Caste, Landlessness, and Agrarian Distress: Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s Perspectives on the Marginalization of Farmers and Labour Reforms

Abstract

Caste shapes farming struggles across India. Not just known for drafting the constitution or fighting caste abuse, B.R. Ambedkar deeply analyzed land systems under British rule and after. His work focused on peasants, farm workers, especially Dalits crushed by hierarchy. Early writings like his 1918 piece on tiny farms show how he saw fragmented plots as an effect, not root cause. Underlying problems? Unemployed hands in fields, weak investment, missing factories - this built deep countryside hardship. Through decades, he tied land pain directly to caste exclusion. Looking closely at how he tackled the Khoti and Mahar Watan setups in the Bombay Presidency, his thoughts laid out in States and Minorities (1947) come into view. His time as Labour Member under the Viceroy’s council between 1942 and 1946 shaped key worker safeguards - work hours capped, pay floors set, maternity care ensured, injury coverage provided, groups allowed to form freely. These steps taken side by side suggest Ambedkar saw hardship in farming regions not as separate issues but tied together - caste rank, missing land titles, labor abuse feeding one another. That same pattern shows up now: farmers ending their lives, earnings stuck low, women doing more farm work, Dalits and Adivasis still locked out of owning fields - all traces back to old colonial roots. Because of this, ideas once pushed by him - state-led factory growth, shared farming plots, farmland brought under public control, legal shields for workers, land given with attention to caste history - still cut deep today, shaping both ethics and law for changing rural India.