kerala: how caste surpassed class

by the time the land reform movement in kerala was finally translated into state policy, it had actually become a moment of 'caste surpassing class' and not vice versa. it was a movement when the most politically active jati group among the bahujans, especially sections of the ezhavas, forged a tentative alliance with the erstwhile landholding upper castes.. kerala history after that moment should perhaps be seen as a chronicle of the fortunes of this alliance as more space was negotiated, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, from the upper castes by this emerging dominant group, through time.. so what the policy achieved was actually only a formalization of of transfer of titles to peasants from this group who were already tilling the particular holdings as tenants.. land reforms across india have followed a similar pattern..they have always been transfer of full rights to a few jatis who were engaged as tenants earlier, not to the whole category of shudras or obcs or dalits, at large. these successful jatis form a minority within the shudra/obc category. this was the case in up, were the yadavs, kurmis, jats etc benefited to some extent, not all of the 70 odd obc jatis at large.. it's again, yadavs and kurmis etc in bihar, not the 130 other jatis..the dismantling of zamindaries and jagirdaries in coastal andhra and telangana benefited the reddy, kamma, kapu sub-castes.. and so on. the same was the case with kerala.. where the ezhavas and a couple of other jatis benefited more than the 70 other jatis..

so the class struggles, which had been waged earlier, finally transformed into a triumphal caste alliance when they became policy in the late 50s. all the progressive 'reform policies' in kerala should be seen as a culmination of a century old class struggles, wrongly referred to as mere caste -particularly in its reductive form, jati - assertion movements or religious reform struggles.. whether it was ayyankali's first agricultural strike or right to education movements, or the movements led by narayana guru and others - all of these can only only be understood as movements against caste or class rule. as dr. ambedkar had indicated in aoc, caste rule should be seen as constitutive of power derived derive from 'religion, status and property'. so the 1950s land reforms ensured some property for the ezhavas and a few others, while ensuring the maintenance of the religious authority, social status, property and power of the brahmins, nairs etc.. a strengthening of the caste order or caste rule through the the infusion of some new partner jatis into its fatigued body.

stagnation is a marker of agriculture in kerala more than in any other part of the country - it had arrived a decade or two earlier, in the 60s itself, while in many parts of the country it started in the eighties or nineties.. for instance, kerala now produces less rice than it did in the sixties, perhaps.. a large quantum of essential foodgrains come in from other states while large tracts of agricultural lands lie fallow.. this might all seem very strange, considering one would expect land reforms to increase productivity and output. in kerala, both have gone down over time.. if we analyse closely, we'll notice two subterranean facts: one, that land reforms actually arrived when a large number of the largest group of landholders - the nairs and brahmins - had already decided to consolidate their urban assets (and move away from agriculture?)..the nairs, for instance, had the highest literacy rates, perhaps, among all shudra groups in south india - right from telangana to tamil nadu - next only to the brahmins, even as early as 1911. two, the new group of tenants who had become title-holding farmers, the ezhavas and others, did not have a) the same resources as the erstwhile upper caste landholders to invest in increasing productivity, and b) a large number of these new farmers were themselves becoming more interested in urban jobs..

this caste alliance, which calls itself a communist party aiming for a 'people's democratic order' and working for the interests of the people against the 'landlord-bourgeois' dominated society represents the strongest class interest - or a combination of interests - in kerala.. it is characterized by what could be called babu collectivist interests - bureaucratic capitalists, as they would call in their terminology - plus a wide range of state-dependent commercial interests - from those involved in plantations to tourism to other such services. all of these interests share some common caste identities, and have a common vision.. we can perceive the peculiar contours of their vision by looking at the political economy they have together tried to forge in kerala over the last 6 decades - stagnation in agriculture, increase in consumption (among the middle classes, all fueled not by increased capital formation but by remittances generated from a workforce aiding economies elsewhere) without a concomitant increase in production, stagnation in industrial expansion, lots of disguised unemployment and underemployment. this represents the starkest case of what i call caste mode of production - selective adoption of modernity to fossilize social relations around caste through the agency of state power.

dr. ambedkar's insights on agriculture: social economy over political economy

some not entirely random thoughts from his paper 'Small holdings in India and their remedies' published in the Journal of the Indian Economic Society, Vol. I.1918..written nearly a hundred years ago, just an year after the russian revolution. but many of these insights still don't seem to have occurred to most of our brahminized left or right..dr ambedkar wrote this when he was 27, but the humanist social foundations of his economic thinking are unmistakably there.. so much distress and such great tragedies could have been avoided! this should have become common sense of the ruling classes in india long ago, but composed as they're mostly of the erstwhile and even largely contemporary 'idle labour', its creamy layer, that he refers to in this paper it is logical that they didn't/don't comprehend his wisdom. so here are a few pickings from the paper that i most agree with (some portions were emphasized by me):
  
size of holdings does not matter:

To a farmer a holding is too small or too large for the other factors of production at his disposal necessary for carrying on the cultivation of his holding as an economic enterprise. Mere size of land is empty of all economic connotation. Consequently, it cannot possibly be the language of economic science to say that a large holding is economic while a smallholding is uneconomic. It is the right or wrong proportion of other factors of production to a unit of land that renders the latter economic or uneconomic. Thus a small farm may be economic as well as a large farm; for, economic or uneconomic does not depend upon the size of land but upon the due proportion among all the factors including land. 

faulty political economy leads to idle labour:

Those who look on small holdings as the fundamental evil naturally advocate their enlargement. This, however, is a faulty political economy and as Thomas Arnold once said "a faulty political economy is the fruitful parent of crime". Apart from the fact that merely to enlarge the holding is not to make it economic, this project of artificial enlargement is fraught with many social ills. The future in the shape of an army of landless and dispossessed men that it is bound to give rise to is neither cheerful from the individual, nor agreeable from the national, point of view. But even if we enlarged the existing holdings and procured enough capital and capital goods to make them economic, we will not only be not advocating the proper remedy but will end in aggravating the evils by adding to our stock of idle labour; for capitalistic agriculture will not need as many hands as are now required by our present day methods of cultivation.

bad social economy at the base of economic ills:

Consequently the remedy for the ills of agriculture in India does not lie primarily in the matter of enlarging holdings but in the matter of increasing capital and capital goods. That capital arises from saving and that saving is possible where there is surplus is a commonplace of political economy. 

Does our agriculture—the main stay of our population—-give us any surplus ? We agree with the answer which is unanimously in the negative. We also approve of the remedies that are advocated for turning the deficit economy into a surplus economy, namely by enlarging and consolidating the holdings. What we demur to is the method of realizing this object. For we most strongly hold that the evil of small holdings in India is not fundamental but is derived from the parent evil of the mal-adjustment in her social economy. 

Consequently if we wish to effect a permanent cure we must go to the parent malady.
But before doing that we will show how we suffer by a bad social economy. It has become a tried statement that India is largely an agricultural country. But what is scarcely known is that notwithstanding the vastness of land under tillage, so little land is cultivated in proportion to her population.

pressure on agricultural land is caused by lack of other occupations:

Notwithstanding what others have said, this enormous pressure is the chief cause of the subdivision of land. It is the failure to grasp the working of this pressure on land that makes the law of inheritance such a great grievance. To say that the law of inheritance causes sub-division of land is to give a false view by inverting the real situation. The mere existence of the law cannot be complained of as a grievance. The grievance consists in the fact that it is invoked. But why is it invoked even when it is injurious? Simply because it is profitable. There is nothing strange in this. When farming is the only occupation, to get a small piece of land is better than to have none. Thus the grievance lies in the circumstances which put a premium on these small pieces of land. The premium, is no doubt, due to the large population depending solely on agriculture to eke out its living. Naturally a population that has little else lo prefer to agriculture will try lo invoke every possible cause to get a piece of land however small. It is not therefore the law of inheritance that is the evil, but it is the high pressure on land which brings it into operation. People cultivate the small piece not because their standard of living is low as Prof. Jevons seems to think [f.25] but because it is the only profitable thing for them to do at present. If they had something more profitable to do they would never prefer the small piece. It is therefore easy to understand how the universal prevalence of the small farms or petit culture is due to this enormous pressure on land.

capital exists, but labour lives:

