LOCAL POLITICS, THE STATE AND UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF INDIA
DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University
By
RAJU J DAS, M.A. (Geography), MA. (Urban Studies)
The Ohio State University 1996
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE: Approved by
Professor Kevin R. Cox, Advisor Professor Lawrence A. Brown Dr. Thomas Klak Dr. Linda M. Lobao Kevin R. Cox, Advisor Department of Geography UMI Number: 9639221
UMI Microform 9639221 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT
The nature of state-society interaction in the Third World is an important theme in social science research. I have examined this by taking three policies of the Indian state having both developmental and redistributive aspects: Land Reform, the Green Revolution and
Integrated Rural Development. The particular questions at issue in this dissertation are: the reasons for this particular succession of policies; and their variable success and failure across regions and classes.
In addressing these questions a concept of the state is crucial. Here its powers and responsibilities are derived by examining the Indian state at different levels of abstraction.
How these powers and responsibilities are exercised depends on the nature of the state’s class base including the landed, and on the nature of lower-class politics. I show how the state's class base has changed over time as in the replacement of the old semi-feudal class by the capitalist farmers, and this is in part because of land reform. As a result, the character of its subsequent developmental intervention has changed. The character of lower class opposition has also changed in that it has become more active politically. These classes put pressure on the democratic state to intervene on their behalf, and this explains temporal changes in the nature o f the state’s redistributive interventions. The developmental and redistributive effects of policies vary over space.
Developmental effects exhibit spatial variation because of (e.g.) the constraints that the structure of private property relations imposes on the state and because of the pressure of the landed on the state for resources which leads to a lack of investible funds for the state. The uneven success of the state’s developmental interventions is a major cause of spatially uneven development which in turn contributes to spatial unevenness in redistribution, whether state- mediated or not. This spatial unevenness also takes place because of spatial unevenness in the degree of lower-class resistance vis a vis rent-seeking state officials and the landed. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my interviewees in Orissa, India. I would also like to thank the workers in the several libraries in India where I collected secondary information.
I am particularly thankful to Dr. Kevin Cox, my advisor. From him I have learnt many of the theoretical and methodological ideas underlying the dissertation.
This research was supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award and an Ohio State Alumni Fellowship. Without these grants, collection of primary and secondary data in India would not have been possible.
iv VITA
May 25, 1964...... Orissa, India
1984 ...... B.A. (Honors).Geography, Utkal University
1987 ...... M.A. Geography, University of Delhi
1990...... M.A. Urban Studies, University of Akron
1989-9 0...... Research Assistant, Department of Urban
Studies, University of Akron
1990-1992; 1993-present...... Teaching Associate, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University
PUBLICATIONS
Research Publication
1. Das, Raju J. “The Geography of Economic Development in India” in F.J. C osta, Noble, A.G., A.B. Mukerji and B. Thakur fedsY Planning For Social and Cultural Development (accepted)
2. Das, Raju J. 1996. "State Theories: A Critical Analysis", Science and Society (New York), Vol 60 (1), pp. 27-57.
3. Das, Raju J. 1995. "Poverty and Agrarian Social Structure — A Case-Study in Rural India", Dialectical Anthropology (New York), Vol. 20 (2), pp. 169-92
4. (with A.K. Dutt and others). 1994. "A Comparative Study of Chinese and Indian Urbanization", in A.K. Dutt et. al. (eds). The Asian City: Processes o f Development, Characteristics and Planning, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands.
5. Das, Raju J. and Dutt, Ashok, K. 1993. "City-size Distribution and Primate City Characteristics in India - A Temporal Analysis", Geo-Journal (Germany), 29(2), pp. 125-137.
v FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Geography Political Economy of Development
Political Geography and Social Theory
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract...... ii Acknowledgments ...... iv Vita...... v List of Tables...... xi List of Figures...... - ...... xiii List of Maps...... xiv
Chapters:
1. Introduction ...... 1
I. Issues/Research Questions ...... 2 II. The Importance of the Research Questions/Issues ...... 3 III. Location of the Study in the Terrain of the Existing Literatures and My Points of Departures ...... 4 IV. The Fundamental Categories Used ...... 10 V. Summary of the Argument...... 17 VI. The Study Area and Collection of Data/Information ...... 20 VII. The Organization of the Dissertation ...... 25
2. State Theories: A Critical Analysis ...... 28
I. Instrumentalist Theory of the State ...... 29 II. Structuralist Theory of the State...... 33 Political Structuralism...... 34 Economic Structuralism...... 39 III. Class Struggles Approaches...... 45 Political Approach...... 45 Economic Approach ...... 48 Structural-Class Struggle Approach...... 49 IV. State-Centered Approaches ...... 56 V. State-theory: A Growing Convergence of Ideas ...... 61
vii 3. The Indian State, Agrarian Development and Rural Redistribution ...... 65
I. Organizational Aspects of the Indian State ...... 66 Formal Democracy...... 66 The Developmental-Redistributive State ...... 67 The Federal Character of the State ...... 69 II. The Class Base and Class Opponents of the State ...... 71 The Class Base of the State...... 71 Lower Class Opposition to the State ...... 81 III. The Changing Balance of Class-Political Forces Over Time...... 87 IV. The Changing Balance of Class-Political Forces Over Space ...... 89 V. Conclusion ...... 94
4. Land Reforms, Class Interests and State Interests: Implications for Agrarian Development and Rural Redistribution ...... 96
I. The Issues in Land Reforms and For Whom These Were Issues ...... 97 The Issues in Land Reforms ...... 97 Who Were Interested In Land Reforms? ...... 99 II. The Nature of Land Reforms ...... 113 Reforms Aimed At Changing Tenant Status...... 113 Imposition of Land-Ceilings ...... 117 III. The Effectiveness of the Reforms ...... 120 Redistributional Limits as Given by the Nature of the Policy Itself...... 120 Limits to the Effectiveness of the Reforms Within Their Own Terms ...... 121 IV. Conclusion ...... 136
5. Land Reforms, Lower-Class Power and State Autonomy: The Spatiality of Class Power and State Power ...... 138
I. Land Reforms and The Post-Colonial Democratic Capitalist State...... 139 II. The Form of The Land Reforms Policy Imposed by the State 143 III. Why Could The State Impose a Form of Land Reforms Not Wanted by Lower Classes? ...... 145
viii IV. Land Reforms Under A different Alignment of Class Forces...... 151 Inter-State Variation in Ceilings ...... 151 Inter-State Variation in Redistribution of Ceiling-Surplus Land ...... 153 Comparison of Land Reforms in Kerala and West Bengal...... 156
V. Conclusion ...... 175
6. The Green Revolution: Political Economy of Its Origin Its Spatial Occurrence ...... 180
I. The Green Revolution in India: Some Evidence...... 181 I. The Geography of the Green Revolution ...... 185 III. Why The Green Revolution Policy? The Political Economy of the Green Revolution ...... 203 IV. Interim Summary ...... 210
7. The Green Revolution: Its Distributive Consequences ...... 211
I. Theory of Distributional Effects of the Green Revolution ...... 212 II. The Green Revolution and Wages ...... 215 III. The Green Revolution, Poverty and Income Inequality...... 226 IV. The Green Revolution and Inequality in the Distribution of Land ...... 236 V. Conclusion ...... 244
8. The Integrated Rural Development Program: A Macro-View ...... 248
I. Why the IRDP(-Type) Policy?...... 249 II. How is the IRDP Supposed to Work? ...... 256 III. Performance of the IRDP ...... 258 IV. Analysis o f the IRDP’s Failure ...... 263 The Economic Structure ...... 263 State Actors’ Power...... 266 V. Conclusion ...... 271
ix 9. The Integrated Rural Development Program: A Micro-Review ...... 272
I. Poverty and the IRDP in Orissa ...... 273 II. The IRDP is Some Villages in Orissa...... 276 Socio-Economic Condition of Nimapara Beneficiaries 278 Method of Selection ...... 281 Performance of IRDP ...... 286 Causes of Failure of the IRDP...... 288 The IRDP, The State and Resistance: the Dialectics of the State Policy and Political Resistance ...... 298 III. Conclusion ...... 306
10. Conclusion ...... 310
I. Summary of Findings ...... 310 II. Implications of the Dissertation for Wider Literatures ...... 320 III. Questions Unanswered ...... 329
Bibliography...... 332 Appendices ...... 358 Appendix A: The use of the Green Revolution Technology and Other Indicators of the Agrarian Condition in India ...... 358 Appendix B: Questionnaire for the Study of the IRDP- Implementation ...... 359
x LIST OF TABLES
Table Ease
4.1 Peasants Struggles In India: A Sample ...... 100 4.2 Non-Official Estimates of the Ceiling-Surplus Land ...... 125 4.3 Official Estimates o f the Ceiling Surplus Land ...... 126 4.4 The Gap Between Estimated and Declared Surplus Land ...... 127 4.5 Land Distributed and Land Distributed as a percentage of Land Declared Surplus ...... 128 4.6 Changes in Distribution in Land in India (1953-54-1961-62) ...... 130 4.7 Impact o f Ceiling Laws: Changes in Distribution in Land in India (1961-62-1982) ...... 131 4.8 Due shares in land of Different Groups (the “B/A” Ratio) ...... 132 5.1 Implementation o f Land Reforms in Kerala and West Bengal ...... 165 5.2 Number of Persons Benefited From Land Reforms ...... 167 5.3 Pressure for Land Reforms in Kerala and West Bengal ...... 169 5.4 Supporters of the Communist Parties in West Bengal and Kerala (%) ...... 173 5.5 Some Social and Economic Features of Rural West Bengal and Kerala 174 6.1 Increase in the Use of the Green Revolution Inputs and Food Production Over Time ...... 182 6.2 Productivity (kgs/hectare) (Food-grains) ...... 183 6.3 The Geography o f Public Investment ...... 195 7.1 The Green Revolution and Money Wages (Male Agricultural Laborers)...... 219 7.2 Real Agricultural Wages (Male) and Food-grains Productivity ...... 220 7.3 The Green revolution and Rural Poverty ...... 228 7.4 The Green Revolution and the Gini Index of Inequality in Per Capita Consumer Expenditure ...... 233 7.5 The Green Revolution and the Changes in Inequality in the Distribution of Owned Land ...... - 234 7.6 The Green Revolution and the Changes in Inequality in Operational Holdings ...... 240 8.1 Income-Strata Within the Poor ...... 257 8.2 Investment in the IRDP (All-India) ...... 258 8.3 Performance of the IRDP (national-level) ...... 260
xi 8.4 The Pilule of the IRDP Performance (1989) ...... 261 8.5 Biases in the IRDP Subsidy and the Credit (1991-92) ...... 266 9.1 Rural Poverty in Orissa (1992)...... 274 9.2 Success of the IRDP in Orissa ...... 275 9.3 Nimapara in Context ...... 277 9.4 Relative Socio-Economic Conditions of Nimapara IRDP beneficiaries 279 9.5 Correct Identification of Beneficiaries (Nimapara) ...... 280 9.6 IRDP Loan in Nimapara ...... 281 9.7 Method of selection of Beneficiaries in Nimapara ...... 283 9.8 Income Generated from IRDP assets in Nimapara ...... 286 9.9 IRDP’s Success in Nimapara...... 287
xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page
5.1 Land Redistribution and Left Electoral strength ...... 155 5.2 Land Redistribution and Peasants'Organization ...... 155 6.1 Green Revolution Technology and Land Productivity ...... 184 6.2 Regional Inequality in Land Productivity ...... 188 6.3 Regional Inequality in Rural Poverty Level ...... 188 6.4 Farmers’ Political Power and Taxation From Agriculture ...... 199 6.5 Sectoral Public Expenditures Under Five-Year Plans ...... 201 7.1 The Green revolution and Rural Poverty Reduction ...... 228 7.2 The Green Revolution and Increase in Inequality ...... 241
xiii LIST OF MAPS Maps Page
1.1 India: States and Study-Villages ...... 22 5.1 Left Parties'Electoral Strength...... 152 5.2 Performance of Land-Ceiling Laws ...... 154 6.1 India: Use of HYVs, 1983-85 ...... 186 6.2 India: Land Productivity (1990-93) ...... 187 8.1 Performance of the IRDP ...... 262
xiv CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
India is a poor country. Nearly 200 millions of Indians, who constitute a quarter of
India's total population, suffered from absolute poverty in 1989-90 (NIRD, 1995:43). The overwhelming proportion of these poor people, i.e. 79.98%, lived in the rural areas in 1990-
91; these areas contained nearly 74.33% of the population at that time. In a comparative context, and in 1985: while only 8% of China's total population1 and 18% of the total population in developing countries were below the poverty-line of US $370 per capita, in
India 33% was below that datum (World Bank in Aggarwal, 1993).
Not only is it that there is a massive poverty-stricken rural population, the level of agrarian productivity is also quite low. Yields of major crops such as paddy and wheat are abysmally low. For example, the rice-yield was 2691 kilograms/hectare in India in 1990, whereas, the world average was 3557 and for China it was 5728. Wheat yield in India was
2117 in the same year. But the world average was 2570 and for China it was 3179.
Thus rural India seems to suffer from two problems: low level of productivity and the problem of poverty. Given these two problems, rural areas have attracted the attention of the
1. It is logical to compare India and China in part because both countries started at more or less similar levels of development at almost the same time (i.e. the late 1940s) (Bhalla, 1995:12). post-colonial State. In the dissertation, I deal with the nature of the state interventions aimed at tackling these two problems.
This Chapter has seven sections. In the first section, I present the main questions that
I address, in the next section, I show why it is important to address these questions. In the third section, I relate my concerns in the dissertation to broader literatures and delineate the points of my departure. In the next two sections I map out the fundamental categories of
Marxist geography/regional studies used and substantive arguments made in the dissertation.
In the sixth section I discuss my study area and sources of data collection. I also show how
I have used critical realism as a method of research. The final section discusses the organization of the dissertation.
I. ISSUES/RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The state has tried to implement several policies. These have included Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and the so-called Integrated Rural Development Policy (IRDP); this latter is a policy aimed at distribution of income-generating assets to the poor. Not only has the nature of state intervention changed over time — as seen in the fact that it has tried different policies at different points in time — but also there has been a gap between what it seeks to achieve through these policies and what it has been able to. The question is why?
