh It emphasises how relations of credit/debt have become intertwined with the tenuous social and ecological foundations of smallholder production to create a new dynamic of vulnerability across the agrarian environment. It thereby links cycles of groundwater depletion to the debt-driven survival strategies of India’s small and marginal farmers within a context of dramatic changes in Indian agrarian social relations over the past three decades. In so doing, it critiques established perspectives that portray the trend towards acute groundwater overexploitation as stemming from inadequate regulation or information deficits among rural producers. Ultimately it argues that groundwater overexploitation represents a common tragedy of debt-driven livelihoods within an austere agrarian environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Marcus Taylor, 2013. "Liquid Debts: credit, groundwater and the social ecology of agrarian distress in Andhra Pradesh, India," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 691-709.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:34:y:2013:i:4:p:691-709
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2013.786291
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2013.786291
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2013.786291?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baccar, Mariem & Raynal, Hélène & Sekhar, Muddu & Bergez, Jacques-Eric & Willaume, Magali & Casel, Pierre & Giriraj, P. & Murthy, Sanjeeva & Ruiz, Laurent, 2023. "Dynamics of crop category choices reveal strategies and tactics used by smallholder farmers in India to cope with unreliable water availability," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    2. Nithya Natarajan & Katherine Brickell & Laurie Parsons, 2021. "Diffuse Drivers of Modern Slavery: From Microfinance to Unfree Labour in Cambodia," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(2), pages 241-264, March.
    3. Sowmya Dhanaraj & Vidya Mahambare & Pragati, 2021. "Are India’s farm debt waivers a political tool that impacts government finances?," Working Papers 2021-211, Madras School of Economics,Chennai,India.
    4. Monika Grubbauer, 2020. "Assisted Self‐help Housing in Mexico: Advocacy, (Micro)Finance and the Making of Markets," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(6), pages 947-966, November.
    5. Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Janssen, Marco A. & Kandikuppa, Sandeep & Chaturvedi, Rahul & Rao, Kaushalendra & Theis, Sophie, 2018. "Playing games to save water: Collective action games for groundwater management in Andhra Pradesh, India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 40-53.
    6. Mader, Philip, 2024. "Orchestrating self-empowerment in tribal India: Debt bondage, land rights, and the strategic uses of spirituality," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).
    7. Sandeep Kandikuppa & Clark Gray, 2022. "Climate change and household debt in rural India," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 1-27, August.
    8. Robert, Marion & Bergez, Jacques-Eric & Thomas, Alban, 2018. "A stochastic dynamic programming approach to analyze adaptation to climate change – Application to groundwater irrigation in India," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 265(3), pages 1033-1045.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:34:y:2013:i:4:p:691-709. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.