The Hindu rate of economic growth and increasing disparities resulting in widening gap between the rich and the poor are creating more and more social tensions. There is a virtual consensus among ruling class parties to ignore completely problems faced by ordinary people.

The vast majority is suffering from a deep sense of frustration. In the late sixties and early seventies, the struggles of the village poor raised the question of development priorities vis a vis continuation of exploitation by the vested interests after two decades of so called planned development. The Govt. at the Centre with the help of the State Govts. tried to eliminate the leaders and the cadres of the movement but refused to solve any issue raised by Naxalbari struggle. The central theme of 1972 parliamentary election of the Congress Party was naturally advertised as Garibi Hatao. During the last two and half decades the so-called democratic Govts. in the country have tried to contain the growing frustrations of the poor and the exploited by adopting conventional two pronged strategies:

1.  Increasing the number and quality of police and paramilitary forces and equipping them with sophisticated imported firepower. People who raise questions and express doubts on the fraudulent behavior of the policy makers are treated as anti-social and there are enough black laws to kill them in ‘encounters’. State machinery allows smugglers to carry on their trade, but kills the peace loving ordinary people for protesting against privatisation of state electricity boards by the Govt. Budget provisions on social sector were drastically curtailed on specific instructions from World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) but expenditures on police, BSF, CRPF, CISF and other paramilitary organisations went up at a geometric rate. In view of the fact that there are a number of Human Rights Groups functioning in various parts of the country for more than two decades and there is an active media, even then the ruling elite is always busy to suppress ruthlessly all types of democratic protests by the oppressed, deprived and weaker sections of the society. If the corrupt Govts. fail to suppress these people’s protest movements with inefficient police and paramilitary forces, anti-people Govts. both at the centre and in different states shamelessly deploy the military as a matter of routine as if they are required to fight a foreign power. To suppress the democratic rights guaranteed by the Constitution, black laws are sharpened religiously in our statute books blaming the people that they can’t afford to live in a ‘soft’ state. To perpetuate their power and to avoid the electorate directly they are proposing to amend the Constitution for indirect election for the sake of ‘stability’.

2.  Some cosmetic schemes called ‘rural development’ projects were initiated from time to time with a systematic propaganda that the number of people “below the poverty line” was going down over the last decades. Now economists depending on favours of Govts. are fighting among themselves on the issue of source from where they should collect data on ‘poverty’: National Sample Survey (NSS) or National Accounts Statistics (NAS). All of them agree that to get more and more foreign loan (it is always against the interests of this country with outstanding loan of around $ 100 billion), they must cook up statistics and show that percentage of people below the poverty line is going down and the country is following the correct development strategy dictated by WB, IMF and WTO.

These organizations are under continuous threat by the working people of the developed world to give up their imperialist exploitative policies through ‘globalization’. Since Seattle meeting of WTO they are haunted around; the latest protest meeting was at Davos where World Economic Conference, 2001 took place. These international agents of imperialism are also pretending that they are serious in ‘poverty alleviation’ programmes in the third world countries. So Indira Gandhi’s ‘Garibi Hatao’ of the seventies has taken its international brand name after 30 years to make the poor poorer at the end of the day. It hardly matters to the bankrupt foreign funded Indian intellectuals dishing out new figures of poverty as if they are hiding their head like ostrich in the desert sand as regular cycle of droughts, floods, ordinary and super cyclones and unprecedented earthquakes in different parts of the country are bringing every year new groups of destitute and displaced people within the fold of poverty and their number is always moving up and not going down. We forget that around one-fourth of our population are tribals and dalits and they suffered most whenever any new project was initiated in their areas in the name of ‘development’. During the last half a century around 56 million adivasis and dalits have been displaced without rehabilitation and more than 50 percent of such project affected displaced persons were adivasis while  they constitute hardly 8 percent of total population. In his Presidential statement on the eve of Republic Day, 2001, the President only expressed his anxiety for these dalits and adivasis who only suffered and sacrificed everything due to so called developmental projects and pat came the criticisms from vested interests that have monopolised in grabbing all the benefits since 1947. In this article an attempt is made to find out how is it that even after more than five decades of ‘independence’ our rural masses are not provided with an opportunity to live a life of human dignity, not to speak of any tangible hope for prosperity.