Further, to the extent that these policies have not succeeded, we find that: a) they have not failed in all respects, for, the developmental goals of these policies may have been achieved more than the redistributive ones; b) they have not failed equally for all classes/groups, for, some classes have benefited more than others; and c) they have not failed equally in all areas.
Once again, why? The dissertation seeks to address these questions.
There is a second set of questions that 1 address. This has got to do with spatially uneven development. This is the subtext in my discussion in Chapters 4 and 6 .1 argue that the spatially uneven outcome of state policies interacts with the spatially uneven character of agrarian conditions including agrarian structure and class struggle. This interaction produces uneven development. The uneven development in turn becomes a context for the uneven outcomes of redistributive policies such as the IRDP.
U. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS/ISSUES
Having stated the different issues/questions I will look into, 1 will now discuss why these issues are important. I will abstract from the question of the spatiality of development for the time being.
State intervention has become essential to promoting the development of the productive forces (I explain the term below). In brief, the proximate reason for this is that there are certain agrarian-structural barriers to capitalist development that only the state can remove, the barriers that are not normally found now in the advanced countries. The state also seeks to tackle the poverty problem because the benefits of the development of productive forces do not trickle down sufficiently otherwise. If state intervention is so crucial to both development and redistribution, it is important to analyze the nature of the policies aimed at achieving these and why these policies fail and in part also succeed in the way they do. The analysis of state intervention is important for another reason also. It is widely agreed in the radical state debate that the capitalist state is forced to create conditions for capitalist accumulation on which the state itself depends as the source of its own revenue
(Offe, 1987; Hirsch, 1978). Yet, why do policies, that are precisely aimed at promoting capitalist development, show only limited success? Further, it is claimed that struggles by the exploited classes “impose" policies on the state that aim at giving some concessions to these classes (Poulantzas, 1968; Esping-Andersen, et. at. 1976) and that the state is supposed to give concessions in the form of these policies to pacify the lower classes. Yet, pro-lower-class policies fail. Once again, why? It seems, there are mechanisms that counter the ability of the state to carry out its developmental-redistributive roles. What are these mechanisms? We have to look beneath the policies and examine the structures of relations, the structural nature of the state-society relations, that is, that cause these policies and that allow/constrain their implementation by the state.
ID. LOCATION OF THE STUDY IN THE TERRAIN OF THE EXISTING LITERATURES AND MY POINTS OF DEPARTURE
In dealing with the empirical questions alluded to earlier, the dissertation speaks to a wider debate on state-society interaction and more specifically, the role of the state in bringing about development and redistribution. The (theory underlying the) dissertation is located where state theory and development studies — or more specifically the political economy of development/redistribution — intersect. The angle of intersection is defined by two approaches. One is a Marxist approach and another is a spatial approach.
4 The state is neglected, if not completely ignored, by work in almost all the traditions defined by the major development theories: modernization theory/neo-classical economics theory, dependency theory and Marxist-structuralist theory (for a recent survey, see Peet,
1991; Corbridge, 1986). Modernization theory and related ideas (neoclassical theory) emphasize how cultural barriers such as those defined by ascriptive roles impede development and that only with a high level of development can poverty be taclded. Dependency theory blames core-periphery relations for low levels of development and for mass poverty in Third
World countries (see Kay, 1989). Dependency theory/world systems theory, of course, does not neglect the state as such, for, the state in the core countries creates conditions where core-periphery relations can be preserved. But they underemphasize the state in the Third
World. The latter is often considered a toy in the hands of metropolitan countries and thus has very little autonomy to bring about development and redistribution.
Structuralist Marxist theory, which corrects the bias in dependency theory toward the exchange-view of capitalist relations (Brenner, 1977), rightly argues that pre-capitalist social relations of production can act as a barrier to capitalist development (Brenner, 1986). It is the class struggle by serfs/peasants that destroy/undermine the pre-capitalist relations and facilitate capitalist transition. The role of the state is once again marginalized. In Brenner, the state appears merely as a "class-like competitor with the landlords for the peasants' surplus", and it makes a difference only to the outcome of the class conflict (1985:36). What is lacking in his work is the idea that the state can help in the creation of new forms of class-relations
(e.g. a capitalist farmer class from the feudal landlord class), and can contribute to the production o f class and class-fractional conflicts in a society. The state has received renewed attention recently, however. It is no longer considered a superstructural epiphenomenon as Marx sometimes assumed (Jessop, 1990). It is now recognized as playing a critical role in the process of the material reproduction of society in both less developed and more developed countries. In the recent literature, the role of the state in the development process of less developed countries has received much recognition
(Evans, 1979; Corbridge, 1993; see Fine and Stoneman, 1996 for a recent survey of selected literatures). The Third World states have some autonomy vis a vis core states and can promote development (Corbridge, 1986). Many scholars rightly insist that growth will not automatically trickle down and that the state has to make trickle down happen (Kohli, 1987).
However, much of this new literature is on non-agricultural development, as its raw- materials come from East Asian industrial development, or, as in Michael Watts's (1983:
Chapter 8) work, from oil economies. Further, much of this work seems to be more empirical/empiricist -- for the question of what is it that enables the state to be a developmental-redistributive state is not conceptually addressed. So far, the conceptual contribution of this literature to the state debate seems to have been rather thin.
There are however some works that escape this criticism. I want to relate the dissertation to those works. These constitute a particular tendency in the political economy of development. In this approach: agricultural development has a crucial place in the overall development of the society (Byres, 1995); a conjuncture of factors, including production relations that are not capitalist, act as a fetter on the development of productive forces under capitalism; and, the state and class struggle both play important roles in removing these fetters and in making a transition to a regime of capitalist accumulation possible (Richards, 1986; Goodman and Redclifi, 1981). Obviously, important insights in the structural'Marxist approaches to development I have earlier alluded to have contributed to the development of this approach. In addition, radical state theories that examine the relation between the state and class/economy also enrich this work.
As far as studies on India's political economy are concerned, several writers have analyzed the critical role of the state as an economic actor (Frankel, 1978; Alavi, 1982;
Bardhan, 1984b, 1989; Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987; Kohli, 1987; Sen 1995). I have discussed this literature in some detail in the third Chapter. Here I will point out its main problems in dealing with the role of the state in development, problems which will define the point of departure for my study.
1) Much of the work is based on an untenable prioritization of the redistributive role
of the state as opposed to its development-oriented role. A major work on the role of the
state, the one by Kohli, is exemplary. His logic for ignoring the role of the state in economic
development is that economic growth has failed to trickle down and hence to alleviate poverty. The failure accents the question of the state's redistributive role/capacities. It is these which he focusses on and does so well. But conceptually, it is not always easy to distinguish between growth and redistributive policies; certain policies such as Land Reforms are both
redistributive and aimed at the development of productive forces as I will show. In fact, I have
shown in Chapter 8 that even an explicitly anti-poverty redistributive policy like the IRDP
may help in growth in that the better off the people are, the larger will be the domestic market
which in turn may induce capitalist expansion. Furthermore by leaving out "growth policies'*
such as that of the Green Revolution, which Kohli touches on very obliquely, one misses out
7 many aspects of the state. And to the extent that there has indeed been some growth, to what extent the state has played a role in it will be interesting to study. Besides, and more empirically, Kohli's view that growth has not trickled down is primarily based on data pertaining to the 1970s; I have used more recent data to show that growth has indeed trickled down. Further, showing that growth has trickled down provides me an opportunity to show the political economy of that trickle down. Growth itself will not automatically trickle down in a class society. If it has, it is interesting to know under what conditions it has. My analysis shows that what is called "worker power" (Lobao, 1990) is a very crucial condition.
2) Many scholars including Kohli have prioritized the state and state actors at the expense of the social relations underlying these. This is often done, as in the case of Kohli, at the expense of the social determinants of the state's role.
The Rudolphs and Bardhan have seemingly elevated the state and state actors to a position of absolute autonomy. For the Rudolphs, the state is a third actor alongside capital and labor. For Bardhan, state actors are a class in the dominant national coalition of proprietary classes. These ideas cannot be supported. Marx says that even the power of the
Bonapartist state "does not hover in mid-air" and that Bonaparte represents a class — the small peasant proprietors (1973:138).
I want to distance myself from such neo-Weberian statist positions, which are also quite empiricist, and which separate the state from the structure o f social relations underlying it. State power can only be relatively autonomous under capitalism. The fact that it has to preserve capitalist property rights, which are preconditions for capitalist exploitation, constitute the negative limits to its autonomy (Poulantzas, 1976). The outcomes of the exercise of this autonomy vary over time and space. I want to show how such factors as the
agrarian structure, the social base of the state, the lower class organization and even state
actors pursuing their own interests at the expense of those of societal actors affect the
exercise of this autonomy and its outcome: for example, the outcome of such policies as those
of Land Reforms and the Green Revolution. Yet, state actors cannot be located at the same
level in the hierarchy of abstractions about the state as class.
3) Much of the work on the Indian state underemphasizes lower-class struggle. I find
the Rudolphs' position that the state has marginalized labor (and capital) particularly
unacceptable. Following what I have called structural-class struggle theory in the next
Chapter as developed by Clarke (1991) and others, I insist that the very fact that there is a
state means that there are classes such as capital and labor and there is an antagonistic relation that cannot be suppressed by any other force than the state. It is the state that maintains "by
force the conditions of existence and domination of the ruling class against the subject class"
(Engels in Draper, 1977: 24S). But at the same time, the lower classes have the power to
contest what the state does (see Giddens, 1981: 224; Clarke, 1991). One underlying theme
throughout the substantive Chapters is that lower class struggle — whose intensity and form
may vary - influences both the origin and the outcome of state policies over time and space.
4) I want also to distance myself from the instrumentalist ideas of the Indian
communist parties, derived perhaps from the Communist Manifesto, and neo-instrumentalist
ideas as in Gupta's (1990) relative anarchy concept. These tend to reduce the state to its
instrumentalist manipulation by the ruling classes and, in the context of agrarian India, by the
landed. I do take instrumentalism seriously. In fact, and much against what is believed about Poulantzas, I provide documentary evidence in the next Chapter that before he died he
(Poulantzas, 1978) was endorsing instrumentalism! This endorsement is consistent with his idea that the state is an arena of class struggle, and that it takes place not only outside the state but also inside it. Yet, I take instrumentalism to be a contingent aspect of the capitalist state (Poulantzas, 1969). Just because instrumentalism is fairly universal empirically does not mean it is necessary conceptually. Even if the state is an arena of struggle, the precise ways in which the struggle takes place iscontingent.2 It is the positivist-empiricist association of necessity with empirical generality (see Sayer, 1992) that has given instrumentalism the sort of force it has in the literature, as well as attracting the opprobrium of radical critics.
5) Finally, much of the analysis of the state and its role is aspatial. Kohli (1987) and
Frankel (1990) are a few exceptions. The Indian state has a federal structure. So the outcome of policies will be different in different areas. Even if the state was not federal, there would still be a spatiality of outcomes because of unevenness in natural conditions, which were very crucial in Green Revolution policy, and in the preexisting level of development of productive forces, in social relations, in the intensity of class struggle, etc. I want to demonstrate the spatiality of the state to correct this neglect in state analysis.
IV. THE FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORIES USED
Having delineated the points of my departure from the existing studies, let me very briefly lay out the fundamental categories I use. Throughout the dissertation I will refer
2 Class struggle does not necessarily have to be expressed instrumentally. The threat of disinvestment, or simply the fact of disinvestment, could be an instance of class struggle.
10 explicitly or implicitly to these categories in particular: mode of production, productive forces and the social relations of production; exploitation, state, class, political economy, and space/spatiality. In other words the dissertation situates itself theoretically with respect to that body of literature variously known as radical/Marxist geography/regional studies. Instead of explaining these through a glossary where their links are not established, I will discuss them by organizing them into a highly abstract argument that underlies the dissertation.
Each society is a social formation. A social formation may have more than one mode of production in it articulated with one another, although one mode of production will dominate (see the collection of articles in Wolpe, 1980). In passing I may note that much of development theory has wrongly assumed that development and its unevenness in a society can be understood solely in terms o f the laws o f motion of capitalism (Smith, 1991; Harvey,
1982)’. It assumes that capitalism is the only mode of production in the existing social formations. This assumption in turn leads to the facts that the role of the state in destroying non-capitalist class relations and conversely the influence o f non-capitalist class actors on the state are left out.
Now, "A mode of production is an articulated combination of relations and forces of production structured by the dominance of the relations of production" (Hindess and Hirst,
1975: 9). Productive forces or forces of production refer to the elements of the labor process in their combination: i.e. object of labor, instrument of labor and the worker; so as (e.g.) worker skills increase so the productive forces develop. This increase in worker productivity is the indicator par excellence of the development of the productive forces (Roemer, 1986).
3 Harvey and Smith do not completely ignore pre-capitalist relations. But they pay only lip service to them. By "development", I refer to the development of the productive forces while recognizing that the word has other meanings (Brown, 1991: 27-29; Mencher, 1974).
In my empirical analysis, 1 have taken land productivity to be another indicator of the development of productive forces. It is important to note however that even if land productivity goes up, labor productivity may not rise because of (e.g.) a decline in cropping intensity and/or land-person ratio,4 so the relation between the land and labor productivity is a contingent one.
In all class societies, relations of production entail exploitation. "Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the worker, free or unfree, must add to the labor-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra quantity of labor-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owner of the means o f production" (1977a:
344). The extortion of that "extra quantity of labor-time" is exploitation.
But the nature of exploitation, that is, the way this "extra quantity of labor-time" is appropriated is historically specific. "What distinguishes the various economic formations of society" (e.g. feudalism or capitalism), says Marx, "is the form in which this surplus labor is in each case extorted from the immediate producer, the worker" ( 1977a: 325).
Capitalist mode of production is different from pre-capitalist modes. Under pre capitalist modes, exploitation is visible. In pre-capitalist societies, the labor-time performed by the worker for his or her sustenance (necessary labor) and that for the feudal lord (surplus
4 Consider this: OAV = (O/GCAXGCA/NSAXNSA/W). O = output; W = number of workers (cultivators + laborers); GCA = Gross cropped area; NSA = net sown area; 0/W = labor productivity; O/GCA = land productivity (output per unit of cropped area); GCA/NSA = cropping intensity or index of multiple cropping; NSA/W = land-person ratio (net sown area per worker).
