The Production of Rurality: Social and Spatial Transformations in the Tamil Countryside 1915-65 By Karthik Rao Cavale Bachelors of Technology (B.Tech) Indian Institute of Technology Madras Masters in City and Regional Planning (M.C.R.P.) Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Studies at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY February 2020 © 2020 Karthik Rao Cavale. All Rights Reserved The author here by grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Author_________________________________________________________________ Karthik Rao Cavale Department of Urban Studies and Planning December 12, 2019 Certified by _____________________________________________________________ Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal Department of Urban Studies and Planning Dissertation Supervisor Accepted by_____________________________________________________________ Associate Professor Jinhua Zhao Chair, PhD Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning 2 The Production of Rurality: Social and Spatial Transformations in the Tamil Countryside 1915-65 by Karthik Rao Cavale Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on December 12, 2019 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Urban and Regional Studies ABSTRACT This dissertation advances a critique of the "planetary urbanization" thesis inspired by Henri Lefebvre’s writings on capitalist urbanization. Theoretically, it argues that Lefebvrian scholars tend to conflate two distinct meanings of urbanization: a) urbanization understood simply as the territorial expansion of certain kinds of built environment associated with commodity production; and b) urbanization as the reproduction of capitalist modes of production of space on an expanded, planetary scale. Empirically, the dissertation constructs a social history of Tamil Nadu (India) between 1915 and 1965, and seeks to explain how ‘rural’ spaces were reproduced during a period marked by greater market penetration into the countryside, democratization and regime change, and the reorganization of community relations at multiple scales. The argument is developed in three inter-related but self-contained chapters. The second chapter focuses on how ‘village communities’ came to be imagined in political and academic discourse, through the economic writings of Gilbert Slater and N. G. Ranga. Whereas 19th century writers believed that the modern exchange economy posed an existential threat to village communities governed by ‘custom’, I show that Slater and Ranga inaugurated an empiricist approach that rendered village communities compatible with generalized commodity production. Focusing on the history of rural roads, the third chapter examines how the conceptual distinction between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ infrastructure reproduced under-investment in the countryside. Despite a significant democratization of local and provincial governments from the 1920s onwards, I demonstrate that the fiscal arrangements of colonial rule reproduced barriers against treating resources devoted to ‘rural’ infrastructure as capital investment, as opposed to a mere expenditure of revenue. In the final chapter, I demonstrate the resilience of non-capitalist moorings in actually existing village communities, and their importance in enabling the social mobility of excluded communities. This chapter constructs a detailed case study of a group of villages in southern Tamil Nadu, where land owned by upper caste landlords was transferred to lower caste tenants in the mid-20th century. It is through these contestations surrounding land rights that village communities were reproduced well into the 20th century in southern India. Thesis Supervisor: Balakrishnan Rajagopal Title: Associate Professor of Law and Development 3 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………………. 8 Chapter 1: Introduction…………...…..………………………………………………. 11 The production of rurality: Theorizing modes of production of space in the past and present Capitalist Urbanization and the Peasantry: A selective review of the literature………… 17 Spatial Imaginaries of the Indian Countryside…………………………………………... 25 The Rural Infrastructure State in Madras Presidency…………………………………… 26 The mobility/moorings dialectic and the reproduction of village communities………… 28 Chapter 2…..……………………………………………………………………………. 31 The village speaks back: Village studies, peasant politics, and the spatial imaginaries of Indian developmentalism Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 31 Development Planning and the Village Community: An Analysis of Development 39 Discourse…………………………………………………………………………….