The hunger for land has been a key, and some times deciding, factor in the process of political transformation in almost all societies. The land question played a central role during the freedom struggle and in helping Indian nationalist to understand the deformation of the economic and political system produced by colonialism. Hence the question of land reforms has remained on the agenda of all political parties since Independence. All of the rural poor constantly dream of owning at least a small parcel of land, and see land as a critical resource for lifting themselves out of rural poverty. Even the richer classes have constantly shown they believe owning land is the best investment that they can make. Since all the Indian people have given an important place to the owning of land, this question has been politically a most important one, certainly in all our political struggles from the colonial period onwards. It would be ridiculous to try to create a healthy economic system without giving centrality to the question of land.
However, the development of powerful industrial economies over the last century, the integration of all national economies into a global system; and even the establishment of agribiz through the Green Revolution as the leading sector of the Indian rural economy, all make it equally clear that while access to land may be a necessary condition for the alleviation of poverty, we can no longer consider this factor as a sufficient condition to achieve development. As far as the poor of India are concerned, the question of employment is as centrally crucial to them as the question of ownership or access to land. The reason for this is very clear. The poor, and by this I clearly mean over 80% of the total population, including agricultural labour, small and marginal farmers and most of the urban slum population, spend around 80% or so of their earning merely on food. This vast population has no savings and must get some form of daily employment to be able to feed itself. Even small and marginal farmers practicing dry-land agriculture require to work as agricultural labourers for most of the year in order to be able to feed themselves and their families. That is, the production of food-grains and other food-crops from the lands owned by them is insufficient to meet their food needs, and is incapable of employing them throughout the year. This state of affairs has been produced partly by greater parceling of land due to the increase of population and partly by the reduction of productivity per unit of land through greater environmental degradation, caused mostly by the felling of forests, and consequent loss of top soil and local conservation of water.
Hence, even the majority of the farming families who own land consider employment to be of greater importance than merely owning some land, which mostly is degraded and almost always under rain-fed conditions. So we must consider a system of rural development which involves not only giving access to land to the poor, but also regular employment. Now would these two crucial conditions be sufficient for the alleviation of poverty? Clearly working on the land requires seasonal credit availability to farming families under reasonable, or even better special rates of interest, to permit the poor to buy necessary inputs, hire in plough bullocks, or the labour of neighbors during crucial sowing or harvesting seasons. Even more important, they will need a line of credit to be able to carry out, season by season, improvements on their lands, by planting of trees, green manuring, bunding and other water and soil conservation projects at the micro level to be able to improve the productivity of their lands, so as to meet at least the food needs of the region. I would like to emphasize that while the Green Revolution staved off famine from this country, or the grave political necessity of importing food-grains regularly from countries such as the United States, which would have used food supply as a political weapon, the present regional agricultural imbalances continue to lock the masses of the people in deep poverty. Our national food surpluses are in a sense illusory. They are merely an indication that the bulk of the poor lack even the purchasing power to buy grain through PDS to feed themselves. The environmental costs of the Green Revolution which maximized food production in a few areas, which are enriched with capital and technology, have become counter productive. The political stresses and strains produced by increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots, and by creating intense competitive strains between people of different castes and religions has led inevitable to explosive situations, such as in the Punjab. So while the Green Revolution may have helped stave off famine, or political bondage to the West, it has also brought environmental degradation, regional political instability, and an agricultural system which cannot be extended to poor farmers or rain-fed crops, or resource poor areas which cover the bulk of the rural population, as well as most of the rural lands. The only alternative seems to be to develop strategies to support small and marginal farmers in rain-fed areas through a mixture of technologies that regenerate the environment, emphasize ecological farming and the strengthening of communities. In fact agricultural scientists in India are beginning to realize that the bulk of technologies that are applicable to small farmers undertaking rain-fed agriculture - that is, the bulk of the rural population - demand community group action. That is, agricultural science in India has come full circle back to the days of Dr. Voelcker who at the end of the 19th Century reported that traditional Indian farming was the best suited, and the most productive, agricultural system for India, and that the only problem faced by Indian farmers was poverty itself.
Hence we can say that, in addition to access to land, the poor would need sustained employment, credit availability on seasonal basis, extension of appropriate technologies for environmental regeneration and ecological farming, and revival of their own local management organizations which will give them the decisive power to plan and implement agriculture development in their own villages. This package is not far from the Gandhian ideal of Gram Swaraj.