In spite of the vehement struggle that our agricultural population maintains in trying to engage itself productively as cultivators of a farm however small, it is true that judged by the standard of Sir James Caird a large portion of it is bound to remain idle. Idle labour and idle capital differ in a very important particular. Capital exists, but labour lives. That is to say capital when idle does not earn, but does not also consume much to keep itself. But labour, earning or not consumes in order to live. Idle labour is, therefore, a calamity; for if it cannot live by production as it should, it will live by predation as it must. This idle labour has been the canker of India gnawing at its vitals. Instead of contributing to our national dividend it is eating up what little there is of it. Thus the depression of our national dividend is another important effect of this idle labour. The income of a society as of an individual proceeds (1) from the efforts made, and (2) from possessions used. It may be safely asserted that the aggregate income of any individual or society must be derived either from the proceeds of the current labour or from productive possession already acquired. All that society can have today it must acquire today or must take out of its past product. Judging by this criterion a large portion of our society makes very little current effort ; nor does it have any very extensive possessions from which to derive its sustenance. No doubt then that our economic organization is conspicuous by want of capital. Capital is but crystallized surplus; and surplus depends upon the proceeds of effort. But where there is no effort there is no earning, no surplus, and no capital.

to cure agriculture. create work outside agriculture:

If we succeed in sponging off this labour in non-agricultural channels of production we will at one stroke lessen the pressure and destroy the premium that at present weighs heavily on land in India. Besides, this labour when productively employed will cease to live by predation as it does to-day, and will not only earn its keep but will give us surplus: and more surplus is more capital. In short, strange though it may seem, industrialization of India is the soundest remedy for the agricultural problems of India. The cumulative effects of industralization, namely, a lessening pressure and an increasing amount of capital and capital goods will forcibly create the economic necessity of enlarging the holding. Not only this, but industralization by destroying the premium on land will give rise to few occasions for its sub-division and fragmentation. Industrialization is a natural and powerful remedy and is to be preferred to such ill-conceived projects as we have considered above. By legislation we will get a sham economic holding at the cost of many social ills. But by industrialization a large economic holding will force itself upon us as a pure gain.

how agriculture improves by the reflex effects of industrialization:

We prefer to cure agriculture by the reflex effects of industrialization. Lest this might be deemed visionary we proceed to give evidence in support of our view. How agriculture improves by the reflex effects of industrialization has been studied in the United States in the year 1883. We shall quote in extenso the summary given by the London Times: 

"The statistician of the Agricultural Department of the United States has shown in a recent report that the value of farm lands decreases in exact proportion as the ratio of agriculture to other industries increases. That is, where all the labour is devoted to agriculture, the land is worth less than where only half of the people are farm labourers; and where only a quarter of them are so engaged the farms and their product are still more valuable. It is, in fact, proved by statistics that diversified industries are of the greatest value to a State, and that the presence of a manufactory near a farm increases the value of the farm and its crops. It is further established that, dividing the United States into four sections or classes, with reference to the ratio of agricultural workers to the whole population, and putting those States having less than 30 per cent, of agriculture and of agricultural labourers in the first class, all having over 30 and less than 50 in the second, those between 50 and 70 in the third, and those having 70 or more in the fourth, the value of farms is in inverse ratio to the agricultural population, and that where as in the purely agricultural section, the fourth class, the value of farms per acre is only $ 5.28, in the next class it is $ 13.03, in the third $ 22.21, and in manufacturing districts $ 40.91. This shows an enormous advantage for a mixed district. Yet not only is the land more valuable the production per acre is greater, and the wages paid to farm hands larger. Manufactures and varied industries thus not only benefit the manufacturers, but are of equal benefit and advantage to the fanners as well." 

This will show that ours is a proven remedy. It can be laid down without fear of challenge that industrialization will foster the enlargement of holdings and that it will be the most effective barrier against sub-division and fragmentation. Agreeing in this, it may be observed that industrialization will not be a sufficient remedy for consolidation. That it will require direct remedies may be true. But it is also true that industrialization, though it may not bring about consolidation, will facilitate consolidation. It is an incontrovertible truth that so long as there is the premium on land consolidation will not be easy, no matter on how equitable principles it is proposed to be carried out. Is it a small service if industrialization lessens the premium as it inevitably must ? Certainly not. Consideration of another aspect of consolidation as well points to the same conclusion: That industrialization must precede consolidation. It should never be forgotten that unless we have constructed an effective barrier against the future sub-division and fragmentation of a consolidated holding it is idle to lay out plans for consolidation. Such a barrier can only be found in industrialization ; for it alone can reduce the extreme pressure which, as we have shown, causes sub-division of land. Thus. if small and scattered holdings are the ills from which our agriculture is suffering to cure it of them is undeniably to industrialize.

అనర్థ శాస్త్రం

పైసాలో
పదోవంతు
పదిలో ఐదుగురికి
పంచితే
వాళ్ళిళ్ళళ్ళో పస్తులు
పొలాల్లో ఆత్మహత్యలే
పండుతాయి

ఇద్దరే
యేడుపాళ్ళు
యేడురోజులూ తింటే
మిగతా ముగ్గురికి
వారానికి మూడు రోజులు
రెండు పూటలూ
యేడుపే

పైసాలో
ఇంత భారతముంటే
పార్లమెంటు
యిద్దరి సుఖం కోసం
పరిచిన పరుపే
అవుతుంది
పంచాయితీ పెట్టండి!

who's the con man?

the uid attracts the worst kind of casteist prejudices:

For a moment let us imagine the state pays 5,000 rupees as subsidy to an under privileged farmer to buy fertilizer. What is the guarantee that when he has that money he is going to spend it on buying fertilizers? Can he not use that money to buy something else, like a mobile phone maybe watch a film or have a bottle of nice whiskey for a change?

why does the government subsidize the purchase of fertilizer by the farmer?

if the writer had asked himself that question first he wouldn't be raising the kind of doubts that a jailer presented with a convict reform project probably would.

the government wants to support the farmer because agriculture isn't very profitable (except, it doesn't use those exact honest words) and it doesn't want the farmer to get even lower returns (or suffer losses, which is more likely) on account of increased costs. that's the honourable part of the government's intentions.

but even then, if there is a con man, or a party with less honorable intentions, among the two-- the government and the farmer-- it is the government and not the farmer. why? because the government's goal is to keep production going, to get grain from the farms. it manages to squeeze some production out of the farmer even when he suffers losses individually. heads, the government wins and tails, the farmer loses.

so it's the farmer who should be asking all those questions: do these kind of policy makers (in the government) and consumers (like the writer) who question my integrity deserve my respect, leave alone the labour and resources i've invested in my farm?

no mantras or miracles will work here

had started on this draft in march 2010:

here, at the Indian Farmers' website, you'll find this article (word document): 'Status Paper on Rice'. on page 13 and 14, you'll find a detailed breakdown of all the costs involved in producing rice. and the concluding part says:

YIELD, COST OF CULTIVATION PER QUINTAL AND INCOME

(a) Cost of cultivation per acre Rs. 25000/-

(b) Average yield of paddy per acre is 25 quintals (35 bags)

(c) Cost of cultivation per Quintal (Rs. 25000¬ /25) = Rs. 1000/-

(d) MSP fixed for paddy per quintal is Rs. 745 (for the year 2007-08)

(e) Total gross income (Rs.745 X 25 quintals) =Rs.18,625/-

(f) Estimated loss per acre to the farmer (Rs.25,000 – Rs.18,625/-) = Rs 6,375/-(g) MSP to be fixed as per Prof. M.S. Swaminathan Commission

recommendation should be Rs.1,500 per quintal (Cost of cultivation + add minimum 50% of cost of cultivation i.e. Rs.1000+500=Rs.1,500)

those are average costs for producing rice across andhra pradesh in the year 2008-09. also note that the m.s.swaminathan commission's recommendation for increasing the minimum support price upto rs.1500 (or, Cost of cultivation + add minimum 50% of cost of cultivation), made in 2007, has not been adopted until now.

illusory potential

1) the m.s.p. for rice in the current year is rs. 950 for common variety and rs.980 for higher grade plus an 'incentive bonus' of rs.50 (which is temporary and could be withdrawn next year). so how much could a farmer producing 25 quintals an acre, earn per acre now? nothing. the costs (rs.25,000 per acre) would equal the returns (rs.1,000 x 25 quintals). which means the majority (60% of all farmers) of farmers in the state of andhra pradesh, or the marginal farmers (average landholding size: around an acre), would earn nothing.

2) less than 20% of farmers in andhra pradesh own 3.5 acres or more each. and those are 1995-96 estimates when average landholding size was 1.36 hectares, or 3.35 acres. in 2005-06, it was 1.20 hectares or 2.96 acres. the average income of the average paddy farmer* now would be around zero, if the m.s.p., remains at around rs.1,000 (at an average productivity rate of 25 quintals an acre), because the costs (rs. 25,000 per acre x 2.96 or 3 acres) would equal the returns (rs. 1,000 per quintal x 25 quintals per acre x 3 acres).

