Climate change and food security concerns question the sustainability of conventional agriculture. Some argue that indigenous and cultural knowledge constitutes a valuable source of agro-ecological knowledge that could enable practical solutions to twenty first century problems. Others hold that, well-functioning markets, where small holder farmers can access inputs and sell marketable surplus is essential for the relevance of farming for the present generation. Most small farmers who derive a significant part of their income from non-farming sectors through informal, migrant, and seasonal wage labour are exposed to the uncertainties associated with the wider economy, as observed during the recent pandemic. In this context this contribution explores the possible synergies between agrarian development and social protection drawing on ethnographic and archival research in a drought-prone region of east central India. While the area witnessed rapid agrarian change in the late nineteenth century under colonial land grants, the region is better known as a reserve area for migrant labour. In anthropological literature, mobility, nomadism, ‘escape farming’ and flexibility are contrasted with sedentism and intensive cultivation or in terms of community versus state preference. But in the context of upland cultivators in my fieldwork area, sedentism coexisted with hunting, foraging, pastoralism, and long fallow farming depending on the position of land, nature of soil and state pressure. Informal social risk sharing mechanisms, based on trust and reciprocity, patron-client ties, and exploitative labour bondage provided essential support to rural households during periods of growth, dearth, and crisis. This contribution explores the social and cultural factors that has historically sustained support networks among poor rural and tribal communities based on farm, forest and non-farm migrant livelihood strategies. Unlike public social programme such arrangements are seldom aimed at social transformation or reducing poverty but retain complex commitment towards sustaining agricultural systems.
