Introduction

Nations across the world have committed to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which implies the urgency of protecting the human society, economy, and environment from the negative consequences of rapid industrialization and urbanization. The global commitments guide the domestic policies, which further influence every organization. The recently concluded Conference of the Parties (COP) 26, where world leaders gathered to deliberate on mechanisms to prevent the impending climate catastrophe, emphasized the urgent need to deliver action on the Paris Agreement and make net zero commitments a norm. In this context, India has taken the lead, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi setting five ‘Amrit Tatva’ (Nectar Elements) on non-fossil energy capacity, emission reduction, carbon intensity, and a net zero target year.

India faces numerous development challenges, such as one-fifth of the population still living below the poverty line and a significant share of the population not having access to safe drinking water, clean cooking fuel, and all-weather roads. Owing to the limited financial and natural resources, pursuing twin goals related to socio-economic development such as poverty and climate change such as adaptation and emission mitigation requires strategic planning. The trade-offs and synergies involved in the process need to be identified for framing suitable policies. Policymakers need to make investments prudently that help meet the goals of high economic growth and decarbonization simultaneously. For example, a coal phase-out is required to reduce national emissions; however, this transition can have possible repercussions on entrenched businesses such as job losses or financial and socio-economic risks. Governments, companies, and society need to work together to surmount this dilemma.

Thus far it is evident that the rural livelihoods in southern Morang are embedded within a deeply inequitable agrarian structure, with dual surplus appropriation by landlords and merchant capital. However, it is important to remember that feudalism, like capitalism itself, is not a static system, but is dynamic and subject to evolution and flux. While changes to the feudal system over the last few centuries were explored in Chapter 3, this chapter explores the contemporary trajectory of change. The last three decades in particular have marked a new era in Nepal's agrarian political economy. As noted earlier in this book, pre-capitalist inequalities have not been undermined, and these in part contributed to the 10-year civil war and waves of more recent ethnic unrest. However, at a national level, Nepal has also undergone significant economic change following neoliberal restructuring.

Within this context, capitalism is articulating with rural pre-capitalist economic formations like never before. A key argument is that there is growing ‘agrarian stress’ associated with climatic-ecological pressures, expanding capitalist markets with an associated wave of monetisation and cultural change. In its wake, farmers are becoming more dependent than ever before on off-farm labour in the capitalist sector both locally and overseas, to supplement the meagre returns gained from the land under feudal agriculture This has intensified throughout the 17 years within which this research has taken place. We explore these changes in turn below.

Introduction

India's independence marked a significant turning point in its economic history. As a result of British-led deindustrialization, the nation had suffered acute deprivation. According to historical statistics compiled by historian Angus Maddison, India's share of global income fell from 22.6 per cent in 1700 (almost equal to Europe's 23.3 per cent) to 3.8 per cent in 1952. Following independence, India had the difficult task of methodically organizing its economy. It was a tremendous task to overcome centuries-old disparities in resources and development. Economic planning was effective in command economies such as the Soviet Union and East European nations, and it was viewed as a way to address market failures (such as those experienced during the Great Depression in the 1930s). Economic planning was a logical choice for many newly independent developing countries because it allowed states to deploy resources and achieve prioritized goals within set time constraints (Sebak, 2023).

Sectoral composition of GDP of India (per cent)

The sectoral composition of India's GDP has undergone significant transformation over the decades (Figure 8.1), reflecting the changing dynamics of the Indian economy. In the 1950s, agriculture played a dominant role, contributing to over half of the GDP at 55.4 per cent. However, as the country embarked on economic reforms and modernization efforts in the 1960s and subsequent decades, the agriculture sector's share steadily declined. By the 1990s, it had dropped to 30.9 per cent. This shift was accompanied by a remarkable rise in the industrial sector's contribution, from 14.8 per cent in the 1950s to 23.3 per cent in the 1990s. The services sector, encompassing a wide range of industries such as finance, information technology, and healthcare, saw substantial growth evolving from 29.8 per cent in the 1950s to a dominant 61.5 per cent of the GDP in 2021.

The historic region of Morang has made a remarkable transition over 200 years from a forested frontier at the fringes of the Mughal empire to a breadbasket and source of natural resources for the emerging state of Nepal. This chapter reviews this historical transformation. It begins by exploring the subordination of the ‘Adivasi mode of production’ to feudalism, particularly following its annexation into the centralised Gorkhali state. Interconnected processes include the imposition of agrarian taxation, stratification within the indigenous peasantry, the clearing of the forest frontier and the distribution of land grants – the precursor to the absentee landlordism of today. The analysis goes on to look at the emergence of imperialism, and how the persistence of rural feudalism went alongside the distorted and uneven development of capitalism, particularly of industry. The final section explores the changes in the rural economy following the downfall of the Rana regime and rise of the monarchical Panchayat system. As the king pursued a developmentalist agenda in the 1960s, the agrarian relations on the ground remained similar, yet the relationship between caste, class and ethnicity shifted – particularly in the wake of the 1960s land reforms. In particular, the chapter charts the declining wealth of the indigenous Tharu landed elite, and the emerging dominance of absentee landlords at the apex of the agrarian structure with close ties to the state. The final part of the chapter charts the emerging articulations with capitalism following the establishment of manufacturing industry in the Morang region and the perpetuation of semi-colonial trade relations.

