WHILE starvation deaths are closely related to the policies of distribution and food security, farmers’ suicides are closely related to the policies of agricultural production and porocurement. Starvation is basically a crisis of the distribution system. Starvation can be eradicated only by providing the poor increased with access to food, ensuring food security, offering employment opportunities, increasing wages and thus, eradicating poverty. As the crisis is all pervading, the processes of production and distribution cannot be viewed as watertight compartments. Farmers' suicides and starvation deaths are two sides of the same coin, i.e, agrarian crisis. In the background of increasing crisis in agriculture, we cannot stay away from taking a closer look at a major section, the agrarian and rural labourers who remain the backbone of agriculture in the country.

There is a misconception that the impact of globalisation has more to do with peasants than with agrarian labourers. In fact, agrarian labourers and small peasants are the worst affected lot because of globalisation and liberalization. The rich peasant lobby is forcing agrarian labourers to sacrifice their wages in the interest of agriculture and of broad rural unity against the ill effects of globalisation. The dominant powers try to propagate that the agenda of land reform is outdated. They also try to spread the defensive theory that small parcels of land cannot face the competition and that can only lead to suicides in the changed scenario. But, the hard reality is that the issues of land, wages and migration are back in the agenda, with a vengeance.

Changes in cropping patterns bring in their wake vast changes in patterns and intensity of employment. Measures like introduction of corporatisation and contract farming, etc., transform the nature of employment and production relations in rural areas. There are also suggestions to develop Agri-Export Estates along the lines of industrial estates in the cities. M.S. Swaminathan, agricultural scientist, recommends formation of Small Farmers Agri-business Consortium (SFAC) to run such estates that will have common facilities for storage, marketing, post-harvest requirements, quality control, etc. for the farmers in the estate. Employment relations too will undergo sea changes if such suggestions were accepted. Feminisation of the labourforce is another major trend in rural areas. Wage levels have fallen sharply as agriculture has become unremunerative. With male workers looking for off-farm employment opportunities with better wages women are increasingly replacing their role in agriculture.

It is obvious that agricultural employment has declined sharply. The arguments of reforms facilitating labour intensive agriculture and manufacturing and growth in employment have been belied. Non-farm employment also has not increased to the required level. 237 million workers out of 369 million unorganized workers in the country are associated with agricultural activities. It is a huge number that cannot be brushed aside. They are mostly agrarian labourers faced with wage-slavery conditions of existence. Concealed forms of bonded labour are quite rampant in rural society.

In majority of cases, small peasants are also labourers in their own lands. We also witness the phenomenon of both agrarian labourers and small peasants migrating to other relatively more prosperous regions like Punjab, Maharashtra, etc., looking for agricultural employment in lean seasons. A large majority of agrarian labourers also join the swelling ranks of construction labourers in the urban areas. The dual dimension of being a small peasant in rural areas and at the same time a semi-proletariat in urban areas is a common occurrence today.

These unorganized workers are not paid minimum wages – neither in rural areas nor as migrant workers in other states nor as urban workers in towns and cities. Agrarian labourers’ wages vary from Rs.20-60. When minimum wage itself is a mirage, the question of fair wage or living wage is just unimaginable.

Real wages are, in fact, decreasing day by day. This is confirmed by a report on Human Development in South Asia 2002, which states: “In Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Orissa and Punjab, the growth of Farm Business Income (FBI) and Hired Labour Payment (HLP) has decelerated. In all these states, there has been a marked deceleration in the growth of labour use. The growth of real agricultural wage rates in all these states has been less than the national average during the 1990s, and, with the possible exception of Punjab, these are all states where growth of implicit real wage rates are low and have also decelerated.”

The report further states: “In Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal FBI growth accelerated while HLP growth has decelerated. The most interesting case is that of West Bengal where real wage rate growth was the highest in the 1980s but fell below the all-India average during 1990s despite fairly rapid growth in farm incomes.” (A Report on Human Development in South Asia 2002) Perhaps, the case of West Bengal is a clear pointer to the theory and practice of sacrificing agrarian labourers’ interests at the altar of ‘broad peasant unity’.

Every rural labour household is indebted to the tune of an average minimum of more than Rs.600. Forty per cent of agrarian labourers are facing migration every year shunting between their native village and the sanctuaries where they can find a job to feed their bellies. Migration is most rampant in agriculturally backward states like Bihar. Most of these migrant labourers are not even aware of the Migrant Workers Protection Act providing for benefits like no discrimination in wages, equal wage and benefits to migrants like local workers, displacement allowance, journey allowance, etc. None of these workers enjoys any of the benefits of labour welfare legislations. No welfare schemes like the Employment Assurance Scheme, etc., actually serve the interests of these agricultural labourers.