3) what if the m.s.p were increased to rs. 1,500? the average paddy farmer with a landholding of 2.96 acres would make around (rs. 1,500 per quintal x 25 quintals per acre x 3 acres) rs. 1,12,500 which would yield him a net income of (rs. 1,12, 500 minus costs of rs.75,000) of rs. 37, 500. the per capita income of his family members (assuming a family size of 5) would be around rs. 7,500, or less than one-third the per capita income of rs. 23,729 (in 2004-05, at current prices) of the state.

4) who would benefit if support prices are increased to the level suggested by swaminathan? less than 6% of the state's paddy farmers, or those who own more than 10 acres each. each farmer who owns more than 10 acres, would earn an income of around rs. 1,25,000 (rs.37,500 per acre x 10 acres minus costs of rs.25,000 per acre x 10 acres). the per capita income in his family would be around rs.25,000 or slightly more than the state average.

5) how about the majority, or the marginal farmers? the marginal paddy farmer would make around rs.37,500 (rs.1,500 per quintal x 25 quintals) and earn an income rs. 12,500 (rs. 37,500 minus costs of rs. 25,000 an acre). that means per capita income of each member of his family will be rs. 2,500, or slightly more than one-tenth the per capita income in the state.

6) what if every paddy farmer in the state managed to double the yield: from 25 quintals an acre to 50 quintals an acre? let's assume he doesn't have to incur any new capital costs and input costs to increase the yield by such magnitude, and he's able to manage the feat by sheer good luck. how much will the marginal farmer be able to make in the new scenario? his income from each acre will be (rs.1,500 x 50 quintals = rs.75,000 minus costs of rs 25,000= 50,000). which means per capita incomes in his family would be less than half the state average. how much will the average paddy farmer (landholding: 2.96 or 3 acres) make? rs.1,50,000 (rs. 1,500 per quintal x 50 quintals per acre x 3 acres minus costs of rs. 25,000 per acre x 3 acres). which means per capita income of his family would rise above the state average by around 25%.

but that would depend on three miracles happening simultaneously:

i) m.s.p. going up by more than 50% in one year. average annual growth in m.s.p in the last two decades has been less than 10%.

ii) average yield per acre going up by more than 100% in one year. average annual growth rate in yield in the past four decades has been much lower than 2%. 

iii) there would be no need for fresh capital investment and also no increase in input costs.

even if all those three miracles do happen, simultaneously, over 60% of the farmers in the state (the marginal farmers) would still earn incomes of around rs.50,000 which would still mean per capita incomes in their families would still be less than half the state average. and the small farmers, another 20%, would be earning significantly more. the medium farmers, another 15%, would be doing even better. which means 60% of the paddy farmers in andhra pradesh wouldn't benefit much even from the miraculous scenario which offers i) a 50% increase in minimum support prices immediately and ii) doubling of yields iii) and a zero percent increase in input costs.

is there really a point in further speculating on what would the farmers earn if the minimum support prices were doubled to rs.2,000?
----------------------------------------------------

as i mentioned earlier, i wrote that draft over an year ago. now, minimum support prices have gone up slightly: rs.1,030 for grade 'a' variety and rs.1,000 for other varieties. which means the conclusions i'd drawn on all the  6 scenarios presented still hold true. and only scenarios (1) and (2) reflect the current reality as you know. (3), (4), (5) and (6) represent hypothetical scenarios. pipe-dreams which rest on miracles.

there are a couple of things one needs to know to understand how these farmers survive if the returns are so low or non-existent: the total estimate of costs listed in the status paper also includes a 'land lease' component: rs.7,000 for an acre. this is what the owner-cultivator would save, but the tenant farmer would be deprived even of that. also, a certain percentage of the farmers also go in for a second crop. but that wouldn't make a great difference in their incomes, i think, because most of the costs would have to be incurred again.

the high priests of 'food security' aren't thinking about all that i guess. as i said in my previous post, there seems to be a strong belief among them that these are manageable problems. that a few wise interventions like increasing support prices, subsidies and agricultural extension etc would improve productivity, which is a primary concern for them, and also somehow give the farmer greater returns.. from sainath to jayathi ghosh, everyone's been reeling out those mantras. but the stupid shudras have a saying: mantraalaku chintakaayalu raalavu. which means, roughly: the tamarind tree wouldn't shed its fruits for mantras.

from swaminathan to sainath, they've been spouting these mantras for many years now. i don't doubt their sympathy for the farmers. but i'm convinced, seven years after the congress was re-elected promising succour for the farmers (one of its main election planks) and seven more years of unabated chanting of mantras, that they probably think of the farmer as some kind of a lifeless cog in a vast system of machinery that's not working as per their grand designs. the cog's problems matter only so far as they affect the working of the machinery.

lastly, according to some latest observations in the media, the costs of cultivating each acre have gone upto rs.30,000. even if all those estimates are wrong by even a significant percentage, say 20 or 30 or even 50, i don't see how it will change that overall inexorable reality. 

sonia's gang of genocidal kautilyas

Despite producing of 22 per cent wheat , 12 per cent rice and 13 per cent cotton of the country’s total , the Punjab agriculture is in serious crisis that have pushed 90 per cent farm households under debt, mounting to whooping Rs 26,000 crore said Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) Vice Chancellor MS Kang. Inaugurating two-day seminar on “Punjab Economy: Performance and Challenges” organized by the Department of Economics at the university campus, Dr Kang said the farm production is of optimum level as the state shares less than 2 per cent of the total cultivable land of the country.
Moreover, the total value of farm produce per annum from the state has down to Rs 22695 crore now from Rs 26000 crore in 1994-95, he said adding the pauperization of farm families has led migration of farmers which now touches one lakh hands. The farm income per hectare has come down because produce prices announced by the Central government as Minimum Support Price (MSP) increased on average by one per cent while the prices of inputs rose by 3.5 per cent. And, the growth rate of agriculture Punjab, registered at 10 per cent in 1980s has come down to mere 1.2 per cent now and soil got fatigued and sick requiring more does of fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs to achieve the same level of production. [emphasis mine].

that's a march 2009 news story from the punjab university news bulletin .

despite producing more every year, the punjab farmer earns less every year. his costs go up every year, and so do his debts. and the suicides keep increasing.

from 1988 to 2006, according to a non-profit organization called the Movement Against State Repression (MASR), around 40,000 farmers have committed suicide. and that's only an estimate based on research done in some districts of punjab. around 2009, each farmer in punjab owed a debt of over rs.40,000, on an average, to institutional and other lenders. and every one of them would have incurred more debt in the past three years because the value of his produce has been going down, steadily, over two decades, at least.

now, he's being asked to borrow some more money to pay for the food security bill.

because punjab's the biggest source of surpluses for the indian state, the punjabi farmer would again be enticed with the promise of more procurement. though that would mean assured sales to an extent, looking more closely one would realize that with procurement prices growing at the spectacular rate of 1% per year on an average, it would only mean more losses for him in the end, when the growth in prices is measured against the general rate of inflation. as the banks have already shut their tijoris tight, he'd have to borrow more from informal lenders, incurring more costs..and so on.

and the funniest part is that the savarna/civil society activists promoting the food security bill have been closely associated with the sainath kind of 'liberals' who, while making jetsetting careers out of suicides, have been trivializing the crisis by bruiting around the idea that everything would be alright if only the govt subsidizes inputs a bit more, pushes the banks a little more, doles out a little more for procurement etc. have they really looked at the scale of the problem? the total debt burden on the punjabi farmers in 2009 was nearly 20% more than the total yearly output of all of them put together. now it'd have gone up much more. the more the farmer produces, the less he makes, and the more he slides into debt. because oversupply pushes prices down and wipes away all gains from lower costs. that's been the trend since the mid 80s when the suicides started in punjab.

by asking him to pay more for this new, enhanced 'food security' formula, sonia gandhi's brahminized gang of advisers are pushing more punjabi farmers towards suicide.

right to overrule

The "Right to Food Campaign" is an informal network of organisations and individuals committed to the realisation of the right to food in India. We consider that everyone has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and undernutrition. Realising this right requires not only equitable and sustainable food systems, but also entitlements relating to livelihood security such as the right to work, land reform and social security. We consider that the primary responsibility for guaranteeing these entitlements rests with the state. Lack of financial resources cannot be accepted as an excuse for abdicating this responsibility. In the present context, where people's basic needs are not a political priority, state intervention itself depends on effective popular organisation. We are committed to fostering this process through all democratic means. [emphasis mine]

that's the foundation statement of the right to food campaign.please check the highlighted line again: don't our elections produce 'popular' governments? if elected governments don't represent 'popular' organisations, who does?

the barely concealed contempt for india's politics, democracy and the ordinary indian who considers himself a participant in both can also be noticed in the dazzling rhetoric of other 'right to..' campaigners. indian politics can't handle this serious stuff, so here's what the indian state, through its 'civil', hence neutral and untainted by the filth of politics, bureaucracy needs to do to deliver these 'rights'. in effect, what the campaigners want the state to do is to overrule the the 'politics' of the elected government.   

and they've been succeeding. the nac is filled with these campaigners, and the nac, of course, talks to sonia gandhi more often than the elected government does. and why does the elected government have to consult with sonia gandhi? because sonia gandhi is the party. if she didn't nominate every one of the 'elected' lawmakers (down to panchayat sarpanches and even ward members, sometimes) and if her endorsement wasn't required for the 'election' of the lowliest official in her party across the country, you could have said: the congress is bigger than sonia gandhi.