12 labor) is spatially and temporally separated from each other, and therefore, the difference between these two types of labor is visible.5 But, under capitalism, writes Marx,
"(S)urphis labor and necessary labor are mingled together... [During the first period] "of the labor process, (the worker) produces only the value of his labor power, that is, the value of his means of subsistence. ... During the second period of the labor process, that is, during the period when labor is no longer necessary labor, the worker does indeed expend labor pow er,... but his labor is no longer necessary labor, and he creates no value for himself He creates surplus value..." (Marx, 1977a: 324-325).
Since necessary labor and surplus labor are mingled together, exploitation is not visible under
capitalism. The wage is assumed to be equal to labor expended. One is paid by the hour.
rather than to the value of labor power. Exploitation is concealed by the wage relation.
Production relations in class societies define class relations. Class relations are
exploitative relations between those who own/control the means of production and those who
do not. As Lenin says:
"[CJlasses are large groups of people differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production, by their relation (in most cases fixed and formulated by law) to the means of production ... Classes are groups of people one of which can appropriate the labor of another owing to the different places they occupy in a definite system of social economy" (1967: 213-214).
In a social formation, given the possibility of multiple production relations — capitalist
and pre-capitalist mode(s) of production — there will be more than one ruling class and more
than one exploited class. I use "lower classes" to refer to the multiplicity of exploited classes.
1 use ruling classes somewhat liberally to refer to the landed and the urban bourgeoisie.
5 For example, the serf would work a few days on his own land (necessary labor) that would produce his means of sustenance, and a few days on the land of the lord (surplus labor). So, production relations/property relations are class relations, for, these involve exploitation. From this standpoint the state's role becomes crucial because it is the state that protects property relations. Given that production relations involve exploitation, they generate
conflict, latent or otherwise. So the state has to suppress these conflicts in part through
repression and in part through redistributive policies. How much the lower classes will gain, given a certain level of development of the productive forces, will be however a reflection of the political power it can bring to bear on the state/ruling classes.
The role of the state becomes crucial for another reason. The production relations normally promote the development of the productive forces under capitalism. However, these
can become a barrier to development (Cohen, 1986). "At a certain stage of development, the
material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of
production, or — what is but a legal expression of the same thing — with the property relations
..." (Marx 1977b: 389). The state can play an important role in changing the production
relations and thus promoting the development of the productive forces. How the state does
it is contingent, as I show in Chapter 4 and 6.
All of these categories that I have discussed are those of political economy. This is
Marxist political economy. This is necessary to say because nowadays everyone working on
development issues seems to be working on political economy! At a very high level of
abstraction political economy says that economy and polity are interrelated. Political economy
views "the economy as socially and politically embedded as structured by power relations"
(Sayer, 1995: ix). But the very nature of conceptualization of the economy, of the
political/social and of the relation between the two is what distinguishes one type of political economy from another. In the non-Marxian political economy which includes the so-called
"the new political economy" of Bates, North, Kruger, etc. (see Toye 1991 for a survey of the new political economy literature), there is no indication that the economy is a structure of exploitative and historically contingent relations and that the state defends these. Even mere assertion that the state protects property rights as in North (1986) says little about the exploitative character of these rights. For Bates (1981), the state is completely autonomous of the economic. These ideas are outside the realm of the Marxian political economy. In the next Chapter, I discuss in detail the various one-sided ideas, common in the literature, about the relations between state, economy and class. I do this mainly within the terms of the
Marxian political economy approach so I will not repeat the discussion here.
However, I must at this stage mention that one important object of Marxian political economy, like that of non-Marxists such as Adam Smith, etc. is to explain how accumulation
— the constant creation of new means of production — comes about and what prevents it. And as Byres and Brenner, among others, have suggested one important explanation lies in the agrarian transition, the transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist relations in agriculture
(Byres, 1995: 507; Brenner, 1986). In this dissertation, I address the question of how a Third
World state, almost independently of imperialist intervention,6 has tried to facilitate not only this transition but also to create conditions where capitalist landowners will make investments in raising productivity, and why it cannot be completely successful in doing so. But it has not
6.This is important to say because the state also played a role in the agrarian transition (i.e through land reforms) in Japan and some Asian countries. But it was the American state that played a crucial role in Japan, and it was the Japanese state that undermined feudal relations in its east Asian colonies. For a review of agrarian transition in these countries see Byres (1991). failed equally everywhere in this endeavor. This brings me to the last category I want to discuss.
By my silences I have implied that class, exploitation, the state, and so on are aspatial categories. They are clearly not. While exploitation has to take place in a class society by definition, its nature -- whether it is capitalist or pre-capitalist ~ may vary spatially depending on (e.g.) a locally specific development of the productive forces and the social relations of production, a particular distribution of means of production in the local society across households, and so on, as I have shown in Chapter 4. Similarly, classes are spatial categories in that (e.g.) the empirical expression of their political power varies spatially. As Walker
(1985) says: we should reject the view that class is more real if it is more unified (see also
Sheppard and Barnes, 1990:210). To extend the analogy, and to convey a sense of the spatiality o f the state, the state cannot be less real because it is less unified. In other words, there are fissures within the state including those given by the spatial organization of the state: the division of labor between local and central branches (Duncan and Goodwin, 1987; Cox,
1990). For example, in India, there are the federal government and other state institutions at the national level, State governments and state institutions at the level of the State, district- level state institutions, and so on. It is not just that the state is spatially organized. I will show that this spatial organization in turn has implication for the state-society interaction.
By the term "state" I will refer to the entire institutional ensemble (legislative, judiciary and executive phis territorial branches of the state); by "State" I will refer to provincial level apparatuses of the state. Now, given a certain degree of autonomy of lower level state apparatuses, and given that the lower classes are better organized in some places than in others, they find it easier to make use of these low-level institutions as compared with more central branches of the state. Throughout the dissertation, I will use the term "spatiality" to imply the fact that social relations, broadly defined, are geographically differentiated.
V. A SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT
Having explained the more abstract categories I use, I want to sum up the arguments of the dissertation at a less abstract level. The Indian social formation is characterized by the co-existence of capitalist and some pre-capitalist social relations, although it is predominantly capitalist. So the state is a capitalist state. The state's developmental role concerns, in large part, the strategies intended to destroy these pre-capitalist relations. Its developmental role also concerns putting means of production such as subsidized inputs in the hands of those who are normally the larger landowners and who can make productivity-raising investments.
Further given mass poverty, and given that an increase in productivity may not automatically help the poor through a trickle dow\i process, the state plays an important redistributive role too. I look at three policies: Land Reforms, the Green Revolution and the IRDP. I show that the state has failed to implement these policies, but it has not failed equally everywhere or for all classes.
To address this policy failure as specified above, I have tried to conceptualize the state at different levels of abstraction. At a high level of abstraction, the Indian state is a capitalist state. By virtue of its capitalist character, it has some powers and some responsibilities. The state exercises/carries out these however not just as a capitalist state but as a state in a more concrete form, i.e. as a democratic, developmental-redistributive, federal state. But being a democratic, developmental-redistributive and a federal state also gives it some further powers and responsibilities. How these are exercised depends on the nature of its class base and the nature of the class opposition to it, within an overall capitalist context.71 show that the landed class is an important part of the social base of the state and has influenced the nature and outcome of its policies. But state actions have also been influenced by lower classes.
Further, the nature of the state's social base changes over time, and this is in part because of state policies at a pervious point in time. As a result, the nature of its developmental-redistributive role changes. For example: the implementation of Land Reforms policy by undermining the interest and powers of pre-capitalist landowners created conditions
for the emergence of a class of capitalist farmers. Thus there was a change in the nature of the state’s social base. But once capitalist farmers assumed importance they put pressure on the state for different sorts of intervention - subsidies, etc - than those aimed at institutional
changes in the agrarian structure.
The nature of the lower class opposition also changes over time. The lower classes have become more active politically. These classes put pressure on the state to intervene on their behalf too, especially given that it has a democratic form. The fact that lower classes have been able to put greater pressure on state over time in part explains temporal changes
in the nature of state intervention.
7 In my theoty, I am prioritizing class as a structure of social relations and therefore, the class character of the state. Class is my vantage point (see Oilman, 1993, Chapter 2 on the notion of “abstraction of vantage point”). I am abstracting from other structures based on ethnic/caste/nationality/gender relations and from their infiuence on the state (see, Qadeer and Hasan, 1987; Roychowdhuiy, 1991; Vanaik, 1990; 1992). I am also abstracting from the growing influence of foreign capital on the nature and functions of the state.
18 The outcome of a particular policy varies over space. This is in part because constraints that the structure of private property relations imposes on the state. For example,
Land Reforms aimed at undermining landlordism stipulated that erstwhile tenants had to buy ownership rights; expropriation without compensation was outside the scope of state action.
What this meant was this: given that there was already uneven development in the sense that tenants were rich in some areas not in others, they could become owners only in the areas where they could buy ownership rights. Landlordism could not be undermined in all areas.
Similarly, the Green Revolution policy having enriched capitalist farmers economically contributed to their political power which was in turn used to put pressure on the state for more and more subsides. Given that industrial bourgeoisie also makes similar pressures, and given the limited ability of the state to tax the politically powerful capitalist farmers, there was a shortage of funds for investment in the Green Revolution in backward areas. The policy of
Green Revolution became successful in a few areas. Uneven development was reinforced.
The outcome of state policies for the lower classes has also been spatially uneven.
Land has been redistributed, the Green Revolution has benefited the lower classes and the
IRDP has helped the poor to augment their income, more in some areas than in others. There is in part because of the spatial unevenness of the degree of lower class organization both outside and inside the state. Given the federal and democratic form of the state, the lower classes seek to make use of any opportunity thrown up by these structures. Inter a lia they try to institutionalize their power in some States (this is class struggle inside the state). And, where they do, they benefit more than in other States from state policies, because state power can be more effectively exercised on their behalf and against the landed. More generally, whether or not their power is institutionalized, the geography of their organization becomes the geography of the effectivity of the exercise of state autonomy on their behalf.
VI. THE STUDY AREA AND COLLECTION OF DATA/INFORMATION
Given India's problem of mass poverty and given that the level of development of the productive forces is very low, I chose India for my study of the role of the state in development. Another most important factor was my familiarity with the agrarian political economy in the country.
As I have said, the Indian state is spatially organized in terms of many States. There
is a division of labor between the federal government and the State governments. There are
17 major States, major in terms of area. It's a fact that as far as agriculture and rural
development are concerned, it is the States that actually make policies and implement these
within the general guidelines provided by the federal government though. However, and this
is important to note, a State legislation can be vetoed by the federal government. So, the
federal government has a good deal of control over what State governments can do. Since this is the case for all States, all States will face similar constraints. By taking States as the
units of observation, I can "isolate" the effect of the federal government's constraints on
States to some extent. For example: a communist party can form a government in a State, but
it cannot implement a legislation in the State which will abolish private property because the
federal government will veto it. But given that all State governments will have to work under
this constraint imposed by the capitalist state structure, what is it that explains variation in the nature of and outcomes of policies across States? By taking States as units of analysis, I can look at some of the sources of these variations. My comparative analysis of Land Reforms in two States, Kerala and West Bengal (Map 1.1), where communist parties have been power, sheds some light on these.
Besides States, I have in some places used what are known as agro-climatic regions, which are quite homogeneous in terms of agro-climatic conditions and each of which contains three or four districts; districts (the equivalent of counties) are the administrative areas into which each State is divided. Analysis at this level helps me deal with the question of how variations in agrarian structures cause variation in the level of development.
Data for the States and other units have been collected from secondary sources existing in several libraries, communist party offices etc. in different parts of India. These were collected during my visit to India.
For the study o f the IRDP, I have conducted interviews — structured and unstructured
— in a few villages in one of the most poor States, Orissa. I conducted a structured questionnaire survey and informal interviews in Nimapara block and informal interviews in
Khandadeuli (Puri district), Rangas (Jajpur district) and Remuna (Balasore district) (see Map
1.1). I discuss the details about primary data collection in Chapter 9.
I will briefly discuss the method used in the dissertation. I have used a critical-realist method. Instead of discussing in great details what realism is, I will rather discuss how I have used this. The dissertation is a product of both abstract and concrete research. The goal of abstract research is structural analysis: it aims at finding out what constitutes an object and what its causal powers and liabilities are. Actual events are treated as possible outcomes of these powers and liabilities when they are exercised (Sayer, 1992: 236). The state has the INDIA: STATES AND STUDY-VILLAGES
1 □ □ ANDHRA P. 2 □ ASSAM □r~~~i cm ana 3 I I BIHAR Duapara a DELHI Khandadeuli □ GOA 4 □ GUJARAT 5 1 HARYANA 6 d HIMACHAL P. JAMMU & KASHMIR 71 1___ . 7-1! 8 d KARNATAK KERALA 10 3 MADHYA P 11 Id MAHARASTRA □ MANIPUR □ MEGHALAYA d NAGALAND 121 ORISSA 13 □ PUNJAB 14 d RAJASTHAN □ J5 Ed TAMILNADU □ TRIPURA 16 d UTTAR PRADESH 17 □ WEST BENGAL
M ap 1.1
2 2 causal power to act against landowners. Whether it will act so in an instance and what the effects of that will be are contingent. Through concrete research I have tried to examine the conditions on which the outcomes of the exercise of causal power o f the state are contingent.
From another angle, my dissertation is a product of intensive and extensive research.
Intensive research identifies structures of relations and their mechanisms through abstract research. Then it aims to find out, through interactive interviews of small groups of (causally related) individuals, how these mechanisms work. For example: given the monopoly over administration of the IRDP, state officials could exercise some power over the poor who were tied to particular places because of the spatial organization of the state. But how these power relations actually worked, what the outcomes of these were, and what the mechanisms that countered the power relations were identified when I conducted intensive interviews of officials, beneficiaries and communist party organizers in Nimapara. Similarly, while laborers do have the power to go on strikes, whether in a village they do so and whether they will succeed is contingent. It is through my discussion with the poor people and their organizers in Khandadeuli village that I leamt that the provision of food by the local communist party to strikers was crucial to the success of the strike when it last took place.
