Change and Development in Rural Society ~ Writiy

🌄 CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL SOCIETY

Indian Society is Primarily a Rural Society

The majority of India’s people live in rural areas (68.84% according to the 2011 census). They make their living from agriculture or related occupations. This means that agricultural land is the most important productive resource for a great many Indians.

Land is also the most important form of property. But land is not just a ‘means of production’ nor just a ‘form of property’. Nor is agriculture just a form of livelihood. It is also a way of life. Many of our cultural practices and patterns can be traced to our agrarian backgrounds.

For example, most of the New Year festivals in different regions of India, such as Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Bihu in Assam, Baisakhi in Punjab and Ugadi in Karnataka to name just a few– actually celebrate the main harvest season and herald the beginning of a new agricultural season.

1. Agriculture and Culture

There is a close connection between agriculture and culture. The nature and practice of agriculture varies greatly across the different regions of the country.
These variations are reflected in the different regional cultures. One can say that both the culture and social structure in rural India are closely bound up with agricultural and the agrarian way of life.

2. Occupation in Rural Areas

Agriculture is the single most important source of livelihood for the majority of the rural population. But the rural areas are not just agriculture.
Many activities that support agriculture and village life are also sources of livelihood for people in rural India. For example, a large number of artisans such as potters, carpenters, weavers, iron smiths, and goldsmiths are found in rural areas.
The diversity of occupations in rural India was reflected in the caste system, which in most regions included specialist and ‘service’ castes such as Washer men, Potters, and Goldsmiths.
Increasing interconnection of the rural and urban economies have led to many diverse occupations.
Many people living in rural areas are employed in, or have livelihoods based in, rural non-farm activities.

Agrarian Structure: Caste and Class in Rural India

Depends upon the land holdings amount of land a person holds.
There is an unequal distribution of land, some people have lots of land and some people don’t have any.
The agriculture structure is how the land holdings have been distributed among people.

1. Types of Landholdings:

Large landowners and Medium landowners: Own large amount of land and are usually able to earn sufficient or even large income from cultivation, earlier known as zamindars.
Small landowners: Small amount of land and can make a profit (in case there are no natural disasters).
Marginal landowners: These along with small family grow just enough for consumption of their family and do not have enough land to get surplus to sell in the market.
Landless labourers: Have no land of their own, therefore work in others fields.
Tenants: Have lower incomes than owner cultivators.(Take land on rent and give the landowner a share of the profit).
Position of Women: Women are usually excluded from ownership of land, because of the prevailing patrilineal kinship system and mode of inheritance. By law women are supposed to have an equal share but in reality they only have limited rights and some access to land only as part of a household headed by a man.

2. Class Structure

Agrarian society, therefore, can be understood in terms of its class structure. But we must also remember it is also structured through the caste system. There is a correspondence between caste and class as one moves down the hierarchy.
Upper caste were considered to be upper class. But the issue in rural areas is complex.
Brahmins are the top most caste but not necessarily the wealthiest. The kshatriyas are upper caste as well as upper class.
Dominant Caste : In many regions of India the major landowning groups belong to the upper castes.
Such groups were termed by the sociologist M.N. Srinivas as dominant castes.
The dominant caste is the most powerful group, economically and politically, and dominates local society. Examples of dominant landowning groups are the Jats, Rajputs, Vokkaligas, Lingayats, kammas, Reddis, Jats etc.
Proprietary caste : Upper caste, rich people, large and medium land owners controlled the resources and labour force in that particular area.
Begar-bonded Labourers : were illiterate and did not know how to do any skilled work.

The Impact of Land Reforms

1. The Colonial Period

When the British colonised India, in many areas they ruled through these local zamindars. They also granted property rights to the zamindars.
Zamindari system: Under the British, the zamindars were given more control over land than they had before. Since the colonisers also imposed heavy land revenue (taxes) on agriculture, the zamindars extracted as much produce or money as they could out of the cultivators. One result of this zamindari system was that agricultural production stagnated or declined during much of the period of British rule.
Raiyatwari system: In this system, the ‘actual cultivators’ (who were themselves often landlords and not cultivators) rather than the zamindars were responsible for paying the tax. As a result, these areas became relatively more productive and prosperous.
Mahalwari system: Revenue system was made by village or estates with the landlords. Mahals means- a group of villagers. Revenue was periodically revised.