---------------------

that was a draft i had worked on 7 months ago. a couple of days ago, i see that sonia gandhi is not just congress party, or the government. she is god. food and consumer affairs minister k.v.thomas says:

“The draft Bill is ready now. I don’t say it is in line with NAC or not. But it is in line with what is in the mind of Madam Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
“The principle of Sonia Gandhi is that every citizen of the country should get legal cover toward a certain quantity of nutritious food, not simply foodgrains,” he shared.

in the 7 months since i started on this post, the priests of civil society have moved much closer to god, through the lokpal coup d'etat, pushing parliament into more 'ineffectiveness'. this current move shows utter contempt for not just parliament, elected through popular vote, but also ignores totally a majority of those who participate in the popular vote-- cultivators and workers. one wonders if god, while nodding her assent to all the sanctimonious mumbo-jumbo her civil society priests were chanting before her, had thought even a little about the answers they didn't have?

* who shall pay for the increased procurement? the fci procures, and if it pays a higher msp to the farmer, the govt will have to dole out a greater amount by way of subsidies to the pds. in balancing these two actions, will the farmer always not get paid less to keep the subsidies lower? or will the msp not be a function of the pds prices, always? should cultivators and workers continue to pay with stagnation and death for the food security of the urban middle classes?
* wheat and rice, the brahmin grains, will drive this increased procurement, as always. what about the farmers who produce less brahminical cereals like jowar, bajra etc?
* will surpluses continue to be procured from 3-4 states? wouldn't that destroy any incentive for food security in the majority of states, like it has done in all these years?
* shouldn't food security be a concern of the states, primarily, regions within the states, and districts within regions and blocks within districts and villages within blocks to be more meaningful?
* rice is a water-guzzler and has taken away a much needed resource from millions and millions of ordinary citizens, especially in northwest india, a region which never produced rice in much quantity before the so-called green revolution.. who will pay for this water, which means thirst, hardship, lack of basic sanitation.. dry toilets and again stagnation, caste and much more?
* there is increased competition among many states to build costly but ineffective irrigation systems to tap water to grow rice and other such crops.. who will pay for all the bad blood among states and regions? for the ecological disasters and the adivasi displacements? does india need more rice, at such heavy costs?

questions. one can think of many more questions, but the priests know better, i guess.  

the costs of rice

andhra pradesh needed around 32 lakh tonnes (rough estimate) of rice in 1961. it produced around 40 lakh* tonnes, according to an estimate of the international rice research institute. forty years later, in 2001, it required around 68 to 70 lakh tonnes. it produced around 93 lakh tonnes. from around 25%, the surplus had increased to 32%-- did that ensure less malnourishment in andhra pradesh than in kerala which produces only one-fifth as much rice as its population needs? no.

the average resident of kerala is richer than the average resident of andhra pradesh: per capita gdp in kerala is around 23% higher than in andhra pradesh. as for malnourishment, it's much higher in andhra pradesh, of course. but according to a recent report prepared by the u.n. world food program (unwfp) surpluses producing andhra pradesh is also much more food insecure than kerala:

New Delhi: India's mineral-rich state Jharkhand is the most hungry and thirsty state in the country and also among the states that has the poorest of sanitation facilities.

According to a report on the State of Food Insecurity in Rural India prepared jointly by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Jharkhand has replaced Orissa from top of the list of hungry states in the country.

The report, which is a corollary to the Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India that was released in 2001, also ranks the country 94th on the Global Hunger Index of 119 countries.

"On the composite index of food insecurity of rural India, states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are found in the 'very high' level of food insecurity, followed by Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat", the report said.

The better performers include Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, all of which report an Index value below 0.53, it added.

Surprisingly, economically developed states like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka find themselves in the category of high food insecurity in the report. [emphasis mine].

so, what did andhra pradesh gain from producing so much rice? nearly twice as many people were employed or underemployed, one can safely assume, in 2001, in the production of a little more than twice as much rice as in 1961. it'd seem like all that talk of technology-intensive farming that the green revolution had supposedly ushered in was just that: mere talk. because the green-revolutionary technology only seems to have increased the surpluses marginally because most of the increase in output could as well be attributed to increase in labour employed. by pursuing a model of development that placed less emphasis on people, andhra pradesh seems to have achieved efficiency in neither production nor distribution. this has produced a society more riven by more social and economic inequalities, more deprivation and discontent than it originally started with.

if we consider the pure economic costs now, ignoring the human, ecological, and even political and social costs, they seem to be much higher than the gains: the government pays rs.1,000 as m.s.p for every quintal of paddy now, which is as just as much as the farmer spends to produce it. and for more than two decades his gains have been as bad. isn't it time somebody started calculating the total real costs, not just the economic ones? especially those who are promising the people of telangana that a new state would mean more water and rice?

* the paddy to rice ratio is 3:2.

sharing rivers, but not water

balagopal on river-sharing:

Small wonder then that not only the States of Karnataka and Maharashtra but the people of Telangana and Rayalaseema as well have always nursed a fully justified grievance about the distribution of the Krishna river waters. And even though there is no allocable water left in the Krishna river in terms of the Bachawat award, proposals aimed at watering the parched lands of Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Kurnool, Cuddapah and Anantapur districts have been put forward in abundance. And the State government too, at various points of time – if only at election time in most cases - has promised execution each of these proposals. Not counting the minor proposals, the major ones alone would need about 200 tmc.ft of water: 40 each for the Srisailam Left Bank Canal (Nalgonda district), Bheema, Nettempadu, Kalwakurthi & other lift irrigation schemes (Mahbubnagar district), Galeru-Nagari and Handri-Neeva (for the four Rayalaseema districts), and Veligonda (the uplands of Markapuram division of Prakasam district). The profusion of the demands reflects the stark reality of heart-breaking drought in these areas.

from this article ('Pulichintala - A Test Case', by K.Balagopal) at the site which isn't small enough enough to think beyond rights that i had referred to yesterday.

i'd talked about perspective here, in response to some comments. going back to the article, let's look at balagopal's perspective:

According to a note circulated by the Irrigation department in the year 1998, the Pulichintala project is slated to use 982 million cubic meters of water from the Krishna river, which comes to about 13 tmc.ft. One tmc.ft of water is sufficient to irrigate six thousand to ten thousand acres, depending on whether it is used for wet cultivation or `irrigated dry’ cultivation. Taking the latter, these 13 tmc.ft of water would irrigate 1.3 lakh acres of land. How happy would any of the above districts from Nalgonda to Anantapur be to get at least this much irrigation water, though it is nothing compared to the 20 lakh acres that would be irrigated by all the projects all of them taken together have been dreaming of for decades now!