Introduction

The ‘hybrid’ modelling method can help bridge the traditional gap between top-down and bottom-up approaches for deriving low-carbon pathways. However, this involves considerable effort in building the reconciled national accounts and energy balance data. Moreover, the documentation on the required process for deriving ‘hybrid’ data has not been done yet. This chapter outlines the steps to be followed for constructing a hybrid input–output table (IOT).

The model-building capacity requires the construction of a hybrid dataset that will be further used for calibrating the model and generating future pathways. So this chapter outlines the first step of data hybridization in the modelling exercise. Accounting matrices constructed in the past were mostly aggregated in nature with hardly any energy system details.

However, this method does not take into account three factors (Figure 3.1). First is the heterogeneity in energy prices. Earlier, the databases considered one energy price for all the sectors, conveniently ignoring the fact that there are significant differences across sectors. For instance, the Indian government charges different electricity rates to households, agricultural consumers, and commercial firms. Similarly, natural gas prices vary depending on the consumer profile.

Second is the dual accounting of energy systems in monetary value and physical units. It is required to integrate the energy and technology information from technology-focused bottom-up models into the national accounts. Hybrid data involves separate matrices for energy prices, energy volumes, and economic expenses, so dual accounting is possible in energy–economy modelling.

The story of agrarian transition in southern Morang in many ways epitomises the larger crisis facing the global peasantry and its relationship with capitalism in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Capitalism is expanding into the most peripheral corners of the world, and the peasantry, particularly those at the base of the agrarian structure – who are facing rising costs and agroecological stress – are increasingly drawn into capitalist labour markets via migration and local off-farm labour. It is these articulations between the capitalist and pre-capitalist which are increasingly central to peasant livelihoods.

Recognition of this process of agrarian transition whereby capitalism and peasant farming co-exist, with the former providing substantial profits to the latter, is of course not new and, as noted at the start of this book, these phenomena are generating renewed academic interest (Shah and Lerche, 2020; Zhan and Scully, 2018; Sehgal, 2005). However, what has received far less attention is the added complexity posed by additional axes of exploitation on the farm which long predate the peasantries’ integration into capitalist labour markets. This is a gap which this book has sought to address with a focus on the additional layers of livelihood stress when the economic and cultural burdens of neoliberal capitalism intersect with the legacy and persistence of landlordism and rent-seeking merchant capital. In doing so, this book offers a more nuanced analysis of the ‘pre-capitalist’ itself and its symbiotic (rather than subordinate) relationship with capitalism.

Introduction

Transportation has changed significantly throughout the years, starting from the days of animal-drawn carts to today's modernized public transport networks. Excavations at ancient civilization sites have indicated that roadways existed as early as the twenty-fifth to thirty-fifth century BCE. During British colonial rule in India, road networks and transport services were developed for the ease of trading and administration. The advancement of transportation is closely related to the advancement of civilization. With industrialization and urbanization came the need to find new means of transporting people and products from one location to another. Fast settlement of inhabitants in cities and industrial growth drive city expansion. As people reside in areas far from their workplaces, affordable and effective transportation has become one of the necessities of city life. Mechanical energy gradually came to replace animal power. The Calcutta Tramways Company established India's first public transportation system in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) in 1881, where horses pulled the first tramcars. Steam engines were introduced after a few years to draw tramcars. In 1931, gasoline-powered buses replaced tramcars. Since 1920, public transport by bus has been made available in all major Indian towns. Transportation promotes any country's economic, industrial, social, and cultural growth (Potluri and Tejaswi, 2018).

Transport is a critical piece of infrastructure for the development process. It contributes to a significant portion of India's energy consumption, particularly petroleum products. With economic and population expansion, consumption is anticipated to rise further; increasing industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural development is likely to increase freight and passenger transit; and greater real wages will promote leisure-related travel. Currently

Introduction

A scenario is a narrative that outlines a potential future that helps identify significant events, main actors, and drivers and their motivations and provides insight into the functioning of the world. Building and utilizing scenarios can aid individuals in addressing potential challenges that may be present in future. Scenarios are intuitive, analytical structures that vividly depict potential futures but do not provide consensus or predictions. They describe context and changes but do not dictate user responses. Scenarios serve as a strategic tool for analysing potential policy implications and responses to events, thus providing a common language for discussing current events and exploring future uncertainties for successful decision-making (Shell International, 2008).

Scenarios are compelling, yet challenging, narratives that outline the future, addressing uncertainties and not providing forecasts, projections, or recommendations. Building scenarios involves asking questions, providing answers, and offering guidance for action, aiming to broaden perspectives and highlight key issues. It provides insight into uncertainties and potential consequences, promoting informed and rational decision-making by highlighting potential outcomes of current and future actions. Scenarios explore real-world issues like system dynamics, structural changes, policy choices, technological evolution, and macroeconomic patterns, reflecting the fact that the future situations are influenced by human

actions. However, the age-old drive to contemplate collective possibilities and draw lessons for today remains (Raskin, 2005).

Scenario as solutions

Scenario planning is an imaginative process that involves hypothetically imagining the future, which is considered an innate human activity, allowing us to think about it and plan for it (Hughes, 2009). Scenario building can address real-world problems in various ways, as shown in Figure 7.1.