The question of how to characterise Indian agriculture — as feudal, semi-feudal, colonial or capitalist — became one of the most sustained theoretical debates in Indian social science during the 1970s. Far from being an academic quibble, the "mode of production debate" carried immense political weight: the correct label determined the appropriate strategy for social transformation. If the countryside was feudal, the task was a democratic anti-feudal revolution; if capitalist, the road ran towards socialist struggle. The debate drew directly on the framework of Karl Marx, for whom the mode of production — the way surplus is produced and appropriated — was the foundation on which social and political life rests.
The Marxian starting point
For Marx, a mode of production combines the forces of production (tools, technology, labour) with the relations of production (who owns the means, how surplus is extracted). Each mode — feudal, capitalist and so on — has a characteristic mechanism of surplus appropriation. Applying this to India meant asking a precise question: through what relations is the agrarian surplus extracted, and what does that imply about the trajectory of change? The debate that followed was conducted largely in the pages of the Economic and Political Weekly.
The capitalist thesis
Ashok Rudra, in early empirical work, tried to identify capitalist farmers through indicators such as use of hired labour, market orientation and reinvestment of profit. Utsa Patnaik refined the criterion, insisting that capitalism required not merely wage labour or market sale but the systematic accumulation and reinvestment of surplus — the "accumulation and reinvestment" test. On this view, the green revolution belt was witnessing the growth of genuine agrarian capitalism, even if unevenly.
The semi-feudal thesis
Against this, Amit Bhaduri argued that eastern India, particularly Bengal and Bihar, remained trapped in a semi-feudal mode. Its defining features were sharecropping, perpetual indebtedness, the fusion of landlord and moneylender in one person, and the tenant's lack of access to the market. Crucially, Bhaduri contended that landlords had a positive interest in blocking productivity-raising innovation, since improved output would loosen their grip over debt-bound tenants. This "semi-feudalism" explained agrarian stagnation as the outcome of exploitative relations rather than mere technological backwardness.
The colonial and articulation positions
Other scholars complicated the binary. Jairus Banaji argued that formally feudal relations could serve capitalist ends when integrated into a colonial and world market — a mode of production, he stressed, cannot be read off from surface forms of labour alone. Hamza Alavi advanced the notion of a distinct "colonial mode of production", shaped by India's subordinate position in the imperial economy. These interventions warned against mechanically importing European categories.
What the debate settled — and unsettled
No single verdict emerged, and that indeterminacy was itself instructive. The debate established that Indian agriculture was neither uniformly feudal nor uniformly capitalist but a heterogeneous, transitional formation in which different relations coexisted, often within the same region. It demonstrated the danger of reading production relations directly from external appearances such as tenancy or wage payment, and it insisted on close attention to the actual mechanism of surplus extraction.
The debate also sharpened methodological awareness. Participants disagreed over whether the decisive criterion was the form of labour, the destination of the product, or the disposition of surplus — a disagreement that pushed Indian sociology towards more rigorous empirical grounding of grand theory.
Contemporary relevance
Liberalisation, contract farming and the penetration of agribusiness have given the old questions a new form. Where classical debate asked whether capitalism was emerging, the current discussion concerns the character of a corporatised, globally linked agriculture and the fate of the small peasant within it. The core Marxian question — who appropriates the surplus, and how — remains the analytical thread.
How to use this in the exam
Present this as a debate, not a settled fact. Open by explaining why the mode of production matters for both theory and political strategy, grounding it in the Marxian concept of surplus appropriation. Then array the positions clearly — capitalist (Patnaik, Rudra), semi-feudal (Bhaduri), colonial and articulation (Alavi, Banaji) — and note their differing criteria. The strongest answers refuse a single label, arguing instead for a heterogeneous, transitional agrarian structure, and then extend the debate to contemporary contract farming and agribusiness. Precise attribution of scholars and their tests is what distinguishes a top-band response.