Many times, unique cases reveal more about general processes and structures than the normal ones. For, "Rare conjunctures ... may lay bare structures and mechanisms which are normally hidden" (Sayer, 1992: 249). Kerala and West Bengal are two unique cases in India where communists have been electorally quite powerful and have formed governments. My brief study of these, though based on secondary and mainly qualitative information, shed some light on the conditions that enable successful implementation of Land Reforms. In particular the specificity of Kerala's agrarian structure and strong competition between communist paries and between communist and non-communist parties were quite crucial to the success of Land Reforms.
I have tried to exploit the complementarity between extensive and intensive research.
Extensive research aims at discovering some of the common properties and general patterns of the whole population. I have used structured questionnaires to get some descriptive idea about: how poor and disadvantaged the beneficiaries were, how much money beneficiaries received, how much leakage took place, how much profits they made on the assets and so on.
These data were crucial to my abstract research as well. For example, I leamt that the beneficiaries were quite poor in terms of pre-IRDP income, landlessness, etc; so I revised my earlier idea that the money was given to the non-poor who were relatives of the locally dominant class. 1 did not however rely on extensive research for causal understanding of why
(e.g.) the IRDP failed. My understanding of the IRDP was based on a qualitative analysis of underlying structures such as capitalist constraints on the state’s ability to make investments, officials” powers relations with the poor, etc.
I also used extensive research methods to find some general patterns at the level of events. This is represented by my regression analyses. They alerted me to certain possible causal relations; for example, a causal relation between the dominance of large farmers and agrarian backwardness. I did not use these analyses as a substitute for qualitative analysis however. At best these regression results provided evidence consistent with what I had expected from my qualitative analysis of the state, agrarian backwardness, class organization, and so on. In this context, the use of Casetti’s (1992; 1972) expansion “method” has been particularly helpful. I have used this “method” to shed light on how (e.g.) the relation between productivity and wages varies over space according to the spatial variation in the political power of the workers.
VD. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION
The study is organized as follows. The second Chapter is an extensive, critical analysis of a very large body of quite abstract ideas about the state. I have focussed on the class character of the state and its relation to the class structure/the economy. I have isolated different aspects of the state: its liability to capitalist constraints, to lower class and instrumentalist control, to rent-seeking activities; its causal power to work against the mling classes. These have been treated at different levels of abstraction.
In the next Chapter I have recombined these aspects along with certain features that are specific to the Indian state (its post-colonial character, its democratic form, etc.). This helps me arrive at a more concrete picture of the Indian state. In particular, I discuss three organizational aspects of the state: its democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal forms. I show that the state in India exercises its causal powers not as a capitalist state in the abstract, which the last Chapter focused on, but as a democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal state. I also show the nature of the social base of the state as well as of its lower class opposition. Finally, I examine the changes over time and over space in the balance of political forces underlying the state and what the implications of these are for the nature of its interventions and for the outcomes of these interventions.
25 In the light of these two Chapters, I look at three policies of the Indian state in the next six Chapters. Chapters 4-5 discuss Land Reforms, Chapters 5-6 discuss the Green
Revolution policy and Chapters 8-9 deal with the IRDP. These three policies are three windows for me on the nature of the state.
In Chapter 4 ,1 discuss, building on structuralist ideas about the causes of low levels of agrarian development, how the agrarian structure that India inherited from its colonial past was a barrier to the development of productive forces. The post-colonial state sought to remove this barrier. I discuss, in detail, the convergence of interests of the urban bourgeoisie, lower classes and state (actors) in the Land Reforms policy. Then I deal with the nature of the legal provisions under the Land Reforms policy, the limited extent of implementation of these, and the implications of that for uneven agrarian development.
In the next Chapter, based on these more concrete materials on the Land Reforms policy, I relate the nature of the state to Land Reforms. I discuss how the state had to create conditions for capitalist development within a bourgeois-democratic context, and how this context, in turn, defined the very form of the Land Reforms policy: it became bureaucratic and entailed compensation to erstwhile landlords. I discuss why the state could impose such a form of Land Reforms when the lower classes had opposed this. I also show that with different class alignments from what existed in most States and nationally, both the form and outcome of Land Reforms could have been and were different, as my comparative study of two communist States and regression analyses for all States show.
Chapters 6-7 discuss the Green revolution policy. Chapter Six discusses what the
Green Revolution was all about, the political-economic reasons why the state promoted it, why it occurred in a spatially uneven way and how it contributed to uneven agrarian development. In the next Chapter, I discuss how the distributive outcomes of the Green
Revolution policy were a function of property relations and the class struggle and the forms o f state intervention underlying these.
Chapters 8-9 discuss the IRDP. Chapter 8 discusses why the IRDP was started and how it was supposed to work. Then it discusses how it actually worked at the national and inter-State levels and shows that leakages of benefits to the non-poor and inadequate funding caused by capitalist constraints on the state’s ability to make redistributive investments caused the failure of the policy. But the policy has not failed equally everywhere. The uneven development of the productive forces and unevenness in lower class organization seem to explain the spatially uneven success of the policy. In the next Chapter, I look at how the
IRDP works at the village level in Orissa. This corroborates the findings in the last Chapter.
Besides, it shows how the IRDP, like Land Reforms policy, is producing the political subordination of the lower classes.
The final Chapter summarizes the findings. It also links these to the existing literatures and presents questions for future research, questions that were raised but left unanswered. CHAPTER 2
STATE THEORIES: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
This Chapter critically examines the literature on the nature of the capitalist state. It mainly, if not exclusively, deals with Marxist approaches to the state. In Marxist theory, the state is a complex social relation of many aspects which offer ways into the study of the state as a whole (see Oilman, 1982:41); these aspects are like windows from which to look at the state. Viewed from one window, the state appears as a one-sided relation.
Various approaches to the state can be seen as conceptual dualisms consisting of opposing one-sided aspects. This method o f analysis shows how one approach develops as a critique of another. It also shows that the state is a dialectical unity with many aspects. The following dualistic approaches can be identified: instrumentalism vs structuralism; capital determination of the state vs class struggle determination; form vs content; and state-centered vs. society-centered approaches1. While my method o f analysis is as shown above, my method o fpresentation will be slightly different to avoid the repetition that results from the fact that these dualisms are overlapping (e.g. some views on state autonomy and capital determination are those within the structuralist framework too).
1 Due to constraint of space, I have not discussed ideological aspects of the state in any detail. On this see: Poulantzas (1968), Gramsci (1971), Wolfe (1974) and Oilman (1976).
28 My method of presentation is as follows. The first section presents instrumentalist theory, followed in the next by a discussion of structuralist theory which developed as a critique of instrumentalism. Both of these theories underemphasize struggle by dominated classes, and the autonomous interests of state actors; so the third and the fourth sections deal with these two issues. The concept of the state as a form as opposed to content of social relation will be discussed as a part of the class struggle approach, as class struggle takes place over both state form and content. In the fifth section, in the way of summarizing the discussion, I show that the state debate contains tendencies towards convergence between at least three sets of conceptual dualisms.
I. INSTRUMENTALIST THEORY OF THE STATE
Instrumentalist theory deals with the class character of the state in terms of who controls it. According to this theory, the state is merely an instrument in the hands of the ruling class. Marx and Engels say: "The executive of the modem state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" (1976: 486). Instrumental control is exercised in many ways, "ideological" and otherwise. State personnel share bourgeois ideology and therefore act in the interest of the bourgeoisie. This is indicated in the class background and affiliation of the personnel of the state and also of those directly involved in their private capacities in the formulation and implementation of state policies (Miliband,
1977: 68; Jessop, 1990: 145). As Miliband says, the state personnel at the commanding heights of state branches "have tended to belong to the economically dominant class. And
29 where state personnel are not bourgeois by class origin they are later recruited into it by virtue of their education, connections, and way of life" (1977:69)
It is, however, not enough to be represented merely ideologically a la Miliband — as it was discussed above. It is also important that (e.g.) capitalists control the state materially and directly: they have legislative seats, they advise the government, sit on commissions and regulatory boards, make decisions on behalf of the state, present (even write) actual bills for legislative consideration, fund political parties, and so on (see Mollenkopf, 1975).3
The merit of the instrumentalist approach as exemplified by (e.g.) stamocap theory and also by "power structure research" is that it reveals the reality of instrumental control of the state, and has generated much research on the actual relations between the state and capitalists (see Mollenkopf 1975). By doing this, this theory also contributes to de-mystifying the libera] view of the state as class-neutral. Thus it contributes to "the development of revolutionary will" (Oilman, 1982:45). However, the concept of instrumental utilization of the state does not satisfactorily explain the class nature of the state (Poulantzas, 1978: 13).
The theory has been criticized on conceptual and empirical grounds. I will first discuss conceptual criticisms.
2 It is the State Monopoly Capitalism ("stamocap") theory that takes instrumentalist control farthest. According to "stamocap" theory, competition between capitalists necessarily leads to the centralization and concentration of capital and hence to the development of monopoly capital. Monopoly capitalism becomes state monopoly capitalism as monopolies and the state are fused together. It is marked by a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. So state intervention is necessary to offset this tendency, and may include the nationalization of basic industries, state provision of basic services, the creation of a large market for commodities, etc. State intervention is possible because it is an instrument of the dominant monopolies, as can be seen in the class background and class affiliation of state personnel, etc. [For a discussion on stamocap theory, see Poulantzas (1978:129); Camoy (1984:128)]
30 First, the theory does not recognize that to act in the general interest of capital, the
state must be able to act against the particular interest of capitalists. This means that the state
should have more autonomy from direct capitalist control than this approach allows (Block,
1987b)3.
Second, snce there are conflicts between interests of particular capitalists and those
o f capital in general, a particular policy formulated by a specific (group of) capitalist(s)
through the instrumental use of the state does not prove that it would be unambiguously
favorable to capital in general (Jessop, ibid: 146). In addition, with growing globalization of
capital (Bina and Yaghmaian, 1991; Baker, 1978), it will be difficult to associate the national
state with national capital. Since capitalists can move across the globe, the need for
instrumental use of the state in a particular country may not be strong.
Third, capitalists may involve themselves in how the state works, but whether or not
they do so is contingent. To the extent that they are locked into a particular state's jurisdiction, to the extent, that is, they have not been able to, or cannot, hedge their bets
against state policy by (e.g.) spreading risks spatially and sectorally, they have incentives for
involvement that more footloose/more diverse capitals do not have.
Further, and perhaps most importantly the use of state power cannot be "decisively"
determined by the class background and affiliation of the state elite, for "state power reflects
the interaction between state elite and the circumstances in which it must act"
(Jessop, 1990:150; also see Giddens, 1981:219). As, we will see later, the state has its own
3 Miliband himself says, the state acts on behalf of the ruling class, but "it does not for most part act at its behest" (ibid.: 74; italics added), because, the state enjoys high degree of autonomy, so that it can manage what Marx calls "the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" .
31 incentive to pursue pro-capital policies without the direct participation of the capitalist class
(for, it depends on accumulation for its own revenue); although, whether the state will be successful in this is something different. Thus, the most important theoretical flaw in this theory is that it ignores structural constraints on the state.
The instrumentalist theory can be criticized on the following empirical grounds. First, there is a wide variation in, and hence no necessary unity among, the social backgrounds of state personnel and of economic spokes-persons(e.g. pro-capitalist intellectuals) of the ruling class. This is especially true given that, parts of the state apparatus — often the higher positions in it ~ can be and have been in the hands of members of the dominated class(es) (see
Alavi, 1982). Bourgeoisie itself may not occupy important positions in the state; for example, throughout most of the 19th century, in capitalist Britain "the whole business of government
... remained the guaranteed domain of the landed aristocracy", not of the bourgeoisie (Marx in Miliband, 1977: 70). Given all this, any coherent policy in the long-term interest of the capitalist class emerging through the instrumental use of the state seems unlikely. In particular, the "stamocap" theory, which exemplified instrumentalism, came under attack as social democratic governments in Europe were elected and a crude identification of the state with interests of monopoly capital could not be sustained.
Second, there is a low correlation between class origin and affiliation on the one hand and views on specific political issues of interest to capital on the other (Jessop, ibid), so that as Miliband himself realizes, the class bias of the state is not decisively determined by the social origins of its leading personnel (Miliband,1977:71).
32 Third, H is empirically true that bourgeois-led states have pursued policies including pro-labor reforms that capital does not always approve of (ibid:71), and this shows that the state cannot be a tool of capital, acting "at its behest". For example, Marx considered the Ten
Hours Act as a victory of "the political economy of labor over the political economy of property" (in Miliband, 1983a: 16). One can argue that such reforms are mere concessions given through the state by capital to labor in order to coopt it. But as Gold et. al. rightly say,
"even when such reforms are ultimately co-optive, to treat all reforms as the result of an instrumentalist use of the state is to deny the possibility of struggle over reforms" (ibid:35; see also Esping-Andersen, 1976).4
n. STRUCTURALIST THEORY OF THE STATE
In the structuralist theory, state's class character is examined not in terms of who controls the state — as in the instrumentalist theory — but in terms of the constraints on state's actions imposed by the capitalist class structure. Miliband, having admitted in his (1970) paper that he should perhaps have stressed the structural constraints on the state in his early work more than he did (p.57), says in his classic Marxism and Politics (1977) that "The question is not one of purpose or attitude [of the state elite] but of'structural constraints'" because: (i) the socio-economic system forms the contexts of the political system and state action and (ii) purpose and attitude, etc. "are themselves greatly affected by that socio-
4 Poulantzas argues, "the political and economic struggles of the dominated classes impose ... [reforms] on the capitalist state" (1968:191; also 1978:140). That this is true is "often revealed by a hostility between the state and the dominant class", which cannot be explained by the instrumentalist theory (1968:285; Burawoy, 1982:S17). Hence "the state is not a class instrument, but rather the state of a society divided into classes" (ibid).
33 economic context, so that what appears 'reasonable* by way of state action (or non-action) to power-holders will normally be in tune with the 'rationality1 and requirements of the socio economic system itself.." (p. 93).
State action, broadly speaking, can be political and economic. So structuralist theory can be of two types: "political structuralism" (e.g. early Poulantzas) and "economic structuralism" (e.g. Altvater), and these emphasize political and economic fiuictions of the state respectively.5 Besides, analysis of state-form (the fact that the state is separate from the society, to the extent it is) is an important part of these two approaches. I will analyze these separately.
