An Impasse in Capitalist Transition?

This paper aims to contribute to the scholarship on political economy of agrarian change by way of providing context-specific evidence and insight into agrarian transition within two selected villages in Bangladesh. As such, it discloses the findings of a resurvey assessing changes in cultivable landholdings spanning nearly 30 years. The debate over the relevance of persistence of the farmer within the backdrop of agrarian change is examined. The paper argues that the absence of a capitalist agrarian transition in Bangladesh is rooted in part in the absence of concentration in landholdings.