ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the changing contours of the analytical debate on the agrarian question and to locate the peasant question in contemporary Asia, with a focus on India. It begins with the basic aspects of the agrarian question and draws attention to the changing nature of priority bestowed on these aspects with the changing phases of the debates on the agrarian question. The chapter then explores the changes in the agrarian relations in contemporary India. Karl Marx's account of the agrarian question deals with 'primitive accumulation' in England that dispossessed yeomen peasantry through state-supported predatory enclosures by landlords, which created capitalist tenant-farmers and wage labourers, and the development of capitalism in agriculture. It is in the analysis of the development of capitalism in agriculture elsewhere like Prussia, Russia and America earlier, and in developing countries later, that the agrarian question acquires different meanings and shifting focus.