II

Exploitation continues : The Britishers like other colonial exploiters elsewhere in the world came to India to exploit ruthlessly our vast natural resources and to promote sale of industrial products of their respective countries. In their business of destroying India, their companions were feudal lords and moneylenders cum trading community. Our craftsmen, artisans and millions of small scale industrial entrepreneurs not only lost their livelihood. People in millions without any reservation came forward to make the highest sacrifices to remove and throw the British rulers into the Indian ocean. In order to bring back that lost faith on administration and to instill a ray of hope among the ordinary people, Govt. of India enacted a series of laws that were promised during the struggle for independence.

Zamindari Abolition Act and a host of land reform laws were enacted to convince the largest section of Indian population, around 75 percent of total population, living in 5 lakhs and odd villages of India, that the then ruling elite were people friendly. Even in the late eighties, to convince the rural masses that our main stream political parties are people-friendly, laws were enacted to decentralise powers and institutions of gram panchayts were installed. Land reform laws were never intended to be implemented, except half heartedly under the pressure of the militant peasant struggles. Thus land continued to remain concentrated in the hands of a few households as it was before independence. The following Table 1 shows official land distribution figures but fails to disclose the real concentration among the family members.

Table 1

Operation holdings ( % share)

Year        < 1 Ha     1-2 Ha            2-4 Ha        4-10 Ha       > 10 Ha

            No.   Area   No.   Area     No.   Area    No.   Area    No.  Area

1970-71 50.6  9.0   19.1  11.9    15.2   18.5    11.2   29.7  3.9   30.9

1980-81 56.4  12.1 18.1  14.1     14.0   21.2   19.1  29.6   2.4   23.0

1990-91 59.0  14.9  19.0  17.3   13.2   23.2    7.2  27.2     1.6   17.4

( Economic Times, 5.12.1997)

Agricultural census figures for 1990-91 indicates that the distribution of ownership holdings has remained unequal inspite of promises made in the so many five-year plans. 78 percent of the households owning less than 2 hectares of land per household held not more than 32.2 percent of the total land area in 1990-91. On the other extreme 1.6 percent of the households own 17.4 percent of the land and per household holding is more than 10 hectares of land. Around 820 lakh small and marginal farmers own less than two hectares of land each. As per definition of a household by Govt, in the same family there can be more than one household depending on the age and martial status of the children of the head of the family.

With a fraudulent intention to evade the law the surplus land remained with the members of the family, land reform was a fraud on this country. This has happened through out the country irrespective of political ideology of the Govt. With the gradual breakup of the joint family system and increasing number of children, land gradually started declining in size from one generation to another. Though there is so much hype on information technology, there is no accurate record of land ownership and tenancy, all efforts to develop agriculture is based on wholly unreliable cooked up land records. Thanks to bankrupt criminal politicians, everyone has forgotten the promises given by the leaders of yesteryears, states are busy enacting laws to increase the area under ceiling and allowing small and marginal farmers to lease out their small holdings to big cultivators and even to the corporate sector and join the unending long queue of landless agricultural labour. This is the development perspective of our ‘musing’ writers like the Prime Minister holidaying in Kerala.

The sharecroppers and tenant cultivators till today live at the mercy of big landowners. Under ‘New’ Economic Policy, to satisfy the demands of MNCs and big business, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Gujarat, and Punjab etc. have already passed laws to increase the area of land under ceiling and allowing corporations to own land and use it. Leasing out land by small and marginal cultivators to corporations is now a part of the new ‘agricultural policy’ placed before Parliament by the NDA Govt. Thus so long big cultivators and corporations were not officially allowed to grab land of small and marginal cultivators; rather it was expected that small and marginal cultivators should be protected from eviction and tenancy termination if they lease in some land of absentee landlords. Now big cultivators will pressurise poor cultivators to officially lease out land to them and work as agricultural workers on their own land. The situation prevailing in the tribal belts is still worse: fertile accessible land no longer belongs to tribals in different parts of the country. Constitutional amendment (73^rd of 1992 implemented through another Act of 1996) failed to stop such illegal encroachments. However, all the Govt. documents since independence including latest document on Mid term appraisal of Ninth Plan are still hammering this point that land reform constituted a vital support base, both in terms of anti-poverty strategy and for increased productivity in agriculture. The Agricultural Policy of the NDA Govt. only mentions in passing land reform policy, rather it advocates the entry of corporations in agriculture. There is an understanding with the imperialists that MNCs would be allowed to carry on production of Genetically Modified (GM) seeds and various other cash crops specially cash crops like soyabean, cotton etc.