Often times an emphasis on decentralization or local community action has been seen as a way of keeping the poor or as a romantic return to the past, or as choosing the slowest path of development. I would like to emphasize that the package I am talking about could perhaps be the only practical way for achieving development under present conditions. For many years, land reforms have been attacked by western capitalist economists as a purely ideological question, which will not produce economic benefits under modern conditions. They have carefully failed to recognize that the strength of the strong East-Asian economies can be directly traced to the land reforms carried out in the 19th century in Japan; between 1949 and 1951 in China; and in the late 40's and early 50's in Korea and Taiwan under the direct influence of the United States which wanted secure military bases there in its offensive against communism. Access to land and decentralization have enabled communities of small farmers to increase the carrying capacity of their region, increase agriculture production, regenerate the environment and increase family incomes. This in turn has meant an enormous increase in the purchasing power of the rural population leading to tremendous expansion of the industrial sector. This is certainly the secret of the strength of the Chinese economy of today. Therefore, even for the benefit of Indian industry and urban areas we must seek development of the rural areas, region by region, and community by community, so that Indian industrial expansion can be fueled by the increasing purchasing power of the rural population. The other social benefits of a gradual and widely spread process of decentralization and rural development would be seen in increasing health and educational standards of the rural population, and a consequent reduction in population growth as well as exodus from the rural areas to urban areas (which is today mostly caused by distress migration in search of employment).
However, the key question remains that if it is clear enough that access to land is a necessary condition not only for rural development and the alleviation of rural poverty, but for all round industrial and national development, then why have not land reforms succeeded, despite being on the agenda of all political parties since Independence? It is a known fact that all political parties have used rural power structures to control vote banks and maintain their hegemony over their power centres. Under these conditions a bureaucratic process of land reforms cannot possibly be carried out with any hope of success. Nor can the Left parties, who have clamoured loudest for land reforms, claim any success since they have been too weak, too disunited and elitist themselves to mount an effective revolutionary challenge to the systems in power. The traditional strength of the Indian social order has prevented a collapse of government and the possibility of political revolution. Our mixed economy under the present weak stage of development has displayed all tendencies, both of a socialist as well as of a capitalist nature, and therefore no clear cut solutions for progress have emerged in front of the broad masses. Economic stagnation has linked itself to political and social stagnation. Political attempts to break out of such a deadlock have resulted either in obscurantist moves, or a rash move towards opening up imports from the West, which has led us into a debt trap of over $70 billion in under 10 years. These local events have been over- shadowed by the catastrophic collapse of the Soviet Union, which has discredited bureaucratic socialism, followed by both the Russians and the Indians. The present move by the Indian Government towards deregulation of industry is a belated recognition that a government controlling the commanding heights on the economy has produced only socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor -- that is, India's rich industrialists and the middle-classes have battened on profits made out of non-competitive technologies and management methods, while the poor have been left to fend for themselves, and sell their labour power when and where they can to earn their daily bread. The passing of such a bureaucratic socialism need not be mourned. It produced inefficiency in industrial production and a powerful enhancement of the privileges of the upper castes and classes, while curbing all the initiatives of the poor and denying them access to the most important resources for livelihood, such as land, and secure employment. But a pure capitalist system which emphasizes only profits and productivity for the privileged in the urban areas will also fail since the industries they control will be unable to grow at a healthy rate due to the lack of internal rural markets and lack of purchasing power among the poor. An industrial growth strategy that depends purely on exports will fail because our present level of technology and economies of scale will never permit us to compete with more powerful economies. The only chance for Indian industry to compete effectively in foreign markets would be if it can be rationalized and reconstructed on the basis of a healthy growing demand from our own rural areas. It is only then that it will get an export advantage on the basis of our lower wage rates. (Even the World Bank has admitted that large countries have not benefited through simple de-regulation prescriptions).
A social method has to be found which goes beyond the limits prescribed by capitalism, bureaucratic socialism, or revolutionary theory, for giving access to land to the poor in conjunction with steady employment generation programmes, availability of seasonal credit, ecological farming technologies, and "sangam-type" group action social processes. Since the crisis we are facing is very deep and threatens not only the destruction of Indian democracy, but also the collapse of the State into a Balkan-type of chaotic violence, we must try to agree to non ideological "fuzzy" solutions to problems, rather than on ideological purity. We should see what kind of solutions to problems work, and on the basis of small success patch together further policies. We may find that the solutions that work in Tamil Nadu may be different from those that work in UP or Gujarat. We may find that solutions that work in the next five years may have to be changed for the next decade. As Deng Xiao Ping pointed out: "It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice".2
Happily many elements of the strategies that are necessary are already available with us, for example, we have created an excellent system of famine relief or food for work programmes which have very efficiently prevented the kind of disasters occurring in the Sahel in Africa, though per capita availability of food-grains in many of our semi-arid regions is less than in the Sahel. A system of programme experimentation needs to be carried out by government for using the money available under the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana and other employment programmes for environment regeneration and ecological water-shed development for the benefit of small and marginal farmers and rain-fed areas. We would thus ensure employment and at the same time see that the process of employment also produces immediate local benefits for the poor in a way that a road or building does not do. Again, several group action technologies in the area of water-shed development, integrated pest management, developing village seed banks, producing community based social and agro forestry etc. are being practiced in different points of the country. An integration of these practices on a region-wise and community-wise basis is both practical and cost effective. A further integration of such strategies with employment generation programmes could well produce a kind of "brown revolution" which would of course be low key and take a much longer time span to show results, but which would be appreciated and accepted by the poor in a way that growth strategies have failed to do. Much has been written about people's participation, but their participation has been seen as a kind of back drop for decisive action to be taken by government, development agencies like the World Bank or by scientific and other elites. Even the much touted PRA methods are only a way by which the scientists or the decision-making elite can be reinforced with correct information. All these elite approaches have presumed that the elite are the best agencies for designing development programmes and that the participatory role of the poor is essentially to implement the programmes locally, that is, be "drawers of water, or hewers of wood". This is a wrong-headed understanding of people's participation. For the kind of strategies that I have mentioned, it would be important that the key decision-making bodies should be sangams or free associations of the poor themselves. Many NGOs throughout the country have helped catalyze the emergence of such sangams. It should not be too difficult for the government to encourage such decentralized decision-making for participatory implementation of employment generation-cum-watershed development programmes for achieving, first, stability of food production for the poor on a regional basis, and then gradual growth of surplus income. In fact, the Government may begin to appreciate that an equal deregulation of bureaucratic controls where the poor are concerned could ultimately produce better government and faster growth than deregulation in the industrial sector, and for privileged groups.