A. POLITICAL STRUCTURALISM
This approach is evident in the works of the early Poulantzas. He establishes the fact that the separation of the state from society (particularly, from the economic relations) exists by virtue of the nature of the capitalist structure: capitalism is characterized by "The separation of direct producers from the means of production" (1968:129). This means that direct political power does not have to be exercised in order to appropriate surplus labor from direct producers. This "produces the specific autonomy of the political and the economic"
(1968: 129; see also Wood, 1981).
5 This means that the early Poulantzas, in contrast to what most discussions of state theory suggest, does not exhaust structuralist analysis.
34 Having established the fact of the separation of the state from the economic — this fact is indicated by the term "state-form" in the works of other writers (e.g. Holloway and
Picciotto, 1978) — Poulantzas explains the nature of state action. ”[T]he state is precisely the factor of cohesion of a social formation and the factor of reproduction of the conditions of production of a system" (1969:73). Maintaining the unity of a social formation divided into classes is its "global role". This role "corresponds to the political interest of the dominant class" (1968:54) and conditions its other functions including the economic (e.g. creating conditions to counter the falling rate of profit; the management/ reproduction of labor power)
(1978: 44; 54, 187).
Crucial to Poulantzas* concept of the class-character of the state is his discussion of how the state functions differentially for different classes. With regard to the dominated classes, its function "is to prevent their political organization" (Poulantzas, 1968: 188; 1978:
127). It does this by presenting itself to the working class as representing the general interests
(of juridically created citizens, not c/ay-s-members) (ibid.: 133).6 This notion of the general interest is not, however, trickery but a real fact: "namely that this state ... gives to the economic interest of certain dominated classes guarantees which may even be contrary to the short-term economic interests of dominant classes, but which are compatible with their political interests and their hegemonic domination" (ibid.: 190-91). Making this guarantee,
says Poulantzas, the state aims precisely at the political disorganization of the dominated
6 One implication of the state being separate from the economic is "the institutionalized fixing of the agents as juridical objects" (ibid.: 128). For example, an employee of a factory is decomposed politically into a "citizen" and economically into a "worker". This makes it possible for the state to present itself as protector of the general interest, conceals from the juridical agents their class character in their economic struggle, and thus helps in the disorganization of the dominated classes.
35 classes, in that the econom ic concessions indirectly prevent the dominated classes from attacking the p o litica l basis of exploitation by the dominant class, i.e. state power.
With regard to the dominant classes, however, the state's role is different. The bourgeoisie cannot realize its hegemony over the dominated classes because of: internal divisions within it and consequent lack of its political unity; rise of organized political struggle of dominated classes, etc. (Poulantzas, 1968 284; see also Draper 1977:323). So "the state ... takes charge of the bourgeois's political interest" (1968:284) and tries to organize them into a power bloc which "constitutes a contradictory unity of politically dominant classes and fractions under the protection of the hegemonic fraction" (1968:137, 190, 239).
To perform these two types of function with respect to the dominant and dominated classes as discussed above, the state has to be relatively autonomous from dominant classes and fractions, says Poulantzas. Relative autonomy "allows the state to intervene not only to arrange compromises vis a vis dominated classes, which, in the long run, are useful for the actual economic interest of the dominant classes or factions [e.g. absorption of surplus of monopoly production]; but also... to intervene against the long term economic interest of one or other fraction of the dominant class: for such compromises and sacrifices are sometimes necessary for the realization of their political class interests" (Poulantzas, 1968: 284-85). In short, relative autonomy does not reduce the classness of the state but makes it possible for the state to play its class role in an appropriately flexible way (Miliband, 1977:87). Yet, this autonomy does not authorize the dominated classes to effectively participate in state power nor cede parcels of state power to them (Poulantzas, 1968:288). For the state is not a thing which can be parcellized (ibid), rather it is a relation of power. Thus relative autonomy of the state is necessary because it allows the state to carry out its political functions. But what makes relative autonomy possible? Relative autonomy is argued to be due to an equilibrium of the principal classes (see Poulantzas, 1968:260); Engels writes that "By way of exception ... periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power ... acquires for the moment, a certain degree of independence o f both” (in Miliband, 1977:86). But Poulantzas argues that the state can have a relative autonomy even without class equilibrium. This relative autonomy, Poulantzas says in his response to Miliband and Laclau's criticisms of his work, has "two foundations": one in the structure, another in class struggle. "[T]he separation of the economic and the political provides the general framework ... for examination of the relative autonomy...". As he explains elsewhere: the state's relative autonomy vis a vis the dominant classes or fractions is a reflection of the relative autonomy of the instances (the economic, the political, etc.) of a capitalist formation (1968: 257); it is structurally given. But its concrete form depends on
"the precise conjuncture of the class struggle at any time" (1976:9).
To elaborate further, the capitalist state, in the long run, can only correspond to the political interest of the dominant class(es); this is the negative limit to state autonomy. But within this limit, Poulantzas, in his response to Miliband's question about the nature of autonomy, says that the degree, the form of relative autonomy (i.e. "how relative, how it is relative") depends on the precise conjuncture of the class struggle (configuration of the power bloc, degree of hegemony of the power bloc, relation between capital and labor) (1976:10;
1968: 289; also Miliband, 1983b:67).
37 I will point out four main problems in the works of Poulantzas. First, Poulantzas seems to subscribe to a (structural-) functionalist explanation of the state (autonomy) — capital needs something to maintain the unity of the social formation, and particularly, of different fractions of the bourgeoisie (1968:284), and - lo and behold -- a relatively autonomous state comes into being to perform that necessary function.
Second, Poulantzas, especially in his early works, wrongly assumes that citizenship rights such as welfare and labor rights, franchise, etc. are automatically given by the separation of the political from the economic. In fact, given this separation, whether these rights exist are contingent; for, these rights, as Giddens (1981) has shown, have had to be fought for (see also Clarke, 1991).
Third, he considerably wwcferemphasizes economic functions of the state, especially in his early writings. Although he discusses some economic functions in his 1978 book, yet he notes: "they [economic functions] are not the primary functions" of the state (p. 52).
Finally, he does not have an adequate explanation for why the relatively autonomous state must perform the functions Poulantzas says it does, that is, organizing the ruling classes and disorganizing the dominated classes? For him, structural constraints on the state derive from the place of the state in the social structure; the state is constrained to be a class-state
"by reason of the system itself'. His (political) structuralist theory is most succinctly put forth in his widely-quoted 1969 article (p. 73): "[I]f the function of the State... and the interests of the dominant class ... coincide, it is by reason of the system itself: the direct participation of members of tbe ruling class in the State apparatus is not the cause but the effect, and moreover a chance and a contingent one, of this objective coincidence". If instrumental control by "members of the ruling class" is ruled out, then what are the mechanisms that constrain state actions? This is not quite clear. Others, particularly, economic structuralists, have tried to specify the nature of these constraints. I will now critically analyze their views.
B. ECONOMIC STRUCTURALISM
According to this approach, since the state is outside the sphere of productive activity, it is structurally forced to depend on the bourgeoisie for its survival.7 So, the state has a predisposition towards creating conditions for accumulation and capitalist profit: not to do so is to "sanction such mechanisms as the 'investment strike'" (Offe, 1984: 50), that can precipitate economic crisis and adversely affect the amount of'revenue'. Thus, the material concessions to the dominated classes on which the maintenance of democracy [which is the best shell of capitalism, as Lenin says (1977:17)] depends (see Lipset in Rueschemeyer et al,
1992:14), the salaries of state officials, the generation of employment without which there will be political crisis — all of these depend on accumulation. So the state has a structurally mandated need not to disrupt capitalist accumulation (Block, 1987b, 1987c; Hirsch, 1978,
Offe, 1984). Poulantzas ignores this economic dependence of the state on the hegemonic class. He says that the relation between the state and the hegemonic class or fraction does not derive "from a direct dependence of the state 'machine' on this class or fraction" (1968: 297).
7 But, as Marx asks, will the bourgeoisie pay the state just for nothing? He answers, "the bourgeoisie pay their state w ell... in order to be able without danger to pay (laborers) poorly..." (in Draper, 1977,192, italics added).
39 The economic structuralist approach is most exemplified by state derivation theory which I will examine in some detail.8 This theory, inspired by Marx's Capital, is not only a reaction to "stamocap" theory which denies any autonomy to the state but is also a critique of Poulantzas' politicist tendency. It derives (i) the needs for, and (ii) the limits to, state functions, as well as (iii) the form of the state (i.e. its particular existence as an impersonal official form of class domination alongside and outside the society) from the laws of motion of capitalism (Holloway and Picciotto, 1978:19; Jessop, 1990: 35, 86, 252). I will discuss two most important types of state derivation theory.
Works of Muller and Neuss (who started the debate), Altvater, among others belong to the first type of this theory. According to them, the necessity of the form of the state as a separate institution is derived from the nature of the relations between capitalists. Altvater, who seems to see capital only as an economic system, views the state as an ideal collective capitalist which furthers the general interests of capital. Capitalism fails to ensure the reproduction of the conditions of its existence for two reasons. First, capitalists competing with each other in pursuit of surplus value will not produce certain conditions of production including labor power because such production is not profitable -- this point is also stressed by Muller and Neuss (1978:38) and Aumeeruddy, et al. (1978). So, the state must socialize the production of certain of its needs if accumulation is to take place (O'Connor, 1973:6-9;
Offe in Keane, 1984:14-18). Second, capitalist production driven by competition for maximum valorization of capital might threaten the very existence of the whole society (e.g.
8 The neo-Ricardian approach is another economic structuralist approach. It focusses on how the state influences the distribution of income between the classes, and how it intervenes in the economy to maintain or restore profit at the expense of wages. See Jessop (1990) for a good discussion of this.
40 destruction of natural resources, of reserve of labor, etc.). In Capital, Marx says that the state had to "curb capital's drive towards a limitless draining away of labor-power" otherwise, the blind desire for profit would seize "hold of the vital force of the nation at its roots" (Marx,
1977a, 348; also see Wetherly, 1992). Since capital cannot reproduce the conditions of its own reproduction for the above reasons, the state performs four Junctions to preserve capitalism, says Altvater. These functions are: provision of general material conditions (e.g. infrastructure); establishing and guaranteeing general legal relations; the regulation of the capital-labor relation, if necessary by repression; and safeguarding the existence and expansion o f national capital on the world market (ibid: 42).
This approach rightly criticizes "stamocap" theory which treats state and capital as fused together, and argues instead that state functions cannot "suspend the actions and existence of the many individual capitals" and the antagonism between them (ibid). So, the state is only an ideal, fictitio u s capital, not a real material total capitalist. But it wrongly assumes that the state has the knowledge and the power to facilitate realization of capital's needs, and also says little about the state as a form of class domination (Holloway and
Picciotto, 1978: 21-22).
The second type of state derivation theory is evident in the works of (e.g.) Hirsch
(1978). Hirsch makes several points: 1. The particular state fo rm is to be derived not from the necessity of realizing the general interest in an anarchic society marked by relations o f competition between capitalists (as the first approach says) but from the nature of the social relations o f domination, the exploitation of labor. Capitalism ('free' and 'equal' exchange) requires that the means of force be separated from the immediate process of production -- all barriers to free and equal exchange be destroyed — and "localized in a social instance raised above the economic reproduction process: the creation of formal bourgeois freedom and equality and the establishment of a state monopoly of force" (1978:61). 2. It is possible for the state to carry out some general functions because of its separateness from society, and necessary because general conditions for accumulation cannot be created by individual capitals (ibid: 66) This latter, for me, is a most central aspect, if not the only aspect, of a defensible theory of the capitalist state. 3. The state's own material basis depends on accumulation; this is manifest in direct holders of state power supporting accumulation. There is therefore a pressure on the state to act in the interests of the ruling class even in the absence of any direct influence on it by that class. 4. Contradictions in accumulation resulting in the falling rate of profit provide the context for the dynamics of capitalist development and of the state. The falling rate of profit, as a manifestation of the contradictory character of capitalism, and the resultant need for counter-measures are the key to analysis of the state functions
(1978:97). 5. Unlike other state derivationists, Hirsch doubts whether the state can act in the interest of capital at all, for capitalist contradictions, which cannot be resolved in the long run, are represented in the state. Since it is separate from the sphere of production, it only reacts to accumulation crisis. Thus, as Holloway and Picciotto (1978) note, Hirsch shows limits to the method of deriving state functions from capital's needs.
One most important merit of this approach is that, by emphasizing state's economic role, it becomes complementary to Poulantzas' structuralism that emphasizes state's political role. Yet, it suffers from several problems. It is too often assumed that there is only one logic of capital, and hence one set of imperatives at a given point in time, and that the state
42 som ehow knows and meets the needs of capital. But in fact, the interests of capital are not wholly pre-given (structurally determined). Rather these must be articulated in and through what Jessop (1990) calls "accumulation strategies". These must advance the immediate interests of the different fractions of capital and must secure the long-term interests of the hegemonic fraction which must, in turn, sacrifice some of its short-term economic interests.
Economic structuralism then not only ignores the scope for different accumulation strategies but also the room for manoeuvre available to state managers and to capitalists (ibid. 253-254).
Second, state functions (and forms) are directly explained only in terms of the needs of capital. This implies economic reductionism.
Third, and related to the above two points, given the contradictory needs of capital, even the most rational state structure cannot guarantee rational policies for capital (Esping-
Andersen, op. cit.: 215), and thus state form may problematize its functions. This is not recognized except, of course, by Hirsch. The idea that form problematizes function is an important one. This means that state form — the institutional separation of the state from the economy — poses limits to the state's ability to intervene in the interest of capital (Offe in
Keane, 1984). Also, Offe argues, as the state invests more resources for realizing conditions for the reproduction of capitalism, it indirectly withdraws capital from the circuit of
(productive) capital. State investment has a decommodifying effect, whereas capital is a commodity relation (ibid.). Limits to the state's ability to reproduce capitalism are also seen in what O'Connor calls the fiscal crisis of the state created by "The contradiction between the socialization of costs and the private appropriation of profits" (1973:9).
43 Further, while the economic structuralist approach including that of Hirsch emphasizes the capitalist nature of the state (in that it is under pressure to reproduce conditions of capitalist accumulation), it ignores the fact that capitalist states are of different types: democratic, welfare state, decommodified to some degree, the degree to which small property is swept away by an aggressive primitive accumulation. The nature of this sort of variation depends on (e.g.) class struggle. The class bias of the state can vary to some degree without a particular capitalism failing to reproduce itself (see Wright, 1978).
