THERE has been quite widespread media coverage of the serious drought afflicting large swathes of India – particularly in Maharashtra, Telangana, Rajasthan, Bundelkhand and even Punjab. Many areas have seen two consecutive years of problems arising not only from rainfall deficiency but also serious crop loss owing to unseasonal rain. With nothing to eat for humans or livestock, distress migration from many areas is a very visible phenomenon. Most discussion has focused on the inadequacy of relief measures undertaken by the government and its callousness as regards clearing MGNREGA wage arrears, leave alone expanding its scope. While this is quite correct, at the same time it has to be recognised that longer term policy measures deliberately undertaken by governments, measures which continue at present, were practically designed to result in the outcomes we see today. Droughts are bound to occur periodically, and this is something the rural population knows very well. The real question is why and in what manner the rural economy has been denuded of the capacity to deal with drought and to ensure the survival and reproduction of its working population, which is of vital importance for sustaining the entire economy.

The rural population today, is more than double the total population India had at Independence. In relative terms, rural population has gone down from 83 percent to 70 percent of the total, and the agriculture-dependent population has also declined, but India remains more overwhelmingly rural and agricultural than most other large Asian nations.  The new trend we see since economic reforms and trade-openness started from the early 1990s, is proletarianisation at a more rapid pace than ever before. While the proportion of wage paid workers in the rural work force over the four decades from 1951 to 1991 rose by 12 points from 28 to 40 percent, in the mere two decades after 1991 the proportion rose further by 15 points to 55 percent, in short the numbers and proportion of wage paid labour grew exponentially. Correspondingly the proportion of cultivators has been going down, so that in the present century, for the first time in the history of the country, labourers outnumber cultivators in the rural work force, and do so substantially.

MULTI-PRONGED ATTACK ON

THE CULTIVATING PEASANTRY

Needless to say this rapid process of proletarianisation is more properly described as mainly one of pauperisation and it has been the direct outcome of the multi-pronged attack on the cultivating peasantry inherent in neo-liberal reform policies since the 1990s. This attack has meant an enormous rise in the riskiness of cultivation, has increased bad debts, led to land loss for substantial numbers, and has undermined the viability of this most important productive base of the economy.  A very significant index of worsening welfare for the rural population, is the decline in grain consumption per head, to a present level which is lower than that in 1937-41. In fact India’s population now registers the lowest food grain consumption in the world for all purposes (namely the total of food, seed, feed, waste, processing and industrial use) at 176 kg. This level is lower than the average for Africa (225 kg.) and lower even than the level in the Least Developed Countries (212kg.).  Another notorious index is the higher incidence of (mainly debt-driven) farmer suicides compared to the rate in the general population. 

These outcomes will sound very familiar to students of the economic history of the country, particularly the fifty years before independence. Then too there was a steep fall in grain consumption per head. During the Depression with falling agricultural prices, the peasantry got mired in even greater debt than before and lost land, the proportion of labourers in the work-force rose sharply, and nutritional standards of the population plummeted. But why should the same outcomes be seen at present in Independent India? The answer lies in the fact that just as the fifty years before independence reflected the continuation of the unremitting exploitation of Indian agriculture for the purpose of satisfying Northern needs, so too the new economic policies from the 1990s represent neo-imperialist attempts - quite successful so far - to obtain control over our agriculture for the purpose of filling supermarket shelves in Northern countries.  The difference is that there was direct political control over the country by the metropolis in the past while today there is unthinking and servile implementation on the part of our own governments, of the self-serving dictates of Northern institutions which advocate reducing mass income through fiscal contraction, and opening up to free trade so that their agri-business companies can directly ensnare our producers.

