Change and Development in Rural India

Agrarian Structure: Caste And Class In Rural India

The term agrarian structure refers to the structure of social relationships and institutions that govern the ownership, control, and use of land in rural society. In India, agriculture has been the primary source of livelihood for the vast majority of the population for centuries. Therefore, the agrarian structure is the key to understanding the dynamics of rural life, including its patterns of inequality and power.

The agrarian structure in India is uniquely characterized by the complex and overlapping relationship between caste and class.

Class in the agrarian context refers to a person's economic position, which is primarily determined by their relationship to the land. The major agrarian classes include:
- Landlords: Large landowners who do not cultivate the land themselves but lease it out to tenants or employ agricultural labourers.
- Peasants/Cultivators: Those who own and cultivate their own land, primarily using family labour. This category itself is highly stratified, ranging from rich peasants who produce for the market to small and marginal peasants who barely produce enough for their own subsistence.
Caste: The class structure in rural India has historically been closely aligned with the caste hierarchy.

The Caste-Class Correlation:

Broadly, there has been a strong correlation where the upper castes (like Brahmins and Thakurs) were the landlords; the intermediate 'peasant' castes (like Jats, Yadavs, and Vokkaligas) were the cultivators and tenants; and the lower castes, especially the Dalits (Scheduled Castes), were the landless agricultural labourers. This meant that economic exploitation and caste oppression reinforced each other, creating a system of extreme inequality and dependency. A Dalit labourer was not just economically dependent on the upper-caste landlord but was also considered ritually inferior and was subject to various forms of social discrimination. This overlap between caste and class is the defining feature of India's traditional agrarian structure.

The Impact Of Land Reforms

After independence, the Indian government recognized that the traditional agrarian structure, with its concentration of land in the hands of a few landlords, was a major obstacle to both economic development and social justice. This led to a series of land reforms aimed at restructuring agrarian relations.

The Colonial Period

It is important to first understand that the agrarian structure that independent India inherited was largely a creation of the British colonial period. The British introduced new systems of land tenure, primarily to maximize their land revenue collection.

The Zamindari System: Prevalent in much of eastern India, this system made the local zamindars (landlords) the owners of the land and responsible for collecting rent from the peasants and paying a fixed revenue to the British. This system created a class of absentee landlords who had little interest in agricultural improvement and were known for their harsh exploitation of the peasantry.
The Ryotwari System: Prevalent in southern and western India, this system made the individual cultivator (or 'ryot') the owner of the land, and they were directly responsible for paying revenue to the state. However, the high revenue demands often forced peasants into debt and led to the transfer of land to moneylenders and traders.

The overall impact of colonial policies was the commercialization of agriculture, increased peasant indebtedness, and a growing concentration of land ownership, which set the stage for the post-independence land reforms.

Independent India

The land reforms introduced by the Indian government after 1947 had several key components:

Abolition of Zamindari: This was the most successful part of the land reforms. The intermediary zamindari system was abolished, and the state took direct control of the land. This weakened the power of the old landlord class.
Tenancy Reforms: These laws aimed to regulate rents and provide security of tenure to tenant cultivators. The idea was to prevent arbitrary eviction and to give tenants the right to purchase the land they cultivated ('land to the tiller'). However, these reforms were largely unsuccessful. Landlords often evicted tenants and claimed the land for 'personal cultivation' to bypass the law.
Land Ceiling Acts: These laws aimed to impose a ceiling or a maximum limit on the amount of land that an individual or a family could own. The surplus land was supposed to be taken over by the state and redistributed among the landless. This was the least successful component of the reforms. Landlords used various loopholes, such as registering land in the names of different relatives (benami transfers), to evade the ceiling. As a result, very little surplus land was actually acquired and redistributed.

Overall Impact: While the land reforms succeeded in abolishing the old absentee landlord class, they did not lead to a radical redistribution of land in favour of the landless. The main beneficiaries of the reforms were the intermediate peasant castes who were already tenants with some resources. They were able to consolidate their position and became the new dominant class in rural India. The landless labourers, who were mostly Dalits, benefited the least.

The Green Revolution And Its Social Consequences

The Green Revolution refers to the period in the 1960s and 1970s when the Indian government introduced a new agricultural strategy to increase food production and achieve self-sufficiency in food grains. This strategy was based on the use of a package of modern inputs:

High-Yielding Variety (HYV) seeds
Chemical fertilizers and pesticides

The Green Revolution was concentrated in the well-irrigated regions of the country, particularly in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh. From a purely economic point of view, it was a major success. It led to a dramatic increase in the production of wheat and rice, and India became self-sufficient in food grains.

However, the Green Revolution also had significant and often negative social consequences.