And what use is this project going to be put to? Not even to irrigate 1.3 lakh acres of as yet unirrigated land in Krishna district, but to ensure that transplantation of paddy in the Krishna delta under the old canal system takes place in June-July. Almatti in Karnataka and increased ayacut under Nagarjunasagar in upland Guntur and Nalgonda districts are said to have slowed down the arrival of water into the Prakasam barrage in the early monsoon weeks, thereby rendering transplantation of paddy in the months of June and July uncertain, and therefore 13 tmc.ft of water will be stored in the balancing reservoir at Pulichintala to be sent down to the Prakasam barrage at the appointed time so that the schedule of transplantation that the delta farmers are accustomed to is not upset. What solicitude!

krishna, and unsolvable problems like pulichintala have fuelled discontent in telangana for a very long period. but how is balagopal's perspective different from how those on the other side of the krishna think? from the perspective of the farmers in the delta, who wouldn't share any water even with their neighbours, leave alone those on the other side? when a discussion on rights doesn't start with drinking water and wet toilets, or universally recognized human rights, for the largest number of people, i don't see how even any reallocation of water between regions, would solve any problems. inequality is embedded deep in this perspective: higher needs should be met first. so, it's always the upper caste paddy farmer, in the three regions, whose 'parched lands' would be recognized first. millions of parched throats, in hundreds of villages all along the krishna basin region, can only wait forever. does the separatist movement look beyond this casteist perspective? or at a future beyond agriculture (as defined by the green revolution)?

the future wasn't agriculture (a naive idea- 4)

57 days a year. that's the number of days of work available in the farm sector in india. from more than 220 days a year, 40 years ago. it'll go down further. how much can you earn from 57 days of mostly manual labour?

despite whatever was promised by the upa five years ago, or whatever the upa or the nda will promise now, in the next ten years agriculture's share in the gdp will go down further- from around 20% now to around 10%. despite increased credit and frequent loan waivers. despite increased subsidies and investments in irrigation. despite whatever curbs on imports or exports. all that means the real incomes of those who depend on agriculture, farmers and workers and others, will go down further every year.

all that silly figures of how we've achieved 4% growth trumpeted by whatever government in any one year actually hides the fact that there had been a 10% fall the previous year. we've been served the same sorry meal for the last twenty years or more and we have been waiting for that inevitable turnaround just around the corner all this while.

the andhra pradesh government has sunk in more than 50,000 crores in the last five years in large irrigation projects and the average and overall yields are almost where they were ten years ago. and twice as many farmers have committed suicide in the last five years than in the ten years before that.

logically speaking, there shouldn't be any farmers' suicides in andhra pradesh. because the state has always been a food surplus state, from even before the green revolution. and there are enough rice deficit regions in the neighbourhood, and across india, to fetch the andhra farmers' produce good prices. take kerala, for instance. a major portion of rice consumed in kerala comes from andhra pradesh. in the last forty years, while the total area devoted to paddy cultivation in kerala has come down by more than half, it has increased in andhra pradesh.

kerala, which imports rice, has a higher per capita income than andhra pradesh which exports nearly 30-40% of the rice it produces every year.

kerala also has a higher rate of literacy. infant and maternal mortality rates are lower in kerala than in andhra pradesh.

today, rice sells for rs.20-30 a kg in andhra pradesh, at almost the same price as in kerala.

logically speaking, the andhra pradesh (indian) electors should have kicked out anyone who spoke of agriculture and food security in 2004. or during any elections in the last twenty years.

click to save..what?

india's population has nearly doubled since 1970. so has its foodgrain production. actually, india's food production could've quadrupled, considering the average yield per acre, across the world (including china and even countries such as vietnam and laos, sometimes) of any major cereal (rice, wheat corn) is more than twice the indian average. but yes, india does produce a little more than it requires and has been doing so for nearly four decades.

so why do you still see charities across the western world (and everywhere on the internet) asking you to save indian children from hunger etc.,? india doesn't require any foodgrain imports from the west (except to bridge any very temporary shortfall, just as any other food surplus nation in the world)- so how can any westerner save indian children from hunger? by donating money so that the child/his parents/charity looking after him can buy food. by giving the child/his parents etc purchasing power.

but what most western donors probably do not know is that their money would buy food produced in india and not in the west. for all they know, they're sending food to india.

now, there's another way in which any kindhearted citizen of the west can save indian children from hunger: ask his/her government to stop subsidizing its agriculture. or at least stop spending ridiculous amounts on crops that people of those countries rarely consume- like for instance, the subsidies that america spends on rice production. it throws away more money on the subsidies than the actual output is worth, in dollar terms! if those subsidies are lowered, indian farmers would produce more and earn more from selling a part of their produce overseas. which in turn would mean more purchasing power for indian parents.

p.sainath and many like him do not like that idea because they inherently do not believe indian farmers are capable of the kind of productivity any western or chinese or vietnamese or laotian farmer is capable of. and that is exactly what many knowledgeable people in the west also think, even when they see that their real agricultural productivity is going from bad to worse. so, the indian farmer should continue to live on the indian government's charity, according to people like sainath (he would of course make it sound like he's talking about farmers' rights). and indian children should continue to receive food from kindhearted westerners. (that's what i call brahminized angst).

but is it possible for indian farmers to increase productivity and their incomes by selling their produce only in india?

look at how growth in indian agricultural output has managed to hover around, on an average, 2% a year, over the last forty years. why? because that's more than adequate to meet the annual growth in population? it's like indian farmers instinctively seem to know just exactly how much india needs. or, think of it in this way: if indian farmers had quadrupled their production in the last forty years- where would they have sold half their produce? definitely not in india. which means they've been producing just as much as india is willing to pay for. and india has been paying less and less over the years- from around 50% of gdp in 1970 to around 18% now, which of course, meant more and more distress in the countryside. and now, more and more suicides.

so, why do indian farmers need to significantly improve their productivity if they need to sell only in india? and given the record of the past forty years, how will they manage to increase their incomes by selling only in india? especially, when the indian government/s would continue to control all trade in agriculture commodities even within the country?

why this half-rant now? because i get massively annoyed by invitations to 'click to save an indian child from hunger' and so on, sometimes.

60,000 crores: missing the woods

a report in the times of india, hyderabad, a couple of days ago says:

Even as bankers wait for detailed guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the loan waiver scheme, their preliminary assessment is that the real beneficiaries would only be the wilful defaulters and not the disciplined farmers. In Andhra Pradesh, bankers estimate the wilful defaulters to be not more than 10 lakhs at the most.

10 lakhs in andhra pradesh. how many farmers would that mean, across india? at best, 8 million? that means i was a little optimistic in this post, in which i'd mentioned 10 million possible beneficiaries. the report goes on to say:

Bankers say there are about 1.15 crore farmers in the state. Of these, about 90 lakh are small and marginal farmers, including about 20 lakh tenant farmers. The tenant farmers have never tapped banks, not surprising because they work on an oral tenancy without any written agreement with landlords. The 70 lakh "real" farmers, bankers say, have been making use of the banking sector but a majority of them are disciplined and repay loans on time. This is also to avail loans for the next crop.

here, the reporter seems a little optimistic: if 70 lakh small and marginal farmers were able to access institutional credit in andhra pradesh, so many thousands wouldn't have committed suicide in the last fifteen years. this rediff report from punjab says:

Indeed, according to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, nearly 80 per cent of the farmers in 1 million holdings in Punjab will be outside the ambit of the biggest loan waiver in Indian fiscal history.

Business Standard spoke to 25 farmers in three villages in Sangrur and found that just 4 out of 25 farmers benefit from the waiver.

if only 20% of farmers (or 2 lakh farmers) in punjab would benefit from this waiver, the less said about the rest of the country the better- even the figure of 8 million sounds very, very optimistic now. because, in terms of access to bank credit punjabi famers have always been the most fortunate. institutional credit met 60% or more of their needs until a few years ago- famers in most other states, on an average, cannot access more than a fifth of their credit needs from banks.

i met five small famers from the prosperous samalkot area in east godavari district, in coastal andhra, yesterday. access to bank credit in that paddy-growing, canal irrigated region has always been better than in most other regions in the state. but i was told that none of the five famers i met would benefit from this waiver. because none of them are defaulters. and they had stopped going to co-operative banks more than a decade ago because most of them had stopped lending to ordinary famers. most of the debtors on their books are famers of course. but a majority of the farmer-borrowers don't know that the co-operative banks had lent them money.

will the suicides stop?

