Planting and Performing: Anxiety, Aspiration, and “Scripts” in Telangana Cotton Farming

Abstract

ABSTRACT On cotton farms in Telangana, India, performance draws attention to farmers’ work not merely as an economic activity but as directed toward different kinds of audiences and in conversation with different roles, stages, and scripts. Importantly, this performance is contextualized by a neoliberal seed market where a seasonal deluge of accelerated and consumerist seed marketing diminishes the value of experiential knowledge in favor of the expansion of private genetically modified (GM) seed sales. This article draws on mixed methods and qualitative fieldwork conducted between 2012 and 2016 on cotton farms in Telangana to explore the use of “scripts” in rural life: the learned and socially mediated mental maps that reflect sets of rules, values, patterns, or expectations in smallholder commercial agriculture. The script of manci digubadi (good yield) helps order and justify GM cottonseed decision making in rural Telangana, where seed knowledge is uncertain, environmental feedback is ambiguous, and social emulation dominates farmer choices. While being cautious not to present performance in such a way that questions authenticity or presupposes either fatalism or economic rationalism, I argue that scripts help farmers navigate cotton agriculture amid uncertain GM cottonseed markets and the anxieties and aspirations of neoliberal rural India. [ performance, agriculture, development, biotechnology, South Asia ]