AGRICULTURAL labourers are the most significant section of the rural community today. The rural landless, who were 25% of the population in 1981 are no less than 40% today. Moreover, the Census of India noted how their numbers rose from 74.6 million in 1991 to no less than 107.4 million in 2001. Apart from the three million peasants selling their lands annually and entering the ranks of agricultural labour, out of work artisans and even factory workers who have lost their jobs because of closures have added to this growing army of the rural unemployed.

To make matters worse, jobs in agriculture are decreasing sharply. Where farm work was available for 122 days in the year in the decade of the eighties, the Hanumantha Rao Committee Report recorded only 100 days in 1990 and now the Economic Survey says the figure is down to 57 days in the current decade. In fact, rural employment with a growth rate of 0.20% during 1994 to 2000 has virtually come to a halt, when between 1987 and 1994 it was 2.32%. Not a little of this is the result of policies like mindless mechanization, cutbacks on rural development expenditure and subsidies, inflation and indebtedness.

While the number of people dependent on work in the agricultural sector has declined from 63.9% to 59.8% during 1994-95 to 1999-2000, alternative employment in manufacturing has only increased from 10.7% to 11.1% while in services it has actually decreased from 10.7% to 9.7%. So we can say that employment in agriculture is largely distress employment. Jobs in agriculture have been replaced without alternatives being created elsewhere.

This is borne out by the fact that agriculture which contributed 33.55% of the GDP in 1994-95, accounted for only 24.72% in 1999-2000. And those who were below the poverty line at 2,200 calories numbering 58.5% in 1993-94, were no less than 69.5% in 2004-05, and the figure becomes a devastating 87% if we take the poverty line to mean those who get less than the 2400 calories necessary to keep oneself properly fed. Similarly, the cattle wealth of no less than 91.4% of the rural population has declined, with that of the landless coming down sharply from six milch cattle per hundred families in 1991-92 to merely one in 2002-03. In fact, according to the latest NSSO surveys, 826 million live on a per capita expenditure of Rs 20 per day, of whom 239 million live on a per capita expenditure of only nine rupees per day. Most of them are agricultural labourers. It is evident that the 7 to 9% growth has not affected the majority of the people of India.

 

What is worse is that according to NSSO figures given out by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector, in 2007, the daily earnings of agricultural labourers were as low as Rs 36 per day in 1999-2000, showing a decelerated growth rate for manual labour in the nineties as compared with the eighties, the figures being 3.3% per year between 1983-1994 but only 2.7% from 1994-2000. The ratio between payments in manual non-agricultural labour and agricultural labour declined from 0.79 in 1983 to 0.68 in 1999-2000, non-agricultural labour being 1.5 times better paid than agricultural labour. These are ominous figures when we know that those laid off from agricultural work have nowhere else to go.

The figures begin to tell a new and more devastating tale when one realizes that those already discriminated against like women, scheduled tribes, scheduled castes and minorities are targeted to be discriminated against more sharply now. Women are paid 1.4 times less than men for similar agricultural work. According to the NSSO figures for the poverty ratio among farmer households for 1999-2000, the percentage of Hindu Scheduled Tribes is 35.4, for Hindu Scheduled Castes 24.7, for Muslims 25.2 and for Other Backward Classes (OBC) 17.5%. The figure is 17.1% for other religions and only 10% for Hindu upper castes. Clearly, caste and communal factors influence access not only to resources but also to employment even for bare survival.

It is evident that the famous ‘trickle down’ effect touted by World Bank trained economists has not taken place. While the marginalization of agricultural growth as a result of cutbacks on government expenditure to roughly a third of what it was has brought down not only the growth rate in agriculture, but the daily per capita availability of food grains has come down from 510.1 grams in 1991 to 411.2 grams in 2003 and the condition of our public distribution system is such that it cannot cope with any calamity, let alone war. Already 166,304 farmers have been driven to commit suicide from 1997-2006 and it is their families that provide soldiers to defend the country. The government’s lack of concern for the rural masses in the name of ‘fiscal responsibility’ is the falsest of false economies especially as our region is likely to face increasing military threats with a greater US presence in Afghanistan.

 

The policy of the government in cutting down the allocations under the public distribution system despite double figure inflation continues, though India ranks 66th in the Food and Agriculture Organization report on world hunger out of 88 countries covered. All Indian states are said to be in the category of ‘serious level of hunger’, of which twelve states are said to be ‘alarming’ and Madhya Pradesh is ‘extremely alarming’. In this state of affairs one would have expected a serious drive to procure grain, but during the period 2001-2008, while wheat production has increased by 4.5% procurement has gone down by 46%. In fact, foreign companies were allowed to mop up grain at low rates which the Indian government then bought back at a premium from agro-multinationals.

The result of this has been to make it impossible to sell grain to the impoverished people at prices they can afford. This is visible from the fact that grain allocations for most states have been drastically scaled down while prices have more or less doubled. In fact, major states like UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala have had over 90% of the Above Poverty Line (APL) quotas slashed in 2008-2009 in comparison to what they got in 2005-06. Even a poor tribal state like Tripura has suffered a cut of 86.86%, while similarly poor states like Chhattisgarh and Orissa, too suffered cuts of 90.63% and 88.66% respectively. Considering that most people below the poverty line at an income less than eleven rupees a day can hardly afford any grain at all, this policy of abandoning the APL rationing is actually going to create famine conditions in at least those states that suffer from serious levels of hunger, which means most of those which have been subject to cuts of 86% or more.

True, the passage of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has helped to create over 20 million jobs on paper, but the allocations the government has made since the inception of the act have gone down by over two-thirds per district. Nor have the workers families got their full quota of 100 days a year per unemployed family. Apart from this, corrupt officials are fleecing workers by considerably increasing the work load and not paying either the full or minimum wages under the act. So even this measure leaves much to be desired and every effort is being made by bureaucrats from the panchayats upwards to reduce it to yet another ineffective measure with only a cosmetic function.

 

Moreover, while there are laws to protect wildlife, there are none to protect agricultural labour. Given this reality and the fact that no less than 27.3% of cultivators, 28.2% of agricultural labourers and 41.9% others regularly migrate each year, we are in for troubled times if action is not taken. These migrants are subjected to forced labour, sub-human living conditions, violence and bondage, with no less than 70% of India’s 10 million child labourers working in agriculture. So we can expect to see conditions reminiscent of Sub-Saharan Africa, with famine conditions and the attendant evils of child-soldiers, prostitutes, criminals and terrorists here as well and on a far larger scale than ever before.

The solution is obviously not to be found in alternative employment in the context of a global recession. It has to be found in the sphere of agriculture itself. This calls for land reforms and large scale distribution of assets among the rural landless, especially minorities, scheduled castes and tribes. The existing land ceiling laws and the Forest Rights Act are sufficient for the purpose. They only need to be implemented. Moreover, the experience of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura shows how well this measure can function, not only as a safety net but also to enhance production.

The distribution of assets can be matched with the passage of a central legislation for agricultural labour, a proper functioning of NREGA and sufficient credit at 4% to 6%, including the cancellation of moneylenders’ debts where the initial amount has been more than paid up. The expansion of minor irrigation and hydro-electric projects, the reopening of India’s public sector fertilizer plants, a revamping of the public distribution system and a remunerative minimum support price for crops as its basis can go a long way in avoiding a headlong rush to disaster which would engulf not only agriculture, but the unity and the security of the country as well if timely action is not taken. Agricultural labour is hanging on the edge of an abyss. It had better be given a leg up before it is too late.