60,000 crores: relief for the farmers or the banks?
for the banks, of course. they are sitting on non-productive, soon-to-become-non-productive and long-rotting agricultural credit worth 1,00,000 crores.

this will help 3 crore small and marginal farmers in the country.
oh really? find me 3 crore small and marginal farmers who got institutional credit in the first place, in the last three years or any three years before that. the prime minister himself said not more than 14 days ago:

We are also looking into the credit needs of farmers.We cannot have a situation where 80% of our agricultural sector is outside the formal financial system and suffers from excessive burden of indebtedness.

the total number of all agricultural holdings (large, medium, semi-medium, marginal etc.,) in india was around 120 million, approximately, a few years ago. which doesn't mean we have 120 million farmers in the country. the number of active farmers in the country ranges from 60 million to 100 million, according to various estimates. it's most probably closer to 80 million. but, for the sake of argument, if we assume each of those 120 million or more holdings equals one farmer, only 20%, according to the prime minister, of those 120 million landholders ever gets institutional credit in india- which means not more than 24 million farmers. or more exactly, 24 million landholders. i repeat, where did chidambaram find 30 million agricultural customers for indian banks? and how many of those were actually small and marginal farmers?

well, a substantial number of small and marginal farmers would get relief, anyway.
at best, not more than 10 million small landholders, not farmers, would benefit from this largesse. it doesn't matter how many large farmers benefit from it- they're not killing themselves anyway. mostly.

why?
85% of indian holdings, or 100 million holdings, fall in the small and marginal category. average sizes being two acres and half acre respectively (both are slightly optimistic estimates). there are around 20 million medium and large landholdings in the country (average sizes: 10 acres and 40 acres, respectively). if you were a banker, who'd you treat with more respect- the small guys or those with not less than ten acres each? you can totally rule out the 80 million marginal farmers (with holdings less than half acre each), i think. how many of the 24-25 million farmers who get credit from banks would be small and marginal farmers? .4-5 million (after taking care of the 20 million medium and large farmers)? slightly more- say, 10 million? 13 million? 13 million sounds impossible, doesn't it? considering, that would mean more than half of the 24-25 million agricultural customers of banks are small and marginal farmers. so, even 10 million is a very, very optimistic figure. and most of them wouldn't fall in the suicidal farmer category.

it wouldn't benefit any farmers in distress?
let's talk of farmer p.c.chettiar. he works in the finance ministry in delhi but holds 4 acres in the cauvery delta region. his brother p.d.chettiar, who owns race horses and runs hotels in chennai, owns the adjacent plot of four acres. another brother, p.e.chettiar, whose interest is racing cars and lives in milan also owns four acres. yet another brother, p.f.chettiar, who's an assistant commissioner of police in madurai also has another 4 acres to his name. the last brother, p.g.chettiar, who also owns 4 acres actually looks after agricultural operations in all the twenty five acres all the brothers together own. and all 5 of these small farmers would benefit from this relief offered by chidambaram. that's one kind of farmers this measure would benefit- the absentee farmer from the regions with a long history of access to irrigation. like two-three districts in coastal andhra and western maharashtra, several districts in punjab, haryana, western uttar pradesh and west bengal etc., regions which grow sugarcane, paddy, wheat and other commercially profitable crops. the more prosperous sections of farmers in these regions would benefit.

who wouldn't benefit?
farmers in most of india. in the rainfed, arid regions which constitute 70% of all arable area in india. like vidarbha, telangana, rayalaseema, many parts of karnataka, madhya pradesh, gujarat, rajasthan etc., and also marginal farmers from all over india, including the prosperous, irrigated regions like punjab, coastal andhra etc., i had mentioned earlier.

would the suicides stop?
no. 90% of the farmers who are committing suicide do not receive any institutional credit. if some of them ever did, they do not receive it now. most of their credit needs are met by private moneylenders.

then who'd benefit from this measure?
like i said, prosperous upper caste farmers from the irrigated regions of the country. and upper caste run banks which 'can clean up their books now', as chidambaram says, of some bad credit which would have been written off anyway, in due course. they would receive around 20,000 crores each year as additional capital from the government and this would enable them to lend an additional 2,00,000 each year as credit, hopefully, to more upper caste customers working in the organized sector looking to buy new cars, homes or holidays.

as i said in this post, budgets are mostly about dressing up sectarian interests in widely acceptable, egalitarian garb.

prof. gadde swarup's comments

professor gadde swarup, in an interesting comment on my previous post , says:

Caste questions and farmers' problems seem to be two different problems. The first may be solved in a few hundred years but it seems to me that the second may not be solvable. In any case, may be it is simpler to discuss the problems seperately.

please note two things:

1. my previous post was not about caste. it doesn't even mention caste, or any variant, or any term derived from caste. not even in the tags. am i being slotted away?

2. the scale applied, not consciously i am sure, to measure the problems (the caste problem and farmers' problem): i feel it is inappropriate. i think the act of measurement itself is wrong- caste is being slotted away.

(please also read prof. swarup's second comment explaining his first). moving on to the suggestion at the end: In any case, may be it is simpler to discuss the problems seperately. i hadn't discussed caste in my previous post, but i admit it was on my mind: the two issues can't be separated. ask p.sainath:

Typically, the forward caste will till at the head of the water, the middle caste will till in the middle water, and the tail water will be left to the lower caste and the Dalits. Now in Rajasthan this problem does not arise, since there is no water, no river in the border areas. So how is the positioning of the Dalit basti determined in Rajasthan? In all other parts of the country where the river water runs north to south, the Dalit basti will be in the south. Why is it on the east and northeast there? This happens because Dalits work on leather, which stinks and our sacred nostrils cannot be offended by this menial activity, so we place them outside, so the smell of carcasses and tanning does not enter the village.

that was an extract from an interview with sainath that i had quoted in this post. i'd also referred to other articles in that post to make my point that caste does play a role in the making of policy (and its implementation ) that impacts agriculture and rural india: the clear bias towards famers with larger holdings, easier access to irrigation, inputs, extension and market support and generally all other public goods/services (read: upper caste) is clearly evident, though couched in much egalitarian phraseology. i'd also written on how large irrigation projects benefit mostly a small section of rural india (around 10-20%) in one of my posts on otherindia (now dead?).

two: in my recent series of posts on agriculture (please check this post for links to other posts in the series) and elsewhere (check tags: agriculture, famers etc) i'd pointed out , directly and not so directly, how policy on agriculture is very narrowly framed in india. to sum up, roughly, it has two components: 1. food security. 2. through support to the productive category of famers i'd referred to in the previous paragraph. it doesn't support farmers, broadly, or rual india, broadly. policy is definitely not framed from a holistic point of view- the productive farmers are agriculture are rural india. i'd referred to this paternalistic attitude of policy makers in this post and also in the post on otherindia i'd referred to earlier (here's a link to a link to the post and here's the title of the post: 'bottled up in agriculture'.. i don't know whether it's cached somewhere. i didn't cross-post it here).

three: most of the farmers who have committed suicide are obcs and dalits. sainath had mentioned this somewhere, and other journalists have talked about it. but not explicitly or in depth. they wanted to keep things simpler, i guess.

p.s: on being slotted away, there is an interesting post on the issue on 'double consciousness' (thanks, jack)..

why most indian states should seriously think of seceding from india

THE Green revolution from the late sixties onwards, owing to its markedly greater success in Northern and North western India compared to other parts of the country, had led to increase in the regional concentration of foodgrains output, to a degree of which few are aware. Over a decade ago we had worked out the changing structure of the various regions' contribution to aggregate food output in India for the period 1960-61 to 1987-88 and presented the summarised data in the form of snapshots of three sub-periods, in Table 1. This shows a marked, indeed dramatic shift. Total food output in the regions considered rose by 82 per cent from the early sixties to the mid-eighties. Accounting for just around a quarter (26 per cent) of total food output during 1959-60 to 1961-62 (taking the average of the three years), North and North-Western India had increased its share to two-fifths (39.8 per cent) by the mid-eighties, taking the triennial average for 1983-84 to 1985-86. All other regions of India showed a greater or lesser decline: Eastern India from 23.2 per cent to 20.2 per cent, South India from 21.5 per cent to to 17 per cent and West-central India from 29.1 per cent to 23.1 per cent. Of the addition to grain output during this period, which was 65 million tonnes, nearly 37 million tonnes or over half came came from North India alone.

read ms.utsa patnaik's glib explanation of how this severely distorted growth has been good for india- read and understand that the grotesque edifice of food security in india has been built and rests on growth in a few states in the north and north-west and the concomitant decline in food production across the majority of states! food security at the national level sorely depends on food insecurity in most of the states!

and that is exactly the point i've been trying to make in this series [ (1), (2) and (3) ] of posts. i'd outlined how difficult it is for most indian states to think of producing enough food for all the residents living in any given state. it's not possible because a) the country already produces enough food for everyone, and b) the government distributes surpluses from a few states in all the deficit states so that the total market for local farmers in any given state stands diminished. why should farmers use 100% of the resources at their disposal to produce enough food for 80-90% of the consumption needs in any particular state? any producer would produce only as much as his market demands- in deficit states in india, the government of india ensures that the deficit (5-70% of total consumption needs, across various states) is bridged by bringing in surplus grain from punjab and a couple of other states. so where can the farmers in that state sell their produce if they produce enough for 100% of the consumption needs in that particular state? they can't a) sell in their own state all their produce because the grain sold through the pds takes away 5-70% of their market- their produce can't compete with pds grain on price, and b) they can't sell in other states, because of increased transactional costs, trade restrictions and because their grain, in all probability, would be costlier than grain from surplus states like punjab which have over the years achieved certain economies of scale (i shall touch upon these reasons again, later).

