An analysis of the agrarian structure in terms of caste and class, based on field data collected from 13 Bhojpuri-speaking villages in Bihar, reveals that villages exhibit a high level of landlessness and agrarian inequality but without landlordism. While all landholding households involve themselves in manual agricultural operations, they also employ free labour. Moreover, sharecropping is on the decline and reverse tenancy is slowly becoming the norm. These changing dynamics in the agrarian structure merit a closer examination of how caste and class function in the current day in the rural economy of villages in Bihar.
