For some economists, research on economic issues is a social commitment. Prof. Venkatesh Athreya belongs to this class and his former students and co-researchers have written a festschrift, Whither Rural India?, in his honour, a collection on socio-economic issues. Prof. Athreya holds the view “that poverty (is) essentially the result and reflection of the socio-economic order and hence its eradication would call for much more than economic growth, and that some forms of growth would indeed generate and increase poverty.”
The ‘Role of Agriculture in the Process of Industrialisation’ by Judith Heyer of Oxford University offers valuable insights. It is based on a case study in Tamil Nadu, from Tiruppur-Coimbatore, and shows how “in villages closely linked to a dynamic local industrial economy, a slimmed down agriculture has been supporting significant numbers of people at standards of living very similar to those they would be able to achieve outside agriculture.” However, it also led to environmental damage as Noyyal river has been polluted. Goran Djurfeldt, a Swedish sociologist, who did many years of field work in Tiruchi, has a surprising conclusion that family-managed farms will survive. A contrary view is narrated in a couple of other chapters. U. Sankar bemoans how the “environment, third pillar of sustainable development, has played no role in the formulation of agricultural policies.” Prabhat Patnaik feels that proposals to augment agro supplies have concentrated on the “supply” side rather than the “demand” side and have resulted in burgeoning stocks in silos.
The analysis of “proletarianization of peasantry in India” by V.K. Ramachandran is incisive, if also disturbing. Loss of land by the peasantry and complete depeasantisation is widespread. As discussed in Djurfeldt’s paper, costs of cultivation have risen to such high levels that it makes it impossible for peasants to earn a livelihood without hiring. Mechanisation plays its role in driving labour out. The author goes on to elaborate how “the rural poor, particularly manual workers and poor and middle peasants, continue to be... the great reserve army of labour in India.”
Humanitarian account
The chapter on the plight of a Dalit caste in South India by Staffan Lindberg of the University of Lund, Sweden, is a moving humanitarian account. The author did field work 50 years ago and revisited Tiruppur and Palladam to find out their state today. It assesses, at great length, the conditions of Madharis or sakkiliyars engaged in leather making. His conclusion is rather grim: “From a subordinate but secure position as bonded labourers and leather workers with a guaranteed minimum of life necessities, they were more or less thrown on the garbage heap when modernization and mechanization came into agriculture.” Presently, even as there is a glimmer of improvement in their lives due to welfare schemes, education, PDS, etc., the feverish growth of the garment industry has created a new form of “bonded labour”. It is a new serfdom and, as he concludes, only migration to cities can make them free.
The chapter on agriculture credit and financial liberalisation makes two significant points: one is that agriculture credit in the 2000s moved away from production per se into post-production functions; the other that credit went to large-scale, commercial and capital intensive and export-oriented sections. The small farmer was not on their radar.
We are all familiar with the exploitation of India by the British Raj. Dr. Utsa Patnaik’s paper (‘Profit Inflation, Keynes and the Holocaust in Bengal, 1943-44’) is a searing account of the budgetary and monetary policy tools adopted by colonial rulers to systematically transfer funds from India. With statistical data and clinical analysis, she has established how the policy advice called “profit inflation” given by John Maynard Keynes to finance war efforts led to excessive prices, hoarding and to the famine in Bengal. This book is a valuable contribution to understanding the plight of the farmer. Prof. Athreya will be happy with the bouquet presented to him.
Whither Rural India? ; Edited by A. Narayanamoorthy & others, Tulika Books, ₹950.