in the final analysis, what the governnment of india does in all the deficit states is to follow precisely the kind of ugly, neo-imperialist strategy that patnaik and sainath and many like them accuse the e.u., and the u.s., of adopting in most of the third world- dumping cheap, subsidized produce and driving the local farmers to suicide.

to survive, any food-deficit indian state needs to produce enough food for all the citizens in that state - it is also necessary for the overall development of the economy of that state that agriculture, and farmers, should be able to grow. that isn't possible for most indian states as long as they remain indian states.

older posts in this series: [1], [2], [3].

the recipe for the green revolution

a slightly old article in himal explains how the green revolution changed agriculture in punjab:

The state of Punjab which has been literally feeding India, with its annual contribution of 53 percent of wheat and 40 percent of paddy to the food stocks of the country was, at the time of India’s independence in 1947, a food grain deficit area with only 52 percent of its area under irrigation. The 1960s Green Revolution changed all of that. Introduction of dwarf wheat germ-plasm and dwarf varieties for paddy crop resulted in quantum leaps in production. The high tide of the Green Revolution led to intensive production which then led to the emergence of crop monocultures, in general, as farmers, enticed by the productivity of the high yielding varieties of seeds promoted by the agricultural establishment of the country, switched to rice and wheat rotation. Pulses and coarse grains were sidelined – paddy and wheat was where the money was and to which over 71 percent of the gross cultivated area was put. Farm machinery, pesticides and fertilisers and irrigation dramatically increased the productivity of land. Today 95% of the net sown area gets irrigated by a web of canals and tubewells.

my last post was about how difficult it is for any state in india to even think of competing with punjab, and a couple of other states, for a larger share of the market for the two staple crops, wheat and rice, in the country. why is it so very difficult? there are several factors that combine to give punjab an unbeatable edge over most other states in the country:
* irrigation- punjab, as the paragraph i quoted says, started out with a well-built canal irrigation system, thanks to the british, and this potential has been further enhanced by projects such as the bhakra nangal and now the syl.canal irrigation system is the cheapest and most reliable source of water, as compared with manual and machine-operated irrigation systems. over 65% and more of farms in punjab could depend on this source until a few years ago. the national average is around 30-35%. extensive use of tubewells powered by cheap power and diesel ensure that, as the article says, 95% of all farms have assured supply of water.
* intensive farming- the green revolution was all about intensive farming. that translates into intensive application of technology (high yielding seeds, fertilizer and pesticides, farm equipment), intensive use of natural resources (water and double cropping, or two crops a year) and institutional support (research & advice from universities, credit from banks, support prices from the government). as the national portal i had quoted in my previous post says 'the cropping intensity' in punjab is more than 186% (which means two crops are cultivated in most of the available area)- the national average in irrigated areas is around 120%.
* social profile- the punjab land alienation act (1900), a bizarre piece of colonial legislation, ensured that most of the land in punjab went into the hands of the jats. the other upper castes, obcs and dalits own very little. so when the green revolution programme was first demonstrated and later launched on a large scale in punjab this homogeneity must have played a great role in the faster dissemination of the new ideas. and not just in punjab, but across haryana and western uttar pradesh, (the other one and a half of the two and a half states in north india where the green revolution is considered a great success) the story of the green revolution in north india has been the story of the resurgence of the jats. from charan singh to mahendra singh tikait- think of all the ways in which this unified, and large, jat voice worked to make the green revolution work for them more than others.

will some other state, i repeat the question, be able to match the punjab performance? if the fators listed above constitute the elements of a successful formula, how many states in india wouild be able to muster all those elements, and put them together? let's check against that list and see what needs to be done:
1. irrigation: this is a huge problem. if all the states in india were to achieve around 65% coverage of farms through canal irrigation (from around 30-35% now) the public funds required would run to around several hundred thousand crores. the current government in andhra pradesh was voted in on the promise that it'd do just that (increase area irrigated by canals by 73 lakh acres with an estimated, now revised, expenditure of 46,000 crores), but hasn't accomplished even a tenth part of the job until now even after spending more than 20,000 crores on the program. and andhra pradesh has access to perennial rivers such as the godavari and the krishna while many other states aren't so adequately endowed. this fao document should give you some idea of the size of the problem.is it doable?
2. high-yielding seeds, pesticides, fertilizers etc: most of india is using them- to increase to the punjab level more government support by way of subsidies, which means more public funds, and also private funds (which would mean increased credit for farmers) would be required. and much more funds would be required for farm equipment such as tractors (every village in punjab, on an average, has around 35 tractors- how many villages have you ever visited that have around 35 tractors each?). doable?
3. extension support from universities: doable.
4. credit: punjabi farmers access nearly 60% of their credit requirements from the banks. farmers elsewhere, despite policies that stipulate that nearly 18% of credit should go to farmers, have never received more than 10-!5% of their requirements from banks on an average. doable?
5. government support through procurement: the primary reason why punjabi farmers can access more credit, invest more in inputs and technology, is that the government of india buys more than half their harvest. doable?

it'd seem like most of those tasks, especially 1-3, can be accomplished by any state government if there were more money: more money in the hands of the farmer to invest more, more money in the hands of the government to invest more in irrigation infrastructure, subsidies, extension support etc., but the more vital player in this whole programme would've to be the central government. let's look at this way: if say, the central government buys as much wheat (half the crop harvested) from the madhya pradesh farmers (to use the same example as in my last post) as it does in punjab, and at the same remunerative prices (procurement prices have been better than market prices in most of the years since the green revolution started), then everything else would fall in place. because the madhya pradesh farmers now have an assured buyer for a major portion of their produce, and the most dependable one in the land, banks would be more than willing to lend them as much funds as they require to invest more in inputs, machinery and equipment and other improvements. because the farmer is able to invest more, his yields would increase progressively, every year. and because he's bringing more income to the rural economy every year, the state government would start listening to him more and increase its own investments in infrastructure and support through universities and subsidies etc., and in a few years, the madhya pradesh farmer would equal the punjabi farmer in productivity and surpluses. so, if the last task (no.5) is accomplished- that of securing the same kind of support from the central government as the punjabi farmers get (through procurement), all the other tasks, as i said earlier, fall in place. and all the other tasks, even if accomplished, aren't enough to turn a food deficit state into a surplus state if the last task is not completed. and most probably, it'd be almost impossible to accomplish all the other tasks (especially task 4, which in turn affects the completion of task 2) if the last task isn't completed.

so, why doesn't the central government buy from all the states? and stoke green revolutions and surpluses across the country? can't the central government extend that kind of support to all farmers in all states who, as sainath says, place 'food on our table' ? the answer is that there is already enough 'food on our table'.

older posts in this series: [1] & [2]

malawi and more food for thought

Punjab State, with only 1.5 per cent geographical area of India, produces 21 per cent of wheat, 10 per cent rice and 12 per cent of cotton in the country. Now the cropping intensity of Punjab is more than 186 per cent, and the State, which has earned the name of ‘‘Food basket of country and granary of India’’ has been pooling 40-50 per cent of rice and 50-70 per cent of wheat for the last two decades, and compared to the world, it produces 1 per cent of rice, 2 per cent of wheat, and 2 per cent of cotton of the total world production.

that's from the national portal of india. the statistic not recorded in that paragraph is that the population of punjab is 24,358,999, or around 2.2 percent of india's population. does 2.2 percent of india consume 21 percent of the wheat and and 10 percent of the rice produced in the country? most of the wheat produced in the country is consumed within the country- which means punjab produces around 3-5 times more wheat than it requires. and perhaps as much as 9-10 times more rice than it actually needs. if you feel wheat and rice consumers need to be segregated- even then, we'd see that punjab produces 3-5 times more wheat than it requires, and anywhere between 10-20 times the rice it consumes. those are rough estimates, but one does get the picture that punjab is doing well in agriculture. perhaps, as well as malawi.