The 48^th round of NSS covering the year 1991-92 brought out that 34 percent of the rural households were landless. In Punjab it was 47 percent and in Tamilnadu it was as high as 55 percent. Another 24 percent of rural households hold between 0.002 to 0.50 hectares of land i.e. they too have to earn their livelihood by hard daily labour. Thus 58 percent of rural households have no option other than to keep on searching for work every morning for 365 days in a year. This percentage is as high as 85 percent in Kerala, 77 percent in Tamilnadu, 73 percent in W. Bengal, 68 percent in Bihar and 61 percent in Orissa etc. Among the Scheduled Castes, this group of virtually landless rural households was more than 75 percent.

So when every Five-Year Plan exposes unambiguously the hollowness and cruelty inherent in our modern development strategies, our policy makers don’t get frightened. For the strategists of world capitalism in G-7 countries who dictate the policies of World Bank, IMF and WTO, ‘market’ is the only cure for all types of human sufferings They know quite well that if majority of population in Indian villages are landless workers and if they don’t get jobs for a long duration even at exploitative lowest level of wages, they have no other alternative than to keep the members of their families starving. In its recent report FAO has shown that India shelters more undernourished people than Sub-Saharan Africa. Out of a total 800 million undernourished people of the world, India alone has 240 million against 180 million in Sub-Saharan Africa. 50 percent of children under 5 years in South Asia is undernourished, the same figure for Africa is 33 percent and that of South East Asia is 21 percent. (The Statesman, 18.10.1999 )

III

Green revolution? Our textbook says that without increasing the size of the cake poverty is not removable. The growth in GDP during the last 50 years is much below expectation. This is shown in the following Table 2.

TABLE 2

Annual growth rate of GDP and Agricultural sector at 1980-81 prices

                                Year                             %(GDP)           % Agri .

                 1951-1956                          3.61                 2.88

                 1956-1961                          4.27                 3.35

                 1961-1966                          2.84               - 0.28

                 1966-1971                          4.66                  5.36

                 1971-1976                          3.08                  2.33

                  1976-1981                         3.24                  1.33

                  1981-1986                         5.06                  3.16

                  1986-1991                         5.81                  3.59

(Govt. of India, Eighth Five Year Plan, page 4)

Since the beginning of eighties there is some improvement in the growth of GDP and during the eighth plan it reached 6.4 percent growth but during 3 years of ninth plan (1997-2000) it went down to 6.1 percent against a target of 6.5 percent. In 1951 agriculture contributed 56.5 percent of GDP, but over the years it declined to 27 percent in 1996-97. For people who believe in western model of developmemnt, such steep decline in the share of primary sector as percentage of GDP is presumed as good for the country. Agricultural growth till middle of 1960s was 3.2 percent, in seventies it went down to 2.2 percent, during the period 1980-81 to 1990-91 it improved to 3.4 percent and again declined to 2.3 percent during 1990-91 and 1997-98 against the ninth plan growth target of 4.5 percent. What is disturbing is that growth rate of foodgrains production during 1990-91 and 1997-98 went down to 1.71 percent against 3.04 percent during 1980-81 and 1990-91 and that was mainly due to 50 percent fall in growth of yield rate of the crops. The decline in growth of yield rate of rice and wheat were 60 and 26 percent respectively during the above two periods. Diversion of land to non foodgrains is spreading fast. Between the triennium ending 1981-82 and 1991-92 the share of non foodgrains in gross cropped area increased from 26 percent to 32 percent. In absolute terms the decrease in area under foodgrains was more than 2 million hectares. Thus one has to be cautious that with the decline in the growth rate of yield of foodgrains, agricultural growth rate is continuously falling. One can’t underestimate that percent of rural population in 1980 was 77 percent and it went down to 73 percent by 1995. While the growth rate in the availability of foodgrains in the 1980s was 1.2 percent, it declined to 0.28 percent in the 1990s.

