Rural Elites, Political Economy and Changing Landed Power

Detailed chapter description

Rural power in Mithila, Vajji and Anga has never been reducible to acreage alone. Before independence, large estates, subordinate tenures, rent collection, credit, caste standing and access to officials could be concentrated in the same hands. After independence the legal architecture changed radically: intermediary interests were abolished, Bhoodan sought voluntary redistribution, ceiling legislation authorised acquisition of surplus land, electoral democracy widened political competition, and later panchayat reservation opened local office to groups formerly excluded from formal authority. Yet power did not simply disappear with zamindari. It was converted. Families and groups that could combine land with schooling, political office, cooperative control, contracts, market brokerage, salaried employment, remittances and command over land records often remained influential even when holdings were fragmented. This chapter therefore studies rural elites as changing coalitions of resources rather than as a fixed caste or landlord category. It asks how older landed families adapted; how cultivating and backward-caste leaders rose; how labour migration altered dependence; why tiny operational holdings coexist with intense struggles over homestead and roadside land; how panchayats, PACS, procurement, welfare schemes and construction contracts created new forms of brokerage; and why the current digitisation and resurvey of land records may redistribute informational power without automatically settling social conflict. The Nepal-side Mithila comparison shows a related but distinct trajectory under the Lands Act of 1964 and subsequent federalisation.