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.

breaking up india

[notes from a forthcoming book: part 1 of a series of exercises involving breaking up india into parts to understand it better]

 if a lower caste labourer from, say, rural telangana/andhra, unable to cope with dominant caste reddies or kammas or rajus or velamas migrates to rural maharashtra, he'll face the same, more or less, kind of oppression at the hands of the marathas there. if he moves further north to haryana, he'll have to face the jats..if he goes east to bihar, he'll meet the bhumihars, rajputs, brahmins etc..

you would think all of these dominant castes were born from the same womb. they might behave in a similar fashion, but we know they all speak different languages, have different cultures, eat different food and enjoy different kinds of entertainment. and they also look different, even if they all seem to be of different shades of brown. and if you check even more closely, you'll find that they don't even pray to the same gods, if you ignore the common brahmanic gods (like avatars of vishnu, shiva, durga, ganpati etc) that most of them have taken up over the last one century. their faiths are distinctively local, and different from each other even if they're all labeled together as brahminism/hinduism.

none of them would inter-marry, and would probably go to violent lengths to stop any such alliances from happening if any couples overcome the limits of geographic, linguistic/cultural boundaries and come together. and inter-caste marriages even within the same linguistic geographies are rare.

you'd also notice that they might have dislike and contempt for each other, might plot against each other for political positions, economic interests at local, regional or central level. but they all behave in a similar fashion, more or less, towards people lower down the caste hierarchy.

how and why did all these dominant castes, which are so different from each other, come together and become one 'nation'? and paradoxically, why did the oppressed castes, the dalit bahujans, acquiesce to this formulation that they are also a part of the same 'nation', along with the oppressor castes?         

this is what i mean by jnu gyan

check this interesting article by chandrabhan prasad: a critique of buffalo nationalism that kancha ilaiah seeks to promote. i'd not like to attempt here a critique of the critique (i think it'd be useful), but i'd definitely like to point out some factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies that many knowledgeable folks from indian academia seem to consistently indulge in. especially those articulate folks who work, or have spent a few years (like prasad), in jnu.

for instance, the jats. the jats from uttar pradesh are not obcs- not according to the national commission for backward classes (check the u.p. list). neither are the jats from punjab. nor haryana. only the jats from rajasthan (excluding jats from bharatpur and dhaulpur districts, where nearly half of the state's jats live) are in the central list of backward classes.

which means around 95% of the jats in the country are not obcs. which also means: the jats cannot be taken to represent the obcs.

let me quote here a paragraph from this excellent article, in frontline, on why some jats from rajasthan are in the central list):

The NCBC further reasoned in its advice: “No doubt, after the effective abolition of jagirdari and zamindari systems, the condition of Jats in Rajasthan have begun to improve, but considering the time-span required for advancement of a community as a whole from a position of backwardness, the time that was available for Jats in Rajasthan (excluding Bharatpur and Dholpur) to move up from a position of social backwardness to that of social advancement, cannot be reasonably considered as adequate. The exceptional circumstances dating at least from the late medieval age through the modern period, which were available for communities like Kamma and Reddy of Andhra Pradesh and the Jats of Punjab, etc., have not been available for Jats of Rajasthan (excluding Bharatpur and Dholpur). (italics mine)

so, if you wish to place the jats in any category, place them alongside the reddies and kammas of andhra pradesh, or the marathas of maharashtra or the patidars of gujarat. they don't belong in the obc category. their ascendancy- social, economic, political- is not recent: it has been happening over the last three, four centuries at least. and in the non-aryavarta states, these castes have emerged, as if naturally, to assume the place of the absent kshatriyas.

call them the intermediate or intermediary castes, or the middle castes: in most indian states they're the upper castes. but that news doesn't seem to have reached jnu until now. for a lot of the tv stars from jnu, and other universities across india, the intermediate castes (or upper castes not of upper varna origin) are quintessential obcs.

there is not just socio-economic, but also a consistent historical logic to the castes in the central list. it's another matter that there have been reports from some state commissions for backward classes that have found inconsistencies pertaining to a few castes in the respective states' lists (but not in the central list). prominent among doubtful inclusions are a couple of castes from tamil nadu and karnataka and uttar pradesh. but by and large, there have been more, many more, non-inclusions, of small unknown castes, than inclusions, of large, prominent castes.

look at this way: if the obc population of india, let's assume, is around 50 crores. what would be the average size, in terms of population, of the 2000 odd obc castes? around 2,50,000. if we exclude those few castes whose numbers run into lakhs and a few times, a couple of millions, what would be average size of the average obc caste? many wouldn't even reach the one lakh mark. no, you've never really met the average obc, even though you've met him hundreds of times: he might be the hawker who sells vegetables at your door, the janitor in the lift, the plumber or the electrician, the thelawallah selling plastic goods, the mechanic, the paanwallah...but how would you recognize him if he isn't a yadav or a jat or a kurmi or a lodh? most likely, not even the government has heard of the name of the plumber/electrician/janitor's caste.

why does the focus of the committed academia (and the media and most of the chattering classes who follow their performances in the media) in india remain fixed on the few prominent intermediate castes at the top of the social order in many states, historically, even when most of them are not even obcs, according to the ncbc? considering, even those among them who are obcs, probably constitute around 5% of the obc population in the country, and less than 1% of all obc castes?

and the popular myths propagated by this set of jnu led dons is based on such poor research- it's ages since most of them have actually done any field work, i think. most of the best research has been done by researchers from outside india. and even when they do do field work: they seem to know beforehand what to find.

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]