Despite the fact that food consumption of the poor in India has gone down in the last 10 years (is 40 percent lower than per capita consumption of the top 10 percent of the population), level of foodgrains stocked with FCI has significantly increased to 50 million tonnes due to lack of purchasing power with the masses. It is extremely painful that in a market economy, while foodgrains in the Govt. storages are rotting, though rats have free meals, and getting unfit for human consumption, more than half of the children in the rural areas between 1 to 5 years age are still undernourished and worst sufferers are the girl children.

The relative dependence of people on rural area has hardly declined and majority of people who are forced to leave their villages for nearby urban centers do so due to lack of job opportunities and forced displacement from the villages. In Delhi, for example, there are 40,000 tribal women working as domestic workers who came mainly from Chotanagpur, Jharkhand. Even then around two-third of our total workers in the country are still in the villages of India doing odd jobs in agriculture. Thus share of agriculture in GDP is declining fast but neither secondary nor tertiary sectors are in a position to create new jobs. On the other hand since the days of new economic policies or Manmohanomics, as it is called, more and more workers are retrenched from secondary and tertiary sectors either through so called ‘voluntary’ retirement schemes ordered by World Bank and/or by closures and lockouts. In Delhi alone, to beautify the city, two years back 168 factories were closed by Supreme Court and now no one knows how many lakh workers will be killed by the closure order of the Supreme Court. This will be compounded by demolition of slums and evacuating rickshaw pullers and vendors from Delhi roads. Govt. refuses to divulge the magnitude of the problem to make capital city beautiful. After the recent natural earthquake in Gujarat and man made destruction, lakhs of migrant labourers from different states have gone back to villages and they are completely destitute. They can’t claim any compensation as our industrialists and Govt. inspectors never keep any permanent record of casual workers. Everyone knows it is blatantly illegal. The net result after 5 decades of so called ‘development’ is that unorganised agricultural labour is the cheapest commodity available now in India and organised workers are asked to fend for themselves when the threat of retrenchment is hanging as Damocles sword over them! Faced with uncertain future of Public Sector in general and banks in particular, there is a mad rush to get out from banking jobs. The business of the private moneylenders is on the rise in rural areas.

BJP’s Prime Minister, as President of Jan Sangh, opposed nationalisation of banks in 1969 and by 2001 they are implementing what they could not do 30 years back! The poor in major parts of India, traditionally, consume coarse cereals based on rainfed agriculture. Indian agricultural scientists working in state run universities always supported imperialist dictated ‘green revolution’. MNCs promoted capital intensive cultivation in India through application of HYV seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and higher quantity of assured water either by tubewell irrigation or by constructing big dams. Costly fertilizers, pesticides and huge consumption of electricity or diesel for tubewells created havoc and only rich cultivators who had access to institutional loans could survive such unscientific and self-destructive agricultural practices. The weightage of fertilizers, pesticides, diesel etc. in total production cost was around 15 percent in 1970-71 and it went up to 55.1 percent in 1994-95.These cultivators have to commit loans from moneylenders at exorbitant rate of interests and when crops failed more than once they refused to fight against wrong policies of the Govt., rather adopted the hardest option to commit suicide. This happened initially among cotton farmers in some southern and western states and now regularly it is reported from many more states including that of Punjab and Haryana. In uncertain rain fed areas this ‘new technology’ is simply disastrous. Though economic conditions of millions of people in the villages is deteriorating every day but share of coarse cereals to total cereal production went down from 45 percent in 1950-51 to 17.3 percent in 1995-96. The poor in certain parts of India only consume coarse cereals because it is the cheapest cereal in the market. Rice is consumed in north, east and southern part of India, but its share in total cereal production went down from 50 percent in 1960-61 to 46.3 percent in 1995-96. Wheat is grown in India as a rabi crop and it is concentrated mainly in two and half states i.e. Punjab, Haryana and western UP. During 1990-91 and 1995-96 (average of 6 years) these three states produced 68 percent of total wheat in the country. Share of wheat to total cereal production went up from 16 percent in 1960-61 to 36 percent in 1995-96. Not only that, since the days of ‘green revolution’ to help the various industrial lobbies producing costly agricultural inputs, the vast network of public distribution system was used exclusively for marketing rice and wheat at subsidised rate. Cheap coarse cereals are not to be seen in the agenda of our policy makers!