I will now point out merits and demerits of the structuralist, approach as such. Taken as a whole structural analysis has much to recommend it. It provides, for instance, a rich discussion of (i) how the relative autonomy of the state protects the interests of the dominant class, (ii) the functional necessity of such a state, and (iii) the constraints under which any party in power or state bureaucracy (no matter how sympathetic it is to the dominated classes) must act (Gold et. al. 1975: 38; Oilman, 1982:45). Yet, structuralist approach can be subjected to many criticisms. The most important general criticism is that structuralists tend to wa&remphasize (if not, totally ignore) agency, particularly that o f the dominated class in class struggle; and also that conditioned by the autonomous interests of state actors
(elected/appointed officials). For example, the structuralism o f the early Poulantzas "deprives
'agents' of any freedom of choice and manoeuvre" (Miliband, 1977:73; see also his 1970: 57), when in fact (e.g.) "governments can and do press against the 'structural constraints' by which they are beset" (Miliband, 1977). This theory does not specify haw constraining the constraints are (ibid:73, Block, 1987c: 83). Although the state is considered to be relatively autonomous, the emphasis is more on relative, than on autonomy. So we will now discuss two more approaches to the state that take agency more seriously: the class struggle and state-centered approaches respectively.
m . CLASS STRUGGLE APPROACHES
The relation between the state and class struggle is looked at in many different ways, leading to three important approaches. First, there is a "political approach" in which the political importance of class struggle for the state is emphasized; second, there is an
"economic approach" that deals with the relation between class struggle and accumulation; and third, there is a "structural-class struggle approach" that takes into account the relation between class struggle on the one hand and economic and state structures on the other.
A POLITICAL APPROACH
Here the state role is determined by the changing balance of class forces. Classes are considered as classes-in-themselves, i.e. purely in economic terms. The changing balance of class forces is considered in isolation from the constraints imposed by the laws of accumulation (Jessop, 1990: 88-89). Class interests are assumed to be transformed into corresponding political outputs of the neutral state in an undistorted fashion and in an automatic way.9
Poulantzas, who later ((1976) admitted that he underemphasized class struggle in his early work, offers a more complex version of this class struggle approach. I will discuss
9 The neo-Ricardian analysis of the role of the state in distributional conflicts (e.g. those over wages) (as opposed to those based on production relations) signify this approach: here state action is traced to pressures on profitability stemming from trade union struggles (ibid.: 31-32,90).
45 elements of bis class struggle theory as they exist both in his early as well as his later works.
For him, state functions are examined as reflections of a complex parallelogram of economic, political and ideological forces rather than of the immediate economic interests of the dominant class, because "The capitalist state ... does not directly represent the dominant class's economic interest, but their political interest ..." (Poulantzas: 1968:190). Crucial to his class struggle approach is his discussion of how state policy in favor of the long-term interest of the bourgeoisie is established. The answer lies in his well-known insight, provided particularly in his later works, that the state is not a thing/instrument nor a subject, but a relation. More precisely, the state is a material condensation of a relation of power between classes and class fractions, a relationship which is expressed in the state’s own form
(1978:128-29;1976:12-13); the state is always constituted-divided by class contradictions
(1978:132). This means that: on the one hand, different branches of the state including regional ones "are often the pre-eminent representatives [and seats] of the diverging interests of one or several fractions of the power bloc", although subject to the unity of the state power of the hegemonic fraction" (ibid.: 133; 142; parenthesis from his (1976) article), so that state policy emerges out of the collision of many micro-policies of the different branches representing the different fractions; it is "continually constructed of accelerations and brakings, about-turns and hesitations, and changes of course... it is the necessary expression of the structure of the state" (1978: 135-36). But on the other hand, the examination of state policy cannot be totally confined to analysis of the power bloc and its constituent fractions, because state policy also depends on the relation between the state and the dominated
46 classes10. For state power is "founded on an unstable equilibrium of compromise":
"compromise" means that state power can take into account the economic interests of some dominated classes; "equilibrium” means that while economic sacrifices are real and provide the ground for an equilibrium they do not challenge the political power which sets precise limits to that equilibrium; "unstable" means that the limits of the equilibrium are set by the political conjuncture (class struggle, etc.) (Poulantzas, 1968:192; see Gramsci, 1971:182).
The relevance of the idea of "unstable equilibrium of compromise" is particularly shown in the necessity for concessions to be given to the dominated classes, who are present in the state
"essentially in the form of centers of opposition to the power of the dominant classes" (1978:
142), even against the will of the latter. This is why the state is a condensation of class forces, not a tool o f one single class.
I will point out two implications of Poulantzas class struggle theory. 1. State policy has a contradictory character, and this stems from the "contradictory measures that different classes and fractions, through their specific presence in the state, manage to have integrated into state policy (1978:135). 2. Class struggle over state policies implies that there can be a gradation of "classness" in state policies reflecting class struggle. This idea is reinforced in
Esping-Anderson et. aTs important contribution on a typology of those state interventions that emerge in response to political class struggles (1976). They say that the object of working class struggle is not policies that are either pro-worker or anti-worker, but policies which vary in the very degree of their class-bias. For example, while both minimum wage law and
10 The fact that state policies are subject to struggle by the dominated classes receives less attention in his works than struggle by capitalist fractions. More on this later.
47 adequate guaranteed income for all workers are "commodified circulation" policies, the former causes minimum disturbance to commodity relations, but the latter is clearly a greater threat to capital's interest since it threatens labor's separation from the means of subsistence
(ibid.). So policies that are struggled over have varying classness.
B. ECONOMIC APPROACH
While Poulantzas as a representative of political structuralism has dealt with the relations of the state to class struggle, Hirsch, who is known for his economic structuralist views, also deals with this issue. He claims that the theoretical derivation of functions from the laws of accumulation says nothing about whether and in what form functions result from these determinants. One has to examine how objective tendencies assert themselves through the mediation of such factors as concrete class struggles (ibid:65;83-84). For example, welfare-policies of the state are a necessary response to the increasing political strength of workers.
These two approaches to the relation between class struggle and the state are not without problems. First, Clarke has criticized Poulantzas and his followers for taking what he calls a fractionalist approach when dealing with class struggle. Poulantzas neglects capital-
as-a-whole (Clarke, 1978) and emphasizes existence of particular capitals. But these particular capitals cannot exist independently of capital-in-general or of the exploitative class relation between capital and labor. He complains that, for Poulantzas, capital-as-a-whole exists only politically, only through the state which organizes different fractions of capital into a whole, a bloc. So Poulantzas has "no concept of capital-in-general independent of the state” (Clarke, 1978:46). This overemphasis on capitalist class fractions has led, in turn, to an under emphasis on class struggle between capital and labor at the level of the state. Indeed,
Poulantzas writes,"The contradictions ... reflected within the state are those among the dominant classes and fractions and between these and their supporting classes, far more than the contradictions between the power bloc and the working class. The latter are basically expressed in the bourgeois state 'at a distance'..." (in Clarke, ibid:47-48).
Second, in the structuralist treatment of class struggle by Poulantzas, Hirsch and others, class struggle is seen as constrained by, and confined within, the structure. As a result there is little indication that class struggle also can affect/transform the structure (this is more than getting some economic concessions) that constrains it (Holloway, 1991: 97;Wright,
1978: 21). More specifically, for Hirsch and other structuralists, the separation of the political from the economic is a once-and-for all historical event so that the state once established as an institution separate from the economic is self-reproducing (Clarke, ibid). For them, class struggle is confined within the limits defined by the structure of the state, as if the fact of the state existing as a separate institution from the economic is not under attack. As a reaction against this reification of structure and also against the functionalism of structural analysis, a new class struggle approach to the state is developing. I will now analyze this approach.
C. STRUCTURAL-CLASS STRUGGLE APPROACH
Holloway and Picciotto (1977) have developed what they call a materialist (not economic, not political!) theory of the state; it may be noted here in passing that Jessop
(1990) wrongly considers their work as structural-functionalist work of the type Hirsch
49 produces. Holloway and Picciotto note that the separation of the political from the economic
(e.g. the autonomy of the state) is both real and illusory. It is real in that it has a material foundation: non-necessity of extra-economic coercion in the sphere of capitalist exploitation has made state autonomy possible (this point is also made by Hirsch and Poulantzas). It is illusory because of its ideological character: the autonomization of the state vis a vis the economic is part of commodity fetishization which conceals the class character of social relations between capital and labor. This is so in the sense that the inequality of the economic relation (i.e. inequality between capital and labor) is transformed into the fantastic form of political equality between citizens before the state (ibid.: 80). In turn, the survival of the state and therefore of capital, and the separation of the political from the economic depends on the
(outcomes of) class struggle. On the one hand, the ruling class struggles to maintain the separation of the polity from the economic by channeling the conflicts arising from the sphere of production (the sphere of substantive inequality) into the fetishized form of bourgeois political processes (the sphere of formal equality); on the other hand, the working class straggles to challenge capital politically (e.g. against property rights that the state protects) and economically (e.g. for higher wages).
Since the state is a form of capitalist relation, the history of the development of the state is rooted in the history of capitalist development. In particular it has to be seen in the context of: (i) the establishment of pre-conditions for capitalist accumulation (e.g. the state creating conditions for the establishment of capitalism -- primitive accumulation) [(see also
Aumeeruddy et al. (1978) and Bina and Yaghmaian (1991)]; and (ii) the history of contradictions in capitalist accumulation (ibid.81, 86). And this history, in turn, is the history of class struggle.11 Hie major problem in the Holloway-Picciotto argument is that some times it tends to dilute the importance of class struggle by looking at the state only in terms of economic contradiction in the reproduction of capitalism.
It is Simon Clarke who moves the class struggle theory even further. The raison d'etre of the state is in class struggle: "If there were no class struggle...there would be no state...
Thus it is the class struggle that is the mediating term between the abstract analysis of capitalist reproduction and the concept of the state" (1983:119; see also Cohen, 1988:9). This essential relation between the state and class struggles as posited by Clarke is also noted by
Engels: there has to be a specialized institution of coercion in the form o f the state to maintain "by force the conditions of existence and domination of the ruling class against the subject class" (Engels in Draper, 1977, 245). State power as a power standing above society was necessary "for the purpose of keeping the conflicts between classes "within the bounds of'order*", so that conflicts might not consume the classes and the society in sterile struggle.12
It is not just the origin, but also the continued reproduction of the state as separate from the economy which depends on class struggle, Clarke argues echoing Holloway and
Picciotto. Based on studies of tenants' struggles in Britain in the 1970s and on Holloway and
11 For example, consider the "stage" of capitalism characterized by the appropriation of absolute surplus value. Contradiction in this stage of capitalism is indicated by the fact that the inequality in the sphere of production continually undermines the appearance of equality in the sphere of circulation (capital and labor as commodity owners are equal); and this is exposed by the struggle over the length of the working day by labor. The state in response to the struggle tries to resolve the conflict within the sphere of exchange; hence some social legislations.
12 Marx also says that "At the same pace at which the progress of modem industry developed, widened and intensified the class antagonism between capital and labor, the state power assumed more and more the character of the national power of capital over labor, of a public force organized for social enslavement, of an engine of class despotism" (1977b: 540).
51 Picciotto’s theoretical work, Clarke says that property rights of the ruling class are enshrined in the law, which is enforced by the state; the political power of the ruling class is derived from these property rights. So when the dominated class struggles against economic exploitation, that struggle is also directed against the state that defends property rights. "The tenant experiences his or her exploitation not simply as economic, but as inseparably economic and political, with the threat of the bailiff and eviction standing behind the landlord"
(Clarke, ibid.32). This means that the economic and the political are combined in the immediate experience of exploitation and class struggle. It is the state that reinforces the separation of the economic from the political, and that is how it responds to class struggles.
For example, when tenants struggle against exploitation, "[T]he state seeks to enforce the rights of property on the dominated classes "individually through the courts, fragmenting collective resistance to the social power of property and ensuring that such power will be imposed on dominated classes individually through the 'market', decomposing class forces,
and recomposing them as 'interest groups' based on tenure categories" (1991:33), so that tenants are prevented from struggling as a class. Whenever class struggle tends to overstep the constitutional boundaries of politics and law, and to challenge the rights of property, the
state makes 'economic' concessions in the attempt to re-establish the rule of money and law and to restore the separation of the two spheres; this is how the state as separate from the
economic is reproduced. This means that class struggle takes place not just over policies (e.g.
some economic benefits). It also takes place over (i) the fact of the separation of the political
(i.e. the very existence of the capitalist state); and (ii) the form of that separation (e.g. how much separation -- the extent to which it intervenes in the economic). And both these (i and ii) are not constant features of the state, as structuralists wrongly think. While the state reinforces/imposes the separation of the political from the economic, the dominated classes tend to fuse them together in the manner suggested above (ibid.; see also Esping-Andersen, et al. 1976:191; Nagels, 1986; Rothstein, 1990). To reinforce the above points: it is true that capital and the state as structures constrain class struggle; but Clarke, unlike Poulantzas and other structuralists, does not think that these structures are permanent, rather they are subject to, and reproduced through, class struggle.
"The wage contract between individual worker and capitalist is a very solid reality if the capitalist has the power to enforce that contract, but dissolves into pure illusion if the workers are able to counterpose their collective power to that of capital ... [Similarly] The 'majesty of the law* can inspire awe when it confronts the isolated individual, while becoming an object of ridicule in the face of collective resistance" (Clarke, 1991:45)
So one important point that emerges from the above is that the state as relatively autonomous of the economic is not automatically reproduced. It is reproduced in and through class struggle.1*
This idea of dialectical relation between the state and class struggle is very well elaborated in Wright's works, which are applicable to both capitalist and non-capitalist states.
Wright's insights, which are immersed in his discussion on Marxist methodology and therefore have to be carefully "gleaned", reinforce ideas of those such as Clarke and others. I will very briefly discuss these. There are two main points Wright makes. 1. Class struggle is conditioned by social structures including economic and state structures. The "economic structure establishes limits" within which forms of class struggle (and forms of the state as
13 See Bonefeld (1993) for a discussion that is critical of but also complementary to Clarke's ideas. For lack of space I cannot discuss Bonefeld.