2. Independent India

After India became independent, Nehru and his policy advisors embarked on a programme of planned development that focused on agrarian reform as well as industrialisation.
Major reform in the agrarian structure, and especially in the landholding system and the distribution of land, was necessary if agriculture were to progress.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, a series of land reform laws were passed at the national level as well as in the states.

I). Abolition of Zamindari System/Intermediary System

The exploitation of farmers by zamindars led to a lot of problems.
The first land reform introduced was that the farmers would directly pay their tax to the government.
However, zamindari abolition did not wipe out landlordism or the tenancy or sharecropping systems, which continued in many areas.
It only removed the top layer of landlords in the multi-layered agrarian structure.

II). Abolition of Tenants

Tenants are those who take land on rent. If the land has good productivity, the landlord wanted the land back.
Therefore the Government made the lives of tenants secure by security of tenants ( For a certain period, owner cannot take the land back, before the period) and regulation of rent ( certain amount of the profit was to be given to the landlord either he would pay or in the beginning he would not agree to paying money).

III). Land Ceiling Act

These laws imposed an upper limit on the amount of land that can be owned by a particular family. The ceiling varies from region to region, depending on the kind of land, its productivity, and other such factors.
According to these acts, the state is supposed to identify and take possession of surplus land (above the ceiling limit) held by each household, and redistribute it to landless families and households in other specified categories, such as SCs and STs.
There were many loopholes and other strategies through which most landowners were able to escape from having their surplus land taken over by the state.
While some very large estates were broken up, in most cases landowners managed to divide the land among relatives and others, including servants, in so-called ‘benami transfers’ – which allowed them to keep control over the land
Consideration of Land Holdings: The whole rural area was divided into sectors and each sector had various facilities provided by the government. A person from another sector could not use the facilities of another sector. They have to use the facilities of their sectors.

The Green Revolution and its Social Consequences

The Green revolution was a revolution started in the 1960's and 1970's had a drastic change in productivity.
Introduced in those areas where there was a possibility of a water source and fertile land.
It was largely funded by international agencies that were based on providing high-yielding varieties(HYV) or hybrid seeds along with pesticides, fertilisers, and other inputs, to farmers.
Green Revolution programmes were introduced only in areas that had assured irrigation, because sufficient water was necessary for the new seeds and methods of cultivation.

1. Social Consequence of Green Revolution

Advantages : First time India started exporting grains (rice and wheat), surplus. It was a great achievement for the government but also for Indian scientists who created seeds. Employment opportunities increased, demand for agricultural labour went up.

Disadvantage : Increased inequality in rural areas. Only rich landlords who could afford the HYV seeds could make profits. Subsistence agriculture (peasants) did not have resources to produce surplus to sell in the market for profit. Land taken away from tenants by landowners as they wanted to make extra profit rather than paying them. This was the displacement of tenants. Therefore ‘‘Differentiation”. The introduction of machinery like tillers, tractors, threshers and harvesters led to the displacement of the service caste groups.

2. Second Phase of Green Revolution

The second phase of the Green Revolution was introduced in dry and semi-arid areas.
In these areas there has been a significant shift from dry to wet (irrigated cultivation, along with changes in the cropping pattern and type of crops grown.
Market-oriented cultivation, especially where a single crop is grown, a fall in prices or a bad crop can spell financial ruin for farmers. In most of the Green Revolution areas, farmers have switched from a “multi-crop system”, which allowed them to spread risks, to a mono-crop regime, which means that there is nothing to fall back on in case of crop failure.
Different regions have regional inequalities like UP and Haryana.

Transformations in Rural Society After Independence

Transformation in nature of social relations in rural areas. They are:

An increase in the use of agricultural labour.
A shift in payment -cash.
A loosening of traditional bonds or hereditary relationships between farmers or landowners and agricultural workers (known as bonded labour);
The rise of a class of ‘free’ wage labourers’.

The change in nature of the relationships between landlords and agricultural workers is called “patronage to exploitation” as described by a sociologist - Jan Berman.

