Capitalist trajectories in agrarian mountain societies of east and south‐east Arunachal, India

Abstract

While the mountainous frontier regions of Arunachal have generated a literature celebrating their exceptional social diversity, less is known about Arunachal's rural political economy. Following village fieldwork in 2007 in northern districts, research in 2015 in East and South‐east Arunachal enables two aspects of agrarian transformation to be explored. First a comparison of the institutional transformation of land‐based resources between regions and over time. Second the identification of co‐existing accumulation trajectories: the forms taken by rural accumulation when the engines of capital accumulation are non‐agrarian transfers of state capital into the state and commercial capital originating outside the state, which exports profits. Since non‐Arunachali people are not allowed to own property in Arunachal, local accumulation is dominated by a socially‐segmented, multi‐tribal, rentier class, interlaced with Indian and global capital through extractions from state resources and extractive commodity exchange. The state's three roles: security, developmental and welfare, support these ethnicised accumulation trajectories.