53 well) can vary (p. 17); for example, under a feudal economic structure, characterized by fusion of the political and the economic, a democratic state and class struggle for socialism are not possible. But a range of other struggles (grain riots, land invasions etc.) is possible.
But which of these struggles will in fact take place will be determined by the state. 2. Class struggle as influenced in the manner suggested in (1) above by economic structure and the state, in turn affects/conditions the latter. There are at least two ways in which class struggle does this. 2a. transformative conditioning: To paraphrase Wright, the state which constrains/enables class struggle is at the same time transformed by class struggle (p. 21).
Class struggle by transforming the state can (e.g.) make it fail to reproduce the economic structure. For example, as one of Wright's collaborative works shows, successful class struggle for state legislation foradequate guaranteed income to all workers (an income sufficient to undermine the commodity status of labor power) can undermine capitalism (in
Esping-Andersen, 1976:202). 2b. mediating conditioning: class struggle mediates in the relation between (i) state form (i.e. bureaucratic structure of the state) and state content, and also between (ii) the state and the economic structure, (i) Class struggle can condition or mediate in the way the bureaucratic structure of the state determines the actual activity of the state (e.g. actual policy), so that "the identical structures of the state can produce different policies depending on the relationship of class struggle to the state". For example, when class struggle is outside the state, "bureaucratic structures may effectively select state policies which optimally serve the interests of capital". But if "class struggles occur within the state apparatus itself - when civil service workers and teachers become unionized, state employees go on strike ...[,] tbe same formal state structure can select very different sorts of state interventions" (p.24). (ii) Further, class struggle mediates in the relation between the state and economic structure: "The extent to which a given state structure is reproductive of economic relations may be conditioned by the kinds of class struggles in the society. Where class struggle is very intense and very politicized, bourgeois democratic structures may prove quite unreproductive",14 but "where class struggle is very economistic and apolitical, the identical structures may function very reproductively" (Wright, ibid. 24-25).
As the above class struggle approaches to the state show, there is a dialectical relation between the state and class struggle, and this idea is a definite advance on more structuralist approaches to the state. Class struggle approaches also give due importance to human agency, particularly, to dominated classes. These approaches open up opportunities for looking at the
state from a geographical standpoint. Given that classes are also spatial categories in that
(e.g.) the level of lower-class organization varies over space, the degree of “classness” of policies and the outcome of these policies will vary accordingly. I will develop this argument
at a more concrete level and in greater detail when 1 discuss the Indian state in the next
chapter.
In addition to class struggle approaches, there is another set of approaches to the state
- state-centered approaches - that also give due importance to agency, and in this case, that
of state-actors. These approaches emphasize autonomy of the state and state actors. I turn
to these now.
14 This resonates with Marx's idea that universal suffrage, which, as Giddens (1981) says, was fought for by the working class, "forces the political rule of the bourgeoisie into democratic conditions, which at every moment help the hostile classes to victory and jeopardize the very foundations of bourgeoisie society" (Marx quoted in Jessop, 1990:170).
55 IV. STATE-CENTERED APPROACHES
As we argued above, instrumentalist theory denies any autonomy to the state: the state is a mere tool. The structuralist theory while saying that the state is relatively autonomous, it has nonetheless to function according to the political (Poulantzas) or economic (Altvater etc.) needs of capital. In other words, the state is socially determined in these society-centered approaches to the state. It is against this that some non-Marxist scholars have argued for a state-centered approach, which in turn, has elicited responses from Marxists that indicate a gradual convergence of ideas about autonomy of the state and of state-actors.
According to the state-centered theory of the state (autonomy), the state is an institutional ensemble in its own right, independent of the society. For SkocpoL, who criticizes neo-Marxist state theories for their "deeply embedded society-centered assumptions"
(1985:5), the state is an autonomous actor. This autonomy exists if: "States conceived as organizations claiming control over territories and people may formulate and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the demand or interest of social groups, classes, or society"
(ibid.:9). She attributes this autonomy to factors such as: state's specific interest by virtue of its insertion into an international state system, so in the event of a threat to the state, state elites take initiatives to protect sovereignty; state's unique responsibilities for maintaining public order which "spur state-initiated reforms" (p.9), and the activities of state managers having weak ties to dominant social groups. Evidently, state managers have their self- interests in initiating state actions.
56 For Mann (1984) the origins of autonomous state power are diverse. He refers in particular to the following sources of state autonomy: (a) the necessity in all societies for a monopolistic enforcement of rules, especially those relevant to the protection of life and property (p. 195); (b) the multiplicity of functions15 which are undertaken most efficiently by a centra] state — this idea resonates with Douglas North's idea of utility-maximizing state (see
North, 1986:250) — and these functions in turn bring the state into a relation with many different groups between whom the state consequently has a room for multiple manoeuvres, which are a source of state power (p. 198)16 and (c) the territorial-centrality of the state:unlike groups/actors in the civil society, state's resources "radiate authoritatively outward from a center but stop at defined territorial boundaries" (p. 198). For example, unlike General
Motors, which does not rule the territory around Detroit, although it rules the assembly of automobiles and life-chances of its employees, (Michigan) State exercises a general control over the territory under its jurisdiction (p. 199); autonomous power of the state ensues from this difference (p.201). By virtue of these three aspects of the state, "the state elite possesses an independence from civil society” (p. 201). State autonomy is invested "in the person of state elites" (ibid). The main point that emerges from Mann is that the state can do certain things that no other group can, and hence has autonomous power.
15 The four persistent types of functions are: maintenance of internal order, military defense/aggression, maintenance of communications and infrastructure, and economic redistribution domestically and internationally (Mann 1984:196-197). It may be noted here that, for Mann .maintenance of internal order includes protection of life and property.
16 This idea is akin to the Marxist idea of state relative autonomy as derived from an equilibrium of the classes, as discussed above.
57 The statist approach, particularly the one by Skocpol, has been found wanting conceptually and empirically. First, statists present "state" and "society" (especially, economy)
as separate and polar opposites, whereas "[SJtate and society are interdependent and
interpenetrate in a multitude of different ways..." (Block, 1987a:21). Statists also deny the
existence of classes and class struggles within the state (Cammack, 1989:263-264) and
outside it. An adequate state theory has to recognize its institutional specificity but must, says
Jessop (1990:25), also be a part of an adequate theory of society divided into classes. Akard
has noted that "to understand the capitalist state, it is necessary to bring the economy back
in [again]" (1986:90). Secondly, and relatedly, it is assumed that state managers' actions are
determined by their self-interests (salary, prestige, etc.), and that the state is a source of all
of these. But why does the state become the source of all these? I will argue that the answer
lies in the social determination of the nature of the state: the bureaucratic, and therefore
undemocratic, nature of the state-form, is a necessary feature of capitalism. This type of state-
form, unlike the Paris Commune type (Marx in Lenin, 1977:43-44), becomes a strategically
selective terrain which insulates the state from popular influence on, and surveillance over,
the state, and thus facilitates the appropriation of state rents (e.g. bribe), power, etc. by
officials. Therefore, if the reason why the state is a source of high income, power etc. of
officials lies in the class character of the state, how can their actions and interests be
independent of classes and of the society?
Third, and finally, the very criticism that the Marxist approach neglects the autonomy
of state actors (Skocpol, op cit) can be shown to be incorrect. Consider the following. For
some marxist theorists of the state, the state itself shapes class forces and/or shapes/changes
58 the balance of class forces so that some classes are favored at the expense of others.
Sometimes the state, as Poulantzas says, can even erect a class into the role of a socio economically dominant class and thus into that of a politically dominant class (1967:65). This is also supported by Engels who says that "The [Crimean] war has proved that Russia needed railways, steam engines ...[etc.]... And thus the government set about breeding a Russian capitalist class" (in Bardhan, 1984:35). To argue against the criticism of statists including
Skocpol that the Marxists do not recognize state actors' autonomy, I will examine some
Marxist works -- those o f Miliband, Offe, and the early Block — in which defensible state- centered arguments are made.
Miliband (1983b) says that there are two sets of impulses to state action: external
(class interests) and internal (those generated within the state). The latter are of two types: self-interests of state managers and their conception of the national interest. Since the capitalist state is a source of power, prestige, high salaries, etc. (ibid: 70), it can serve state managers' self-interests. Again, those who seek state power persuade themselves that their achievement of it and their continued hold on it are synonymous with the 'national interest', and whose service is their paramount interest. The two sets of impulses to state action — internal and external — are related in that state managers have been imbued with the belief— this is, for me, perhaps giving too much importance to ideology — that the national interest is bound up with the well-being of the capitalist enterprise. Hence, they have been attentive to capitalist interests (p. 71). Consequently the relation between state managers and capitalists is one of "partnership between two different, separate forces, linked to each other by many threads, yet each having its separate spheres of action" (p.72). The state is never a junior partner: the contradictions of capitalism and resultant class pressures and social tensions necessitate a more pronounced role for the state. But it has to act in the class context: "So long as a government works within it, so long does the partnership hold" (p. 73). Against
Skocpol, Miliband argues that there cannot be a state for itself, a state which is not a partner of anyone (p.74). It is difficult to see, he says, how there can he a state whose interests are in fundamental conflict with all classes or groups in the society, as Skocpol claims.
Like Miliband, Block also recognizes that state actors have their independent interests and powers. He says that "state power is sui generis, not reducible to class power" (1987c:
84). But this exercise of state power takes place in class-contexts. State managers are collectively interested in maximizing their power, prestige, and wealth, but within particular political rules of game given by a set of political institutions; for example, in a democracy, if they maximize their self-interest too much, that may jeopardize their chances of returning to power. On the other hand, the bourgeoisie or any other propertied class cannot survive without the state, so they have to seek a modus vivendi with state managers. This modus vivendi has been favorable to capital: state managers have been restrained from attacking private property and have implemented pro-capital policies.
Miliband's concept of "partnership" and Block's concept of capitalists' "modus vivendi" with state managers are similar to OfFe's concept o f "institutional self-interest", though the latter assigns more importance to the way in which the material content of state power is conditioned by accumulation (1984:121) than (e.g.) Miliband does. Offe writes:
"Since state power depends on a process of accumulation which is beyond its power to organize, every occupant of state power is basically interested in promoting those political conditions most conducive to private accumulation
60 ... [TJhe institutional self-interest of the state in accumulation is conditioned by the fact that the state is denied the power to control the flow of those resources which are nevertheless indispensable for the control of state power"( 1987:120)
Then, it may be argued, when/where the state itself is an owner of the means of production, as it does in many post-colonial countries, then the effectivity of its autonomy may be increased (see Hamilton, 1982: 27-28; Alavi,1972).
Ideas about state autonomy have been used in the geography literature in basically two ways. First: autonomy of the state has been looked at as autonomy of state managers at more local levels vis a vis state managers at higher territorial levels (e.g. federal level) (Fincher,
1981; Clark and Dear, 1984; Duncan and Goodwin, 1987). Second: state autonomy has been looked at in terms of the state's socially and spatially progressive policies (Klak, 1990). In this sense, the state has socio-spatial autonomy.
V. STATE THEORY: A GROWING CONVERGENCE OF IDEAS
In this section, in the way of summarizing the discussion, I will point out important areas of convergence between apparently dualistic approaches. The foregoing discussion contains tendencies towards convergence between at least three sets o f conceptual dualisms.
First, there is a growing convergence between instrumentalism and structuralism.
Consider just two examples. It was Miliband, criticized as an instrumentalist, who ingeniously interpreted Marx and Engels's statement that the state is "but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" (1976: 486); he argued that the existence of
"common affairs" assumed the existence of particular ones, and hence of a fractionalization of the capitalist class; this class needed a relatively autonomous state in order to manage its common affairs, thus suggesting that the structuralist concept of relative autonomy is embedded in the so-called instrumentalist concept of the state presented by Marx and Engels.
And it was none other than Poulantzas, the structuralist, for whom concepts of fractionalization of the capitalist class and state autonomy were important ingredients of state theory. He argued that since the bourgeoisie "sinks into fractional struggles and is unable to realize its political unity”, the state "takes charge... of the bourgeoisie's political interests [i.e. their unity and political hegemony over the society]"... But in order to do this, the capitalist state assumes a relative autonomy with regard to the bourgeoisie" (1968:284-285), Such autonomy allows the state to "arrange compromises vis a vis dominated classes" and "to intervene against the long-term economic interests of one or other fraction of the dominant class: for such compromises and sacrifices are sometimes necessary for the realization of their political class interests" (p.285).
Likewise Miliband, who had taken a quite instrumentalist approach to the state in the late 1960s, trying to establish the class character of the state in terms of (e.g.) the attitudes of those by whom "the vast majority ... has been governed, represented, administered", recognized in 1977 that "The question is not one of purpose or attitude [of the state elite] but o f 'structural constraints'" that shape these. And while the Poulantzas of 1969 had argued that
"if the function of the State ... and the interests of the dominant class ... coincide, it is by reason of the system itself: the direct participation of members of the ruling class in the State apparatus is not the cause but the effect", the Poulantzas of 1978 argued that the state is divided-constituted by class contradictions with different branches of the state being often "the representatives and seats of the diverging interests of one or several fractions of the power bloc" (stress added): apparently recognizing, therefore, the idea of instrumental control over state apparatuses. Where is then the instrumentalism-structuralism dualism that had created, as Piven notes, "a small flood of arguments about the nature of the capitalist state"
(1994:24).
Second, the gap between structuralist and class struggle approaches is narrowing.
Poulantzas, who said in 1969 that the state is a class state "by reason of the system itself1 admitted later that earlier on he had underemphasized class struggle. In his 1978 book, he recognized the existence of class struggle against the state even within the state: dominated classes are present within the state as centers of resistance. Structuralists like Hirsch also argue that the theoretical derivation of state functions from laws of accumulation tell us nothing about whether and in what form state functions result from these determinants, so one has to examine how objective tendencies assert themselves through the mediation of concrete class struggles (ibid:65;83). While economic structuralists don't ignore class struggle, those who focus more on class struggle also emphasizestructures that constrain class relations: while class struggle is constrained by structures like the state, those same structures are transformed through class struggle (Clarke, 1991; Holloway, 1991).