one would think all indian states should follow the example of punjab (or malawi). punjab produces such huge surpluses- most of its agricultural output is exported. i mean, sold to consumers in other states- either through through the government of india's pds or through private traders. what would happen to punjab's farmers if any of the other states in the country decide to follow malawi's example? if, say, rajasthan and madhya pradesh step up border restrictions and duties? try to discourage imports and subsidize local agriculture a lot more? close down all pds outlets in those states?

why should any state follow malawi's example and stop imports from punjab? the central government (and the punjab government) subsidizes both the production and wide distribution of food products from punjab across the country, especially in deficit states like madhya pradesh and rajasthan- why should those states give up subsidized lunches (like dweep argues in this post that i referred to in an earlier post)? two reasons:

one, subsidized lunches don't mean free lunches. the madhya pradeshis need money to buy those lunches. and to earn money, they need work. those who need these subsidized lunches the most aren't educated, skilled workers- so, where can they find the work? on farms, of course. and how can farmers offer them any work if they themselves have been deprived of sustainable livelihood because of cheap grain from punjab flooding the fair price shops and stores in madhya pradesh?

two, subsidized lunches may not mean the cheapest lunches. or the kind of lunches you prefer. look at this line (which is the last line in the paragraph i'd quoted from the national portal of india earlier):

Whereas, it consumes 8 per cent of total fertilizer consumption. In Punjab, per hectare consumption of fertilizer is 177 kg as compared to 90 kg at national level.

not just fertilizers, punjabi farmers invest a lot in higher labour costs, machinery, seed, pesticides etc., add to these, the cost of water sourced from canals running from large dams, or pumped up from tubewells. add to these, the cost of credit needed to make all those investments and foot those expenditures. add to these the financial costs- the cost of central government funds that are invested in buying wheat from punjabi farmers, storing it and transporting it to madhya pradeshi stores. add to these the cost of subsidies- those paid for by the central government and the punjab government to facilitate the supply of cheap inputs to the punjabi farmers and those paid for by the central government and the madhya pradesh government to keep the prices low for the madhya pradeshi consumers.

so, while the madhya pradeshi consumer is buying the subsidized lunches, he's also paying for the subsidies- either through taxes or through lower investment in development in madhya pradesh (wouldn't the government budget for development and infrastructure go down if the subsidy bill goes up?). now, we return to the original question- are subsidized lunches truly the cheapest lunches available?

there's also the question of whether they are the kind of lunches you prefer. vandana shiva says, at the beginning of the last century, the british had found at least 37 different varieties of wheat being grown in the country- there could actually have been many more. perhaps, if you travel through northern and other parts of india where wheat is a staple element in every day diet, you'd find a different variety of wheat being consumed after every 4-5 districts. if they'd a choice, wouldn't the madhya pradeshis prefer something they're used to, food grown in their own neighbourhood?

is it possible for madhya pradesh to step up its foodgrain production to completely meet all its needs? in theory, yes. on a larger level, india had done it earlier. from the mid-sixties, it'd reduced its dependence on imports, developed high-yield seeds, distributed them at little or no cost to farmers, supplied subsidized fertilizer, increased access to irrigation and credit.

is it practically possible? no, in my view. madhya pradesh produces around 6.5 to 7 million tonnes of wheat every year. punjab produces around 14-15 million tonnes. punjab consumes around 4.5-5 million tonnes of wheat every year. i am not sure about the consumption figures in madhya pradesh- but it has a population of 60 million, which is around two and a half times punjab's population, so i think it's reasonable to assume that it consumes twice as much wheat as punjab. which would mean around 9 to 10 million tonnes. which means madhya pradesh has to increase its production by anywhere between 2.5-3.5 million tonnes a year- or by 35-50% a year, approximately. its growth in wheat production for over a decade, by the way, has been less than half a percent a year. at that rate of production, it would reach the target of 9-10 million tonnes in another, say, 70-100 years. and would still remain a deficit state because its population would definitely have increased by more than 50% by then.

if madhya pradesh continues to maintain trade and other ties with the rest of india its goal of reaching self-sufficiency in wheat would never be met. why? because the governmment of india has given away the contract of producing a large portion of the country's wheat requirements, which includes a large portion of madhya pradesh's requirements, to punjab and a couple of other states. one needs to go back to the malawi example to understand this better.

a note: madhya pradesh isn't a food deficit state. it's a food deficit state only if we assume that wheat is the only staple cereal consumed in the state. but there are other wheat deficit (and rice deficit states) states in the country which would fit the description of the deficit state illustrated in my example - because punjab with only a small fraction of the country's wheat (and rice) consuming population has cornered a large share of the market for wheat (and rice). it's very tough for new producers to take away any market share from the punjabi farmers (the government of india ensures that by buying more than two-thirds of wheat and rice produced in punjab).

this brahmin journalist deserves a magsaysay

Faced with job quotas, companies could stop outsourcing and resume in-house operations. They can hire dalits and tribals as sweepers, canteen workers, drivers, chowkidars and so on.

They can open holiday homes for officers in the hills, employing tribals. This will enable them to fulfil job quotas without affecting management or factory quality.

Many dalits and tribals may find this quite acceptable, because they will move from the unorganised to the organised sector.

Third tactic: Convert officers, technicians and skilled workers into consultants. Top staff need not be salaried employees. They can equally be consultants on contract. Consultants get no provident fund or leave travel benefits.

i'd call that an honest, heartfelt expression of self-interest. and this? well, that is more like all the outrage, indignation, handwringing and breastbeating that was probably on display here, all through last week. or like this display of aforementioned theatrics:

Land has a great deal to do with both economic and social status. Let's look at who are the poor in India. Of the Indian poor, 40 per cent are landless agricultural labourers; 45 per cent are small or marginal farmers. (60 per cent of Indian farmers own less than an acre of land). This means that 85 per cent of the poor are either landless or marginal farmers. It's in the first category that you will find dalits in large numbers.

how would you characterize someone who, after more than one decade of writing passionately about the injustices being perpetrated on rural india, admits in a moment of rare honesty (albeit in a circuitous manner) that that he hasn't exactly been advocating the cause of the weakest in indian society all that while but raising concerns about the interests of india's upper caste farmers (who benefits the most from india's agricultural subsidies, support prices and public investments in such areas as irrigation anyway)? sainath's friend jean dreze is less circuitous about acknowledging that support prices etc., do not benefit lower caste farmers:

There are two answers to this question. One is that the poorer sections of the farming community benefit very little, if at all, from price support measures. Consider for instance small farmers in, say, Orissa or Jharkhand or Chhatisgarh. These farmers typically sell little grain, if any, on the market; instead, they tend to combine subsistence farming with labour migration and other income-earning activities that allow them to buy non-food commodities.Hence, higher food prices do not help them.

dreze also thinks the pds is a scam but we know sainath's views on that - he believes the pds 'has wilted under policies clearly aimed at dismantling it'.. who does sainath speak for? does he speak for the dalits and the lower castes?

Typically, the forward caste will till at the head of the water, the middle caste will till in the middle water, and the tail water will be left to the lower caste and the Dalits. Now in Rajasthan this problem does not arise, since there is no water, no river in the border areas. So how is the positioning of the Dalit basti determined in Rajasthan? In all other parts of the country where the river water runs north to south, the Dalit basti will be in the south. Why is it on the east and northeast there? This happens because Dalits work on leather, which stinks and our sacred nostrils cannot be offended by this menial activity, so we place them outside, so the smell of carcasses and tanning does not enter the village.

he speaks for the farmers and he speaks for the dalits and the lower castes. but the good book says: no one can serve two masters. if sainath is concerned about farmers who place 'food on our table' he can't be speaking for '85 per cent of the poor (who) are either landless or marginal farmers'. who does sainath speak for? or, let me rephrase the question: who has he (and the whole army of born again pro-farmer advocates among the indignant classes that the last one decade had spawned) served? institutional credit for farmers has more than doubled, from around 80, 000 crores to 2,00,000 crores, since the last three years. investment in irrigation has gone up everywhere- andhra pradesh, maharashtra and karnataka together, for instance, have spent more than 100,000 crores (maybe more) on irrigation in the last 3-10 years and will be spending more in the near future.. and the central government has just raised the support price of wheat to rs.1000 a quintal etc., etc., have the suicides stopped? oh..those were mostly misguided obc, dalit farmers who shouldn't have tried to 'place food on our table' by trying to compete with those who'd be served everything- water, subsidies, credit, price support- first. why couldn't they remain content with the nregs?

finally, who has he served? my magsaysay goes to aiyar for being more honest. and less theatrical.

(read also: brahmin journalist bags magsaysay award)