Plight of Farmers in Select Short Stories of Munshi Premchand

Authors

  • Shiva Prasad Sharma

Abstract

Agriculture is at the core of India socio-economic and socio- cultural way of life. For more than 58% of Indian citizens agriculture is the primary source of livelihood. In recent times India has seen searing transformations in the agricultural sectors. The passing of agricultural reform bills in 2020 by the Indian parliament emulate the strategies of modernizing agricultural sectors by the government. However, such changes has also brought with a dissenting sections of the farmers who fear that these new laws would bind them to the profit making tendencies of large corporate houses. The farmer in India has never been free from exploitation by factions who have control over the agricultural sector. The Indian farmer is often overburdened by loans, with issues of destruction of his produce because of natural calamities like flood and droughts as well as the strong clasp of the middle man in the market. As such the figure of farmer as an marginalized individual becomes worthy of analysis. And literature as a representative space where the prosperity and angst of the society can be articulated becomes a pertinent sphere in analyzing the plight of the farmer. In this paper the plight of the Indian farmer is analysed through select short stories of eminent Indian writer Munshi Premchand. Premchand’s fiction is inextricably bound to the plight of the marginalized and dispossessed sections of the society. In his short stories ordinary farmers who constantly negotiate the treacherous waters of a materialistic society is given a potent voice. We as readers are made to confront the rather gory nature of the exploitation that farmers face. The paper therefore would try to understand the plight of the farmer as represented in Premchand’s fictions.

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Published

2021-02-01

How to Cite

Shiva Prasad Sharma. (2021). Plight of Farmers in Select Short Stories of Munshi Premchand. International Journal of Modern Agriculture, 10(1), 387-389. Retrieved from http://modern-journals.com/index.php/ijma/article/view/586

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Articles