(Re)building Rural Worker Power to Resist Authoritarian Control: An Analysis of the Struggle to Save "MGNREGA" in India

As precarity and informality have become the norm across the globe, the fields of labour and social movement studies have slowly moved closer together, expressing the need for new theoretical perspectives to make sense of this unfolding reality. Relying overwhelmingly on precarious and informalized labour, parts of the “South” have witnessed a gradual consolidation of authoritarian populism in order to extend the lifespan of neoliberal accumulation strategies (Nilsen, 2024). Off-set by neoliberalism, the stagnation of peasant agriculture and the continued deepening of the unemployment crisis in rural areas have thereby profoundly affected predominantly agrarian societies across post-colonial countries (Patnaik, 2012). Constituting a core empirical focus of critical agrarian studies, India has simultaneously become a prime example of the development of right-wing authoritarian populism. (Scoones et al., 2021; Chacko & Jayasuriya, 2018). How then, to understand the “strategic conundrum” of rural populations resisting right-wing authoritarian (populist) control? While critical agrarian studies scholars have started to address agrarian resistance against authoritarian populism, it remains structuralist, and tends to center and romanticise cross-class coalitions, thereby glossing over the particularities of the trajectories of resistance of the most marginalised sections within agrarian society. With this paper, I aim to make an empirical contribution to the existing literature by centering the experience and strategic challenges of existing “social movement unions” (Nowak, 2021) representing a specific section of the agrarian population, whose strategic conundrum has been largely overlooked. Whereas labour sociology has traditionally relied on explaining labour strategy through examining the specific constellations of power resources available to collective actors, social movement scholars mostly emphasize the processual nature of mobilisations and the pliability of power resources through strategic action and framing (Della Porta & Antonelli, 2025). Nowak (2021), and others have thereby called for situating contemporary labour conflict within the “larger political economy and political conjunctures”. However, there is an absence of literature that brings labour mobilization strategy directly into contact with the larger context of authoritarianism. Hence, this paper aims to contribute to the theoretical discussion by answering two interrelated questions: How does right-wing authoritarianism/authoritarian populism reconfigure labour power of extremely marginalised sections of agrarian society? How do existing landless rural workers (social movement) union actors develop resistance strategies within this complex landscape of constraints (as well as possible opportunities)? I argue that authoritarianism can significantly disrupt union power in multiple ways, thereby offsetting a process of strategic reorientation among collective actors. This may result in the gradual (re)construction of power resources in several ways, despite the lack of immediate movement success and even further authoritarian backlash. Furthermore, I argue for the integration of class analysis in order to understand the opportunities and constraints for union actors especially in regards to coalition-building and organizing strategies, but without losing sight of the agentic capacity of union actors to engage with these dynamics on their own terms.