The poorer section of the country specially landless agricultural labour, small and marginal farmers, have to depend on market to purchase their day to day cereal requirements. The surplus producers: big landlords and grain merchants, are lured to sell it to the FCI, the Govt. procurement agency, at higher and higher prices. In 1991-92 procurement prices of paddy (common variety) and wheat were Rs. 230 and Rs. 275 per quintal respectively and it was increased to Rs. 440 and Rs. 550 respectively in 1998-1999 i.e. it was increased in rice by 91 percent and in wheat by cent percent. To abide by the undertakings given to the World Bank and IMF to reduce the food subsidy, the Govt kept on increasing the price of cereals distributed through the fair price shops. In 1991-92 issue price of rice (common variety) was Rs 377 per quintal and that for wheat Rs 280 per quintal and they were increased for rice to Rs 350 and Rs 905 for people below the poverty line (BPL) and above the poverty line (APL) respectively and that for wheat to Rs 250 for BPL and Rs 682 for APL respectively in 1999-00. Accordingly the market price also went up. Shops are filled up with grains but due to lack of purchasing power millions have to go to bed without food. In 1991-92 food subsidy was around Rs. 2850 crores and by 1999-2000 subsidy went up to Rs. 9200 crores (BE). To target the public distribution system specially for the needy, it has been estimated that cereals should be supplied to around 320 million people supposed to be living below the poverty line at 10 kg per month at half the normal price charged in the fair price shops. The doubt is raised that unless the responsibility of monitoring public distribution system is given to the village panchayts the service may not reach the targeted people. The revision of the prices according to Govt. estimate has resulted in fall of intake in the public distribution system by 22 percent. To celebrate the birthday of the Prime Minister, Govt. announced distribution of wheat and rice at Rs 2 and Rs 3 per Kg respectively for those who are termed as poorest of the poor (Antyodaya Anna). No one knows how to identify them. May be that was created to dispose off increasing volume of foodgrains to the grain traders to sell at black market rates and earn profit. In reality BJP can’t forget its vote bank, traders, who supported when it was Jan Sangh. It was also agreed by parliamentary committee on agriculture to throw huge quantity of rotten foodgrains into the seas as even rats refuse to eat them. On the other hand fertiliser subsidy at 1990-91 prices increased from Rs 4389 crores to Rs 4896 crores in 1996-97 or an increase of 11.5 percent. Budget provision for 1997-98 was Rs. 4930 (1990-91 prices). Around 50 percent of fertiliser subsidy is given to Industry as retention price scheme (RPS) followed since 1977. This is kept by the industry to cover its inefficiency and mismanagement.

Champions of market economy demand Govt. interference should be nil then fertiliser producers should compete in the market, why they should beg for subsidy. Moreover, as fertiliser is used in larger quantity by the affluent farmers having facilities of assured water supply, they should not alone enjoy fertiliser subsidy. Small and marginal cultivators may be given special subsidy on their fertiliser use supplemented by assured water supply.

IV

Capital Outlay: What is surprising is that though two-third of our total work force is still dependent on lowest paid agricultural jobs, there is hardly any initiative for more investment on agriculture. Capital formation in agriculture takes the form of major and minor irrigation projects, watershed management, research and extension activities and so on. Gross capital formation in agriculture or investment in agriculture as percent of gross capital formation has declined from 19 percent in 1980-81 to just 9.9 percent in 1995-96. What is more striking is that share of public investment to total investments in agriculture went down from 39 percent in 1980-81 to 18 percent in 1995-96.

