Slow Violence, Agrarian Distress and the Liberal Democratic State in Marathwada, India

Campbell, John and Cleaver, Frances and Markusson, Nils (2026) Slow Violence, Agrarian Distress and the Liberal Democratic State in Marathwada, India. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Situated within the field of political ecology, this thesis explores the relationship between liberal democratic governance and the phenomenon of agrarian distress and farmer suicide in Marathwada, India. Agrarian distress is the result of multiple developments beginning in the 1990s: the deregulation and integration of the economy into global markets; the expansion of groundwater irrigation in a semi-arid hydrogeological region; and the unresponsiveness of government to its devastating effects. The consequence has been an increase in rural poverty, and tragically, a rise in (and now persistence of) farmer suicides. This thesis argues that agrarian distress in Marathwada is a particular form of slow violence, produced and sustained by the state under successive governments, and represents a failure of liberal democratic governance. According to liberal theorists and the Constitution of India, liberal governance is designed to steer the state towards rational and just decision-making. The tragedy unfolding in the semi-arid countryside of Maharashtra casts doubt on the its ability to achieve this. Ideas from critical political ecology, environmental justice, and green political theory are engaged with to understand the government’s unresponsiveness to harm. The thesis develops a three-part operationalisation of slow violence, conceptualising it as a form of harm that is not recognised as violence, continues unchecked over the long durée, and is spatially diffused. The thesis responds to debates on decoloniality and extractive research, arguing that critical social science has a vital role to play in exposing environmental injustice and that decoloniality has been weaponised by the far right in India as a way to shut down government critique. The thesis then explores the idea of slow violence in three chapters focusing on liberal governance in Maharashtra: the media as part of the public sphere (to consider the ‘visibility’ of slow violence); interviews with farmers in Hingoli District (to expose the lived experience of slow violence); and an analysis of the Marathwada Water Grid, the latest state project that politicians claim will ‘end drought’.