The long-term measures which have undermined incomes in our agriculture so severely include reducing public expenditures on rural development – the first step of the present central government too was to cut back sharply on rural expenditures and on the social sector, following the dogma of ‘fiscal discipline’. This cutting back on public spending has similar economic effects as heavy taxation of the peasantry had in the past: it is ‘necessary’ from the advanced countries’ point of view to reduce mass purchasing power which if allowed to rise ‘too fast’ would pre-empt land for satisfying local food needs and not allow the diversion of our land to export crops which the advanced countries want desperately since they cannot themselves ever produce these crops at all, or cannot produce them in winter. These policies of fiscal contraction have been so successful in deflating incomes that when grain output picked up in the three years from 2011 to 2014, it could not be absorbed domestically owing to loss of purchasing power, so massive grain exports totaling 42 million tons took place during 2013-14 and 2014-15. Yet not a single economist, including those who consider themselves to be progressive, has bothered to look at the question of loss of purchasing power as an explanation of this fact of massive exports amid growing hunger: rather what is peddled are superficial ‘explanations’ of food crisis which come from Northern universities, that completely ignore the adverse effects of income deflation and export promotion on poor populations in the global South. It is not surprising that our rural producers who have been reeling under the prolonged attack on their livelihoods are unable to cope with the additional strain of drought.               

VOLATILITY OF

PRICES

The other two related sets of policies which have seriously increased the risk that farmers face, are removal of price support for exported cash crops and ‘opening up’ to free trade which has increased the volatility of prices to which farmers are subjected. The various commodity boards which earlier used to purchase crops like spices, tea, coffee at support prices, were by administrative diktat relieved of this function in the mid-1990s giving free play to transnational agri-business companies to ensnare farmers in their contractual nets. The effects of exposing farmers to the ups and downs of global prices have been plain to see in the case of cotton farmers’ indebtedness and suicides. The tentacles of a ruthless company like Monsanto, have extended deep into our agriculture, taking advantage of the problems of cotton farmers to tie them into hi-tech debt bondage. In the middle of all this, some ‘friends’ of the peasantry have been lauding the introduction of genetically modified cotton in the name of technological progress – with intellectually infantile arguments from ‘friends’ like these, our farmers certainly need no enemies.

It is interesting to find some recent and apparently motivated articles arguing that farmer suicides have been greatly exaggerated and the incidence of suicides is much higher among housewives. Authors of such illogical arguments miss the point: the suicide rate in Sweden is notoriously high but no-one has said that the Swedish government’s policies are responsible. Housewives in India, living in a patriarchal,  male-chauvinist society are subject to immense strains, but government policy is not directly responsible for their high suicide rate, whereas public policies have undoubtedly contributed to the enhanced suicide rate among farmers. It is correct and just to oppose these policies and to demand their reversal.

The table below is reproduced from the National Sample Survey Report on the Situation of Agricultural Households, 2013.  The data do not include any imputed values for farm-produced inputs or consumption, and understate the actual extent of income inequality. We see that even though landless labourers were not included in the sample, half of all the households derived more income from wages than from cultivation (summing the poorest two groups and taking half of the third group) and were poor peasants in class terms. The income level was pitifully low for 70 percent of households (the poorest three groups cultivating less than one hectare) at below Rs 5,500 and permitted a paltry  investment of Rs 540 or less, that too only by borrowing since income did not cover even their consumption. Given that 2012-13 was a good agricultural year, it is clear enough that there is no margin at all for dealing with drought.  Only the top 4 percent of households (the richest two groups) had enough income left over as a buffer for bad years.

The importance of expanding and implementing MGNREGA is obvious, and not only in drought years. So is the serious implementation of the National Food Security Act – 40 million tons of grains should be going to feed poor households, and not be exported.  Above all, the pernicious policies of deflating mass incomes, removing price support, and exposing farmers to global price volatility, all need to be thrown out.

Average monthly income (Rs) from different sources, consumption expenditure and net investment in productive assets (Rs) per agricultural household during July 2012- June 2013 for each size class of land possessed.

 Source: NSS 70^th Round 2013, Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in India. Statement 12.