Commercialisation of agriculture :

Farmers in the more developed regions were becoming more oriented to the market. As cultivation became more commercialised these rural areas were also becoming integrated into the wider economy.
This process increased the flow of money into villages and expanded opportunities for business and employment.
The state invested in the development of rural infrastructure, such as irrigation facilities, roads, and electricity, and on the provision of agricultural inputs, including credit through banks and cooperatives.
The overall outcome of these efforts at ‘rural development’ was not only to transform the rural economy and agriculture, but also the agrarian structure and rural society itself.

Rural Social Structure was Altered by Agricultural Development

In the 1960s and 1970s was through the enrichment of the medium and large farmers who adopted the new technologies
Farmers belonging to the dominant castes began to invest their profits from agriculture in other types of business ventures. This process of diversification gave rise to new entrepreneurial groups that moved out of rural areas and into the growing towns of these developing regions, giving rise to new regional elites that became economically as well as politically dominant. Along with this change in the class structure, the spread education.
But in other regions such as eastern U.P. and Bihar, the lack of effective land reforms, political mobilisation, and redistributive measures has meant that there have been relatively few changes in the agrarian structure and hence in the life conditions of most people.
In contrast, states such as Kerala have Changing technologies in agriculture undergone a different process of development, in which political mobilisation, redistributive measures, and linkages to an external economy (primarily the Gulf countries) have brought about a substantial transformation of the rural countryside. The rural in Kerala now is a mixed economy that integrates some agriculture with a wide network of retail sales and services, and where a large number of families are dependent on remittances from abroad.

Circulation of Labour

The commercialisation of agriculture has been the growth of migrant agricultural labour.
Men migrate out periodically in search of work and better wages, while women and children are often left behind in their villages with elderly grandparents.
Migrant workers come mainly from drought-prone and less productive regions.
These migrant workers have been termed ‘footloose labour’ by Jan Breman. while migrant workers are brought in from other areas to work on the local farms.
Migration and lack of job security create very poor working and living conditions for these workers.
The large scale circulation of labour has had several significant effects on rural society, in both the receiving and the supplying regions
Women are also emerging as the main source of agricultural labour, leading to the ‘feminisation of agricultural labour force.

Globalisation, Liberalisation, and Rural Society

In late1980' s and early 1990' s globalisation came to India. This led to competition among farmers.
The organisation in charge for rules and regulations was the WTO, which led rules regarding prices, wages, taxes, aspects of trading, and reduction of barriers.
Indian trades are facing competition. Fruits, vegetables, clothes and the whole structure of the rural area changed.
A new concept was introduced in rural areas known as 'contract farming'.
Contract farming : The MNC's go to different villages and tell the farmers about their requirements. The MNC's give seeds, fertilizers to farmers and they describe how to use them. These products were only produced for the MNC's . Therefore farmers are assured of an income and a profit. Very popular in some states (Punjab) and the land is fertile. Some products which are popular like potatoes, tomatoes, flowers, etc.
Disadvantages of contract farming: Farmers are growing the items wanted by that MNC and if there is a crop failure there the farmer has nothing to fall back on because there is total dependence on the MNC. Therefore Insecurity among the farmers.
Products will not be bought by MNC if the product is not up to the mark. Only if it is up to the mark it is good.
We are moving away from production of grains, rice to producing tomatoes, potatoes. Once you grow tomatoes etc you cannot go back to producing grains.
The knowledge that the traditional farmers have is of no use, as the know-how about growing their crops is given by the MNC'S.
Ecologically the soil gets eroded, not very feasible and people are switching to organic farming.

1. Farmers' Suicide-Small and Marginal Reasons

In the Green Revolution belt, small and marginal farmers wanted to increase productivity by increasing the use of advanced technology including tillers, tractors. Unfortunately there may be a setback due to many reasons which can lead to farmer suicide.

Factors:

- Withdrawal of subsidies and support price by government to farmers.
- Debt traps - Where they are unable to pay the money, at times they commit suicide.
- Crop failure-Natural or manual failure, drought, heavy rain, pests, insecticides, etc.
- Totally dependent on the market - when there is a crop failure, they have nothing to fall back on insecurity.

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Writiy

Tuesday, 28 December 2021

Change and Development in Rural Society