Agrarian Justice, Practical Reason and Rationality A Study of the Conditions of Existence in the South Asia

A Short Paper on “Scope of Study” under the Research Project

Abstract

Beginning with a concern for justice and teasing out the conceptual dilemma associated with it is a moral discourse that is of primary significance. It must get primacy over the categories that are related with the heuristic devices of individual rationality in the desires and beliefs and features of decisions regarding action propelled by the faculty of practical reason. The moral principle of practical reason and economic postulate of rationality must play just the instrumentalist roles in attaining, enhancing and instituting ‘justice-for-justice –sake’ – a right and cherished norm of human society. A widely agreed conception of justice that is arrived at in the course of moral discourse is always instructive regarding the nature of instrumentalist roles that the practical reason and theoretical reason – separately or in combination – are presumed to play.

There are but problems posed by the narrowness of the mainstream conception of neoclassical rationality and the limited-reach of the advocacy of practical reason. While the conception of economic rationality suffers from its postulate of egoistic, selfish desire-belief led action of the individual; the limited reach of practical reason is manifested in conceptions of morals by agreement and bargaining among rational individuals in interaction. Such narrowness and limited reach, which are manifest in failures to read comprehensively the human nature, are to be surmounted. This in turn requires conceptual modifications in the conception of instruments in line with recent studies on human nature, specifically that in the conception of economic rationality.

In the field of agricultural ethics in south Asia, such shifts in the conception of theoretical and practical reasons are warranted. In view of the alarming levels of income poverty, widespread inequities in the distribution of resources and lack of security with regard to a vital commodity, that is, food, any attempt to enhance agrarian justice needs befitting revision in the theoretical framework informing the public policy. The main purpose of the project in hand is to explore the rationale of a concern for equity in substantive outcomes and fairness in procedures with regard to the distribution of surplus generating capacity among producing households in the countryside. Another objective of it is to provide a critique of the existing public concerns for distributive justice and equity, which are variously sought to be achieved in matter of distribution of seed, land and water (resources) and food (commodity). The critique is based on synthesising the theoretical categories of economic rationality, practical reason and social justice with applications to empirical data with a focus on case study of the prevailing economic setting of tropical agricultural pursuits in the Monsoon rain-fed south Asia. The concepts of practical reason and economic rationality that are operative in linking these to the idea of justice and fairness in this project are explicable in this empirical setting.