Public sector capital outlay on agriculture in 1990-1991 was Rs. 1315 crores and it increased to Rs. 1394 crores in 1995-1996 (at 1980-1981 prices) i.e. an increase of 6 percent. Thus rural people have to fight for enhanced provision in the budget. There is massive reduction of 64 percent in the actual outlay for irrigation and flood control from Rs 477 crores (at 1990-1991 prices) in 1996-1997 to Rs 173 crores in 1997-1998. The allocation for rural development in 1996-1997 at 1990-1991 prices was Rs 3897 crores and it was increased to Rs 4126 in 1997-1998, an increase of 6 percent only. If one excludes a sum of Rs 700 crores earmarked for National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) (it should be included in social services sector) then outlay for rural development will decline further. Thus in real terms, there is hardly any major increase for agriculture and allied investments. In future our cultivators have to depend more and more on rain god and keep on watching the sky as their ancestors did in the past.

Increasing unemployment and frequent elections demand more and more doles to be given to purchase votes. Integrated Rural Development Programme, Jawahar Rojgar Yojana, Employment Assurance Scheme, Drought Prone Area Programme, Integrated Child Development Scheme and so on involved an expenditures of certain thousand crores of rupees but the benefits derived from such schemes by the beneficiaries were very very insignificant. This component of expenditures of around Rs 11000 crores spent in 1995-96 have neither created any tangible long term productive assets nor any productive long term job opportunity. All were adhoc projects and big opportunities for misappropriation.

WTO and Agriculture : Indian agriculture is under constant attack by imperialist designs. Since 1995, India being a (founder) member of World Trade Organization, there is constant pressure to open up Indian Market of one billion population in agricultural commodities. We have seen that India does not have storage space to keep its own foodgrains- 50 million tonnes against optimum buffer stock of not more than 20 million tonnes. US godowns are also flooded with agricultural commodities because consumers in developed world refuse to lift their genetically modified crops and in next 20 years they have plans to increase production several times. So USA advises us to go slow in production- we should produce more fruits, flowers and other crops and let us purchase food and non-food crops from USA. When Mr. Clinton visited India in March 2000, to appease him we lifted Quantitative Restrictions on import of 714 items and promised to lift such restrictions from remaining 715 items by March, 2001 though obligatory requirement was 2003. Result we can see: South India finds French wheat cheaper than Punjab wheat, coconut from Sri Lanka is flooding Kerala market, oilseeds from Indonesia and Malaysia have flooded Indian market and our own poor farmers are sitting idle. Even tea industry of Nilgiri is going to be bankrupt. WTO’s real devilish teeth are now threatening our poor farmers and our policy makers are really unperturbed.

Prime Minister’s economic advisory team has come out with more destructive suggestions. World Bank and IMF are shamelessly trying to save USA’s recession. Unemployment figures in USA are going up and every one, specially our elite, is more nervous. In agriculture our subsidy on food and fertiliser, electricity and diesel is causing concern to our policy makers, but look at our creditors in Europe, USA and Japan. Every year their help to their farming community is increasing and they refuse to open up import doors to foreign competitors as it against their national interests. WTO wants that India should import atleast 3 percent of its agricultural production each year. Being a debtor country we are forced to oblige them. In USA hardly 90000 families are dependent on agriculture and agriculture accounts for hardly 2 percent of GDP. It is controlled in the developed world by MNCs. In lndia at least 600 million people are dependent directly on agriculture and they don’t have any alternative job opportunities. Mr.Nitish Kumar, Union Minister of Agriculture, is insisting that India also should handover agriculture to MNCs like Monsanto, Cargil etc. etc., allow them to produce genetically modified seeds and crops. He knows quite well that these companies, wherever they went, destroyed local initiatives and made the countries fully dependent on these monopolists. They have already obtained a lot of patent rights. So the basic question that any Indian Govt. has to answer at the dawn of 21^st Century is: Will India’s future generations be slave to these neo-colonial manipulators?

Conclusion: The above analysis is an attempt to expose the myth of rural development in India over past five decades. There is continuous and monotonous demand that poverty in the rural area has to be removed but there is no effort to change the structure, which breeds poverty. Organisations which are trying to educate the rural poor to fight for their own survival are facing continuous threat from the state as well as from the private army of the landlords. Landless agricultural labour, marginal and small farmers have to demand their due share of the national cake. Mainstream political parties are bankrupt and have surrendered to their imperialist masters. Can we save India’s rural population from these destructive designs?