Differentiated Agricultural Spaces and Uneven Geographies of Protest Under Market-Oriented Agricultural Reform: A Comparison of Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, India

Résumé fourni par la source

When national-level market-oriented agricultural reforms enter regional agricultural systems with different land-use structures, production infrastructure, and degrees of institutional dependence, they may generate spatially uneven political responses. Focusing on Punjab and Madhya Pradesh, India, this study integrates agricultural reform policy documents, public procurement statistics, MODIS land-cover data for 2013, 2017, 2020, and 2023, irrigation statistics for the 2013–2014 to 2022–2023 agricultural years, and protest-event records from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT) Event Database for 25 September 2020 to 11 December 2021. We examine agricultural land-use intensity, cropland fragmentation, gross irrigated area, and the district-level coverage, spatial concentration, and cross-quarter persistence of protest events. Punjab maintained an agricultural land-use intensity of approximately 95%, a cropland patch density of 2.50–4.27 patches per 1000 km2, and only a 0.56% increase in gross irrigated area, indicating a mature agricultural space characterized by intensive land use, continuous cropland, and stable irrigation. By contrast, agricultural land-use intensity in Madhya Pradesh increased from 75.24% to 77.63%, cropland patch density declined from 17.40 to 13.15 patches per 1000 km2, and gross irrigated area increased by 70.87%, indicating a transitional agricultural space marked by gradual land expansion, increasing cropland connectivity, and rapid irrigation growth. Protest events were more widespread and persistent in Punjab but more concentrated in Madhya Pradesh. These findings show that agricultural land expansion, cropland fragmentation, or irrigation growth alone cannot explain regional differences in farmer protests. Rather, the observed regional differences are more consistent with an interpretation emphasizing the interaction between differentiated agricultural spaces and existing institutional arrangements, including minimum support prices, public procurement, and Agricultural Produce Market Committee markets. The study develops an integrated institutional–spatial framework for explaining uneven regional responses to uniform agricultural reform.