Social Consequences:

Increased Regional and Class Inequality: Because the new technology was expensive and required access to irrigation, it primarily benefited the already well-off farmers in the irrigated regions. The gap between these prosperous regions and the poor, dryland regions of the country widened. Within the Green Revolution regions, it was the medium and large farmers who could afford the new inputs who benefited the most, while small and marginal farmers were often left behind. This led to a process of class differentiation, with a growing gap between rich capitalist farmers and poor peasants.
Displacement of Labour: The mechanization of agriculture, particularly the use of harvesters, displaced a large number of agricultural labourers, leading to a loss of employment for the rural poor.
Decline of Traditional Patron-Client Relations: The Green Revolution led to the commercialization of agriculture. The old, traditional relationships between landlords and labourers (known as jajmani or bonded labour systems), which were based on long-term dependency and a mix of economic and social obligations, were replaced by more impersonal, contractual, and purely wage-based relationships. While this freed the labourers from some forms of personal bondage, it also took away the minimal security that the old system provided.
Environmental Impact: The intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has led to long-term environmental problems, including soil degradation, water pollution, and a decline in groundwater levels.

In short, the Green Revolution solved the problem of food scarcity but, in the process, deepened social and economic inequalities in rural India.

Transformations In Rural Society After Independence

The combined impact of land reforms, the Green Revolution, and other developmental processes has led to major transformations in the structure of rural society since independence.

Shift in the Power Structure: The traditional dominance of the upper-caste landlords has declined. The new dominant class in many parts of rural India is the class of medium and large landowners belonging to the intermediate 'peasant' castes. These groups have benefited from land reforms and the Green Revolution and have translated their growing economic power into political power.
Increased Commercialization: Agriculture has become increasingly market-oriented. Farmers are now producing for sale in the market rather than just for their own consumption. This has made them more vulnerable to price fluctuations and market risks.
Growing Importance of Non-Farm Employment: With the decline in agricultural employment opportunities, a growing number of rural households are now dependent on non-farm sources of income, such as construction work, small businesses, or jobs in nearby towns.
Rise of a Migrant Workforce: As local employment opportunities have shrunk, there has been a significant increase in seasonal and long-term migration of labour from poorer regions (like Bihar and Eastern UP) to the more prosperous agricultural regions (like Punjab) and to urban areas.

Circulation Of Labour

One of the most significant transformations in rural India is the rise of a vast, mobile workforce. The circulation of labour refers to the large-scale, often seasonal, migration of workers from their home villages to other regions in search of work. This is a direct consequence of the regional inequalities created by the Green Revolution and the lack of local employment opportunities.

Example: Migrant Workers in Punjab

The prosperous agricultural regions of Punjab, which require a large amount of labour during the harvesting and planting seasons, attract millions of migrant workers every year from the impoverished states of Eastern India, particularly Bihar. These workers are often recruited through contractors, work for low wages, and live in poor conditions. Their availability provides a source of cheap and flexible labour for the capitalist farmers of Punjab, but the workers themselves remain highly vulnerable and exploited. This pattern of labour circulation is a key feature of the contemporary agrarian economy, linking different regions of the country in a complex web of economic dependency and inequality.

This circulation of labour highlights the increasing integration of the rural economy with the national economy, but also the insecure and precarious nature of livelihood for a large section of the rural poor.

Globalisation, Liberalisation, And Rural Society

The policies of economic liberalisation and globalisation adopted by India since 1991 have had a profound impact on agriculture and rural society.

Opening to the Global Market: The Indian agricultural sector has been opened up to the global market. This has created opportunities for the export of certain high-value crops, but it has also exposed Indian farmers to competition from cheap agricultural imports.
Withdrawal of State Support: As part of the liberalisation policy, the state has been gradually withdrawing its support for agriculture. Subsidies on inputs like fertilizers and electricity have been reduced, and public investment in agricultural infrastructure like irrigation has declined.
Rise of Corporate Agribusiness: Liberalisation has encouraged the entry of large domestic and multinational corporations into the agricultural sector. This includes areas like seed and pesticide production, food processing, and retail (e.g., contract farming).

The Agrarian Crisis

These changes have contributed to what is often described as a severe 'agrarian crisis' in many parts of rural India, particularly in the last two decades. The key features of this crisis are:

Rising Costs and Stagnant Incomes: The reduction in subsidies and the rising cost of inputs have increased the cost of cultivation for farmers. At the same time, crop prices have often not kept pace, leading to a squeeze on farm incomes.
Increased Indebtedness: With declining profitability and a lack of access to formal credit, many small and marginal farmers have been forced to take loans from private moneylenders at exorbitant interest rates, trapping them in a cycle of debt.
Farmer Suicides: The most tragic manifestation of this crisis has been the large number of suicides by debt-ridden farmers in states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Punjab.

The impact of globalisation on rural society has thus been highly contradictory. While it has created new opportunities for some, it has also increased the risks and insecurities for the vast majority of small and marginal farmers, leading to a deep and persistent crisis in the Indian countryside.