The question still remains how are the poor to be given access to land. It is a thought that at almost half of the foreign debt of $70 billion acquired recklessly over the last 10 years, the government could have bought around 200 million hectares of lands for reassigning or sale on a long-term credit basis to the landless poor and marginal farmers. The traditional rural landlords' interests have changed since the days when their only interest was the production of wealth out of land and the control of the rural population. Today they hanker after an urban style of life and are indeed rural extensions of the privileged urban classes. Most of them would be ready to part with their lands, much of which are fallow in poor rain-fed areas. The government must design a system of large scale purchase of such land partly by cash, but more importantly through sale of shares of public sector units to draw landlord families out of rural areas, and into involvement as a new class of entrepreneurs in managing privatized public sector units. This would be a modified form of the Japanese-style Zaibatsu system.3 Wastelands which are around 200 million hectares, and such newly acquired fallow lands should be reassigned either to individuals or even better to farming cooperatives of the poor to enable a decentralized regeneration of rural areas. 4 Something similar happened in China between 1945 and 1975. Mao Ze Dong abolished landlordism, but accommodated landlord families within the commune system. Can we assimilate them within our industrial system?5
All decisions are going to be dangerous and difficult to make but such experiments need to be tried out, at least on a small scale, since other established models of political and economic development are of no avail to us in our present context. Deregulation as a philosophy is to be welcomed if it means less social restriction, if it will lead, not only to competitive industrial technology, but also to empowerment of the poor to use their own initiatives. Such empowerment of the poor in Kerala has produced astonishing benefits in terms of improving educational and public health standards, showing the capacity for productive social development among the poor. Millennia of elite rule in India has taught the rulers of India to distrust the poor. Such imperial rule by our own mandarins has ultimately led even the Left, with a pro-poor ideology, to distrust the capacities of the poor. In the context of the present deepening crisis, which threatens to destroy the nation, the government as well as political parties should take a chance and trust the poor to get us out of this mess. The means and the methods are known to us. A proper implementation of the methods and a proper utilization of the means are only possible if appropriate decision-making centres are located among the poor. It remains to be seen whether the elite of India, whatever their political persuasion or interest base, will be large-hearted enough to accept the leadership of the poor. The key then lies not so much with access to a critical resource, such as land, but with the question of the form of governance and decision-making we adopt to alleviate poverty.6
Notes :
1. This is not a part of formal discourse on the basis of sure knowledge, but rather an exploration, as happens at a "chance" meeting over a cup of tea. Is there knowledge in the comfort derived from such encounters, in the security afforded by the sensation that all are equally vulnerable?
2. The brahminical tradition asserts an understanding across all time, and prescribes across all space. We are then bound to the immovable moment of the present circumscribed by all difficulties. To think of being effective over a long term period, perhaps, one has to keep short horizons, work out a calculus of time, and feel our way forward through many pathways determined only by common fellowship for others.
3. Since we must share this home land of many communities, the best way to remove our "enemies" is by assuring their prosperity and futures.
4. Better still, title to lands should be given to women, who hold on to their own and their communities' long-term real needs and prospects. It may be worth investigating why men are corrupted by the lures of "development", and how their psyches are crippled growing up under traditional patriarchal values in a post-colonial world which offers them no future.
5. If China is strong, it is because its last two emperors, Mao Ze Dong lived and worked as a Taoist, and Deng Xiao Ping thinks and works as a Confucian. Marxism and Capitalism have come to them as aspects of Chinese thought. Tendulkar may play for Yorkshire, many of us may have been at the LSE, but England and the West have little to offer us now in the way of genuine assistance and less in the way of ideas. Our future will be shaped by other Asian countries, and it is to them that we should look for landmarks in development, even as Australia is doing.
6. Ecological regeneration and community development are unknown sciences that can only be discovered by the unlearned by an act of remembrance.
[National Seminar on 'Agrarian Reforms and Rural Development – National Institute for Rural D evelopmentMay 1993 Theme: LAND REFORMS AND RURAL POVERTY]