Finally, there is an emerging convergence between society-centered and state-centered approaches. While Skocpol and others criticize Marxist approaches as society-centered and argued for a state-centered approach that gives autonomy to state actors, these arguments slowly converge with those of Offe, Miliband and Block. It is argued that state actors have what Offe (1985) calls "institutional self-interest" in promoting capitalist accumulation which
63 is a precondition for fulfilling their own interests so that there exists a "partnership"
(Miliband) or "modus vivendi" (Block) between state actors and capitalists. These concepts also sensitize those Marxists (e.g.some state derivationists),who reduce state functions to capital's needs, to the existence of state actors’ autonomy.
These three tendencies towards convergence indicate western Marxism's apparently inexhaustible capacity to create different concepts to capture important aspects of a complex reality like the state, and then to produce a synthesis. I will use these concepts to shed light on the nature of the state in India in the next chapter.
64 CHAPTER 3
THE INDIAN STATE, AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT AND RURAL REDISTRIBUTION
It would be a truism to claim that the nature of the Indian state cannot be read off from the abstract state theories discussed in the last Chapter. The Indian state possesses the sorts of causal properties that any capitalist state does. But what forms the exercise of these properties will take -- e.g. what policies the state will seek to implement — and what the effects of that will be are contingent on the conditions derived from the specificities of the
Indian state and society. In trying to theorize the Indian state, I will draw attention to the specificities of its organizational nature, of its social base and of the nature of lower class bloc against which it protects its social base.
The objective of this Chapter is then to theorize the Indian state (hereafter, the state).
The aim of theorizing is to be able to shed light on the empirical focus of the dissertation: the temporal and spatial variation in the nature of the state intervention and in its outcome. Now, to theorize the state is to examine its necessary causal powers and liabilities/responsibilities.
Theories can be at different levels of concreteness, depending on the purpose at hand. Given my purpose as stated above, I want to theorize at a level of abstractness/concreteness appropriate to this purpose. It will be a middle-level theory. This will be more abstract than
65 the temporal-spatial variation in the nature and outcome of the intervention of the Indian state, and more concrete than the theories of the state I discusses in the last Chapter.
In the first section, I will discuss three organizational aspects of the state: its democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal forms. I will show that the state in India exercises its causal powers not as a capitalist state in the abstract that the last Chapter focused on but as a democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal state. In the second section,
1 discuss the nature of the social base of the state as well as of its lower class opposition. In the next two sections, I analyze the changes over time and over space in the balance of political forces underlying the state and what the implications of these are for the nature of the intervention of the state as a democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal, capitalist state. The last section provides a summary.
I. ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS OF THE INDIAN STATE
A. FORMAL DEMOCRACY
Colonial rule left behind bourgeois-democratic state structures. Further, state elites believed that bourgeois-democracy was the best form of modem politics (FrankeL, 1990).
India thus inherited and further developed a formally democratic state form. Richard Sisson
(1993: 37-39) sums this up as thus:
Ten national elections have been held in India since independence... A comparatively large proportion of the electorate turns out to vote [46% in 1952 to 61% in 1989]... Elections are competitive [in that a] large number of parties contest national elections [76 in 1952 and 24 in 1984]... [and that] they make a difference in who governs. Four elections ... have resulted in the defeat of an incumbent government at the national level. The Indian citizen is surrounded by secular sources of information. There are over 1,400 daily newspapers and nearly 20,000 other news publications... [R]eporting of
66 political news is quite free .... For all but two years since independence the fundamental rights of the citizen, as set forth in the constitution, have been honored and have received juridical protection. Equality before law,... freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, settlement, and employment ...[,] the right to life, liberty and property[,] ... the right to constitutional redress through due process [are assured]
Based on these features of the Indian polity, Sisson concludes that India is democratic. I will return later to the specificity of Indian democracy.
Democracy has however contradictory effects on what the state can and has to do.
On the one hand, periodic elections have allowed the landowners to exercise instrumentalist control over the state, which is on the increase as I show in Chapter 6. On the other hand, it has provided some opportunities for the lower classes to put some pressure on the state for redistributive policies. Thus the capitalist state in India in laying the foundations for capitalist development has to balance the opposing interests of the landed and agrarian lower classes.
B. THE DEVELOPMENTAL-REDISTRIBUTIVE STATE
The developmental-redistributive role of the state is one of the ways in which the state's relative autonomy is expressed. The Indian state is not only democratic in form, but also developmentalist. And given that it is a capitalist state (more on this later), it creates conditions for capitalist development. But why does the state play the (capitalist-) developmental role in the first place?
Industrial retardation, which was in part because of the colonial past, put a pressure on the state to create conditions for economic development on which it itself depends for revenue. The pressure to play a developmental role was further reinforced by the fact that state elites in India, as in the post-colonial countries in general, are committed to
67 development. And this commitment arises from the fact that they "view their society as in need ofbasic change" (Kohli, 1987:25; emphasis added). There is a widespread consciousness and elite-consensus that their societies have been left behind and, therefore, the state must be involved in societal development, says Kohli.
The pattern of development had to be relatively autonomous vis a vis foreign capital.
This was because the industrial bourgeoisie was too weak to be willing to be inserted into globally competitive markets. Besides, colonial rule and the struggle against it created strong nationalist sentiments which meant that, as Kohli has said, national sovereignty was valued.
This in turn led to the desire on the part of the state elites, many of whom had experienced colonial rule themselves and fought against it, to create an autonomous basis for development.
Industrial development depends on the creation of a surplus in agriculture. But India's agriculture was quite underdeveloped. India inherited from its colonial past an agrarian structure where there were some capitalist farmers who were making productivity-raising investments, but where there were mainly landowners who were exploiting immediate producers in pre-capitalist ways or were employing wage labor but were using old, outdated technologies. The latter two types of landowners were not making any productivity-raising investments for reasons I will discuss in the next Chapter. Suffice it to say that agrarian property relations were a barrier to the development of the productive forces. And, it was only the state, under the given conditions in India, that could change these property relations to ones that would promote development, as I discuss in Chapter 4 and 6.
Besides the material conditions, the state also tends to create ideological hegemony and political legitimacy as a necessary political precondition for accumulation, given the basis
68 of the latter in exploitation. Providing some concessions (e.g. certain poverty-alleviation programs) to the exploited classes has been a means of creating this precondition. This is especially so, given the democratic state form of the state. Thus the state has also played a redistributive role.
Thus the state is a democratic state. It is also developmental-redistributive state. Now, the third feature of the state is that it is also a federal state. I will look at this aspect now.
C THE FEDERAL CHARACTER OF THE STATE
The Indian state has been characterized by a particular mix of centralization and decentralization. Like in any federal state, the state in India is territorially organized in such a way that each level of government -- central, provincial (State), local — exercises some powers independently of the other (Brass, 1995; Wood; Hardgrave and Kochanek, 1986).
Under the Indian constitution, the division of powers between the center and State governments is according to three so-called Lists: The Union List, the State list and the
Concurrent list. The Union list gives exclusive authority to act in matters of national importance. It has 97 items including defense, foreign affairs, currency and the income tax.
The State List, with 66 items, covers, among other things, agriculture and direct taxation on land. The Concurrent List contains 47 items, including social and economic planning, over which both central and State governments share authority.
The Central government, however, has the right to encroach upon the legislative and executive domains of the State governments under certain circumstances including that when the constitutional machinery in a State breaks down. The central government may also take
69 over the running of the State government if the latter does not act as per central government directions. The governor of the State is the formal head of the State. But the governor is appointed by the central government and represents an extension of the power of the federal government to the domain of the State governments. The governor can refer a bill to the central government, even on an item in the State list such as agriculture, and passed by the
State legislature. If that is the case, until the bill is passed by the central government, the State government cannot implement it.
The central government has powers over the collection and distribution of resources.
The financial assistance flows from the central government to the State governments in two major ways. Except for such taxes as land revenue and sales taxes, most taxes are levied and collected by the central government, and a substantial part of this is redistributed to the States based on a formula determined every five years by the Financial Commission. Besides, the central government has the power to allocate vast amounts of money to the States as part of the Five Year Plans drawn up by the Planning Commission, an extra-constitutional body of the central cabinet. The amounts allocated under the Plans are much more than those transferred based on recommendations of the Financial Commission.
Despite the constitutional powers of the central government and the financial dependence of the States on it, the States do enjoy some autonomy. Not only do States control agriculture, which is an important sector in the Indian economy, but also the central governments depend on State governments for the implementation o f many o f its policies.
Thus the Indian state is a democratic, developmental-redistributive, and federal state.
However, we can’t reduce what the state does in India to these formal structural features.
70 True, they define the particular powers and responsibilities of the capitalist state in India. But
(concrete) states such as the one in India interact not only with (abstract) capitalist societies but with capitalist societies with highly concrete features, some of which may be pre capitalist. It is within the context of these concrete features of Indian society that the capitalist state exercises its powers as a democratic, developmentalist-redistributive, federal state. One important feature of the set of concrete features is the nature of the social basis of the state and the balance o f forces between it and the lower classes. It is these to which I now tum.
n. THE CLASS BASE AND CLASS OPPONENTS OF THE STATE
In this section, I want to accomplish two objectives. 1) I look at the social base of the state, i.e. the question of which class/classes hold state power? 2) And since classes are internally related, an analysis of the class basis of the state also entails a discussion of the class(es) which are politically dominated by the state and how they are dominated. This leads me to address the relation between the state and the lower classes.
A. THE CLASS BASE OF THE STATE
There seem to be three major theories on the nature of the social base of the state. I will briefly but critically analyze each of them.
1. The Communist Parties' Theories
The different communist parties perceive the class character of the state differently.
For the rightist Communist Party, the Communist Party of India, the Indian state "is the organ
71 of the class rule of the national bourgeoisie as a whole ..." (Ranadive, 1985). And "in the formation and exercise of governmental power, the big [i.e. monopoly] bourgeoisie wields considerable influence. The national bourgeoisie compromises with the landlords, admits them in ministries and governmental composition, especially at the State levels" (ibid.).
For the "centrist" communist Party1, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), "The present Indian State is the organ of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and landlords, led by the big bourgeoisie who are increasingly collaborating with foreign finance capital in pursuit of the capitalist path of development" (Ranadive, 1985:28).
There is still another Communist party perspective. According to the theory held by leftist (i.e. Maoist) communist party, the Communist Party of India (Mandst-Leninist), the
state represents the interests of semi-feudal landlords and bureaucratic-compradore capitalists
(in Das Gupta, 1973).
2. Intermediate Regime Theory
These formulations do not sit well in an alternative framework in which state elites are
an important part of the social base of the state. One early expression of these ideas is the concept of intermediate regime developed by Kalecki (1966), which, Raj (1973) argues, has relevance for India. In an intermediate regime, state power is held by a coalition of lower middle class (small capitalists, and technical administrative, and professional people) and rich peasants (the landed class that hires laborers).
lOn the centrist character of the CPM, see Mallick (1994).
72 A most important problem with the concept of an intermediate regime is that it ignores the importance of the industrial bourgeoisie and the capitalist character of the state
(Namboodiripad, 1973). This problem is rectified in what I will call the dominant coalition theory.
3. The Dominant Coalition Theory
According to this, state power is held by a coalition of the industrial bourgeoisie, capitalist fanners, and state elites (Bardhan, 1984a, 1989; Kaviraj, 1987). State elites refer to high level officials including the industrial management groups in the public sector. The concept should also include the political elites, as Vanaik (1990) rightly says.
According to Bardhan, the industrial bourgeoisie has benefited from state policies of trade restrictions providing automatically protected domestic markets, of state-owned industries providing cheap capital goods, and so on. The other dominant class constituting at most the top 20% of the rural landholding families, based on size of holdings in the early
1970s. Its development was in part due to the land reforms, and it has benefited from the
Green Revolution policy of providing cheap inputs and price support. The third dominant class benefits from the expansion of educational and administrative functions and the nationalization of industries all of which create jobs for managers, etc. in the public sector.
Although the social base of the state is formed by a coalition of classes, the state is a bourgeois state. This is, according to Kaviraj (1987), in three different senses. 1. The logic of capitalism, no matter in what juridical form it appears (the public or the private sector) economically and politically subordinates the economic and political reproduction of non-
73 capitalist modes of production. That is, the society is dominated by the capitalist class or a coalition dominated by that class. 2. The state-form is parliamentary democratic that "arranges disbursing of advantages in a particular way; and the democratic mechanism works as a useful sensitive political index as to when the distribution of disadvantages, which is bound to happen and intensify in a capitalist economy, is becoming politically insupportable" (p. 2430).
3. The state ensures the domination of the bourgeoisie and helps, through capitalist planning, in the reproduction of capitalist relations (p. 2430).
These three different theories or groups of theories regarding the social base of the capitalist state in India highlight three important features o f its social base: the importance of the state elites; the importance of the landed; and the fractionalist character of the social base.
I will discuss each o f these.
In the dominant coalition, state elites play an important role. Kaviraj is critical of the idea that bureaucratic elites are "too straightforwardly subordinate to the power of the bourgeoisie" (1987:2431). The elites are not bourgeois in a productive sense, but they have been affiliated to the bourgeoisie in cultural and ideological ways. Even before independence, they were the repository of bourgeois intelligence, working out a theory of development of
Indian capitalism, often restraining more intensely selfish objectives and making policies more reformist and universal. The elites mediate between the ruling coalition and other classes and between classes within the coalition.
Underlying the idea that state elites share state power and use state power in their interests and having pertinence to the Indian case are rent seeking theories of the state. Rents can be generated in several ways. First, Bardhan says, as if echoing Raj (1973), "if physical
74 4 . capital can be the basis of class differentiation, so can be human capital in the form of education, skills and technical enterprise" (ibid.). In a country where the overwhelming majority are illiterate or primary school drop-outs, "the educated elite enjoy a high scarcity value for their education and profession. By managing to direct educational investment away from the masses [see also Weiner, 1990)], they have been able to protect their scarcity rent"
(p. 52) which is seen in increases in salary, in high perks etc. So, "It seems the old rentier class
[absentee landlords]... has now been replaced by the new rentier elements in the privileged bureaucracy" (ibid.).
Second, "The process of implementation of [policies] often generates rental income from disbursement of permits and favors which accrues to the bureaucratic elite" (Bardhan,
1984: 51). As different classes including bureaucrats, farmers etc. "jockey for greater power in the ruling bloc, nepotism and graft are institutionalized and 'rental havens' created for people in positions of power" and can make the state predatory (Evans, in Ghosh, 1990:15