The government shelved the bill for a comprehensive legislation for agrarian labourers succumbing to the lobby of opposition from landed gentries, rich farmers, kulak lobbies and state governments. The bill introduced in 1997 had provisions for registration of agrarian labourers and the respective land owners, regulation of working conditions, creation of an agricultural labour welfare fund, implementation of welfare schemes and setting up of a dispute resolution mechanism, etc. But, the bill was completely abandoned. There are attempts to bracket agrarian labourers in the general category of unorganized workers not recognizing the dissimilarities in working conditions and various other issues. Demand for a comprehensive legislation for agricultural labourers therefore remains one of the most important demands of the agrarian labour movement.

The agrarian labourers movement in the country has been fighting on the basic plank of land, wage, social dignity and social emancipation. Demands for control over resources and distribution of other assets have also gained significance in the changed situation.

The Secret of Cheap Imports

THE US wheat farmer is able to sell wheat on, the global market only at a rate of $128 per tonne despite receiving public funded subsidy of $75-80 per tonne. European farmers receive even more subsidy. That would put its unsubsidized cost at almost Rs.9000 per tonne, or Rs.9 per Kg. This is well over the FCI cost, which (including the costs of procurement, storage, transport, distribution, as well as corruption and inefficiency) was about Rs.8 per Kg in 1998-99. Hence, with all FCI shortcomings, if wheat imports were not heavily subsidized, India should have no problem in competing with them. But, the WTO Agreement on Agriculture prohibits only those countries that were not using subsidies in the period of 1986-88. Others are given freehand to continue with the subsidies, which means top five top exporters of wheat who were covering 95% of subsidized wheat exports were allowed to continue. Even if these countries sincerely honour all restrictions laid down in the agreement, they would be able to supply about 40% of total wheat trade in the mid-1990s. This is sufficient a quantum to depress prices much below the actual production costs all over the world.

 

Poverty in India

POVERTY in India is predominantly rural. Three out of every four poor persons live in rural areas. Poverty made a surprise dip of 10 percent between 1993-1994 and 1999-2000 and reached 26 percent. This decline was, basically, an imaginary decline achieved through manipulation in poverty measurement formula and in survey design. Between early 1950s and mid 1970s poverty line was fluctuating without a clear-cut trend and remained more or less at 53 percent. Then, it declined to 36% in 1993-94.

The major states inhabiting very large poverty proportions exceeding 45 per cent are Assam, Bihar, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh. The rest of the states lie in a narrow band around the mean. The so-called BIMARU (Bihar, MP, Rajasthan and UP) states inhabit more than 51 per cent of the poor in the country. Next, if one counts the poor in the eastern states of Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal (WB), they add up to about 57 per cent of the total in the country. The combined rural poverty in the eastern and BIMARU states (out of total 32 states) adds to over 70 per cent.

The Planning Commission updates the poverty line based on the rate of inflation. During the Sixth Five Year Plan it was Rs.3500 per annum for a family of five. It has been revised during the Seventh Five Year Plan to Rs. 6400. The poverty line was updated again in 1992 at Rs. 11000/- per annum. Expenditure replaced income as the measuring criterion during this period. Now, an expendable sum of Rs.327.S6/- (1999-2000) per capita per month (Rs.19653/ per annum for a family of five members) has been accepted as the poverty line to measure the incidence of poverty.

Poverty ratios show backward districts not only in BIMARU states, but also in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and the Northeast. Hunger (defined in National Sample Survey terms) exhibits a similar spatial distribution, but is less universal than poverty and is also more concentrated towards the East and the Northeast.

Likewise, inequality has also widened. Welfare programmes and policies of redistribution are inadequate to address the problems poverty reduction. Even those policies of redistribution and employment generation do not really function, in practice, because of deep distortions in the system. Globalisation policies have only perpetuated the initial inequalities. In 1994, almost a full quarter century after Garibi Hatao became the leitmotif of our economic policies, the Gini coefficient, which is the measure of income inequality remained almost the same as in 1971 for, both, rural (0.345) and urban (0.285) populations. It has further deteriorated in 2000.

Not only the rich-poor divide has widened but also is becoming more apparent between urban and rural population. The regional division is much alarming with Hindi heartland and Eastern India being visibly left behind in the process of growth compared to Southern and Western India. The inequalities and backwardness within states is also increasing sharply. The divide is one major reason for increasing starvation in rural areas. Out of BIMARU states, Rajasthan and MP are trying to come out of sickness, while Orissa is joining the stream of ‘bimaru’ (sick) states.

One reason being cited is the relatively bigger population growth in BIMARU states, which is not matched by corresponding economic and social growth. In fact, population growth can very much contribute to the economic growth provided the productive segment of the population is effectively assimilated into the production process through suitable policy interventions. Policy interventions should aim at generating more employment and wage increase for the rural population so that the purchasing power can be increased.

Mr. Mohan Guruswamy says that the Indian poverty line, because of its emphasis on daily calorie intake is really the ‘hunger’ line and not a poverty line that takes into account basic human needs.