…... Reimagining the countryside: Village Studies and peasant politics in late-colonial 51 Madras………………………………………………………………………………….... Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………... 77 Local boards and the birth of the rural infrastructure state: Madras, 1880-1935 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 77 Postcolonial Capitalism and Transportation Infrastructure: Marx, Harvey, and Sanyal 85 revisited………………………………………………………………………………….. The Fiscal Politics of Road Infrastructure in Colonial Madras………………………...... 92 A. Road infrastructure prior to 1920: An administrative overview………………… 94 B. The political economy of road transportation: Tinnevelly, 1840-1920…………. 105 Local Boards under Dyarchy, 1920 – 1935……………………………………………… 115 A. The reforms of 1919 and the changing practices of infrastructure finance……… 120 B. Fiscal constraints and representative politics in Ramnad and Tinnevelly………. 135 (i) Ramnad…………………………………………………………….. 137 (ii) Tinnevelly………………………………………………………….. 142 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….. 145 5 Chapter 4………………………………………………………………………………... 150 Between exclusion and autonomy: The mobility/moorings dialectic and the reconstitution of village communities in the Tamil countryside Introduction……………………………………………………………………………… 150 Migration and Dalit social mobility: a conceptual intervention…………………………. 155 The (re)production of the village community in the age of Capital……………………... 164 Producing the village: Notes from Shanmugapuram……………………………………. 176 A. An imagined village community? ………………………………………………. 176 B. The political geography of Shanmugapuram……………………………………. 178 C. Cultivating moorings in the village community…………………………………. 184 D. Labor Circulation, Housing, and the Welfare State……………………………... 189 E. Theoretical Implications…………………………………………………………. 193 Gangaikondan, 1871-1935………………………………………………………………. 196 A. The 19th century mirasi village………………………………………………….. 196 B. Effects of colonial policies: deindustrialization and decommoning…………….. 200 C. Changes in agrarian class relations……………………………………………… 203 D. Mobilities and moorings in a changing landscape: Brahmins and Pallars………. 207 E. Gangaikondan in comparative perspective………………………………………. 210 F. Spatial moorings and social mobility: Towards a hypothesis…………………… 212 From cheri to uur: Shanmugapuram, 1947-1977………………………………………... 215 A. Tenancy and Dependency in mid-20th century Shanmugapuram………………. 216 B. Christianity, migration, and the mobility/moorings dialectic…………………… 221 C. Anti-eviction struggles and the making of the village community……………… 226 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….. 230 Chapter 5: Conclusion…………………………………………………………………. 234 Village communities in the 21st century: Reflections on the resilience of the ‘rural’ in Indian developmentalism The village community in Indian development discourse………………………………. 242 The rural welfare state and the mobility/moorings dialectic……………………………. 245 The fiscal foundations of the rural infrastructure state………………………………….. 248 Appendices…………………………………………………………………………………………. 254 References………………………………………………………………………………. 264 6 LIST OF TABLES AND MAPS Tables 3.1: Road network in different provinces of India, 1913-14…………………………… 100 3.2: Maintenance Expenditure on Roads, Province-wise, 1914-1943…………………. 117 3.3: Growth of Road Network in British India, Province-wise, 1914-44………………. 118 4.1: List of Village Studies of Gangaikondan and Shanmugapuram…………………… 152 A3.1: Expenditures of Local Boards, Province-wise (1903-04 and 1912-123)………… 254 A3.2: Cotton cultivation in Tinnevelly district, 1891-92……………………………….. 254 A3.3: Changes in Road Availability and Road Density, Province-wise, 1914-44……… 255 A3.4: Fiscal Space for Infrastructure Investments in Madras Presidency, 1923-29……. 255 A3.5: Expenditure on Road Maintenance in Ramnad District, 1921-1928……………... 256 A3.6: Expenditure on Road Maintenance in Tinnevelly District, 1921-1928…………... 257 A3.7: Division of road maintenance between district and taluk boards in Ramnad District, 1921-1928………………………………………………………………………. 258 A3.8: Division of road maintenance between district and taluk boards in Tinnevelly District, 1921-1928………………………………………………………………………. 259 A3.9: Proportion of capital expenditure in the Communications budget of Local Boards in Ramnad and Tinnevelly………………………………………………………………. 260 A4.1: Summary Statistics of Interview Respondents in Shanmugapuram, Chidambarapuram, and Gokilapuram…………………………………………………… 260 A4.2: Caste composition of Gangaikondan revenue village in 1871, 1916, and 1934….. 261 Maps 3.1: Location of erstwhile Tinnevelly and Ramnad Districts.…………………………… 83 3.2: Road Map of Tinnevelly District