Gaurav Bansal
Gaurav Bansal
Post-Doctoral Fellow (September 2026 – present)
Structural transformation, rural capitalism, class-caste relations, labour & inequality, agrarian social movements
Biography
Gaurav is a post-doctoral fellow at CSH. He is an interdisciplinary political economist with a PhD from the School of Global Development, University of East Anglia, UK. Before joining CSH, he taught as a Visiting Professor at the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru and was an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Human Development, New Delhi.
His research focuses on the uneven dynamics of structural transformation, rural capitalism, class-caste relations, labour and inequality, and agrarian social movements in India under neoliberalism. His thesis simultaneously examined aspects of both rural labour and rural/provincial capital through a relational lens, with a regional focus on Indian Punjab in the late-Green Revolution context. His research also focusses on linking the changes happening in rural India with the political economy of small towns and the broader non-farm economy. His work is grounded in extensive field-based research and employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. Theoretically, he draws on the heterodox political economy tradition to engage with long-standing debates on the persistent irresolution of the Agrarian Question(s)—of capital, labour, and politics—in India.
His research at CSH will focus on the After-Life of the Farmers Protests in India, examining Agrarian Democracy, Caste-Class Solidarity, and the Limits of Collective Action in Rural North India.
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-9272-2104
ResearchGate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gaurav-Bansal-5?ev=prf_overview
Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4FGd3YsAAAAJ&hl=en
Recent Publications:
- Bansal, G., & Vicol, M. (2026). Contract Farming and Social Movements. In N. Fold, C. Hambloch, S. Narayanan, H. Perez Nino, & M. Vicol (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Contract Farming in the Global South. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003513674-33
- Bansal, G. (2026). Reading Agrarian Transformation Through Literature: Moral Economy, Political Economy, and Caste in 1950s Punjab in Gurdial Singh’s Marhi da Deeva. Sikh Formations. DOI: 10.1080/17448727.2025.2610902
- Bansal, G. (2024). The Political Economy of the farmers’ protest: emerging perspectives from the field. In C. Molliner & D. Singh (Eds.), The Indian Farmers’ Protest of 2020–2021: Agrarian Crisis, Dissent and Identity. Taylor and Francis.
- Pattenden, J., & Bansal, G. (2021). A new class alliance in the Indian countryside? From new farmers’ movements to the 2020 protest wave.Economic and Political Weekly, 56(26-27).
- Bansal, G. (2020). Tenancy and Accumulation: A Study of Capitalist Farm Sector in Punjab. Review of Agrarian Studies, 10(2). DOI: 10.25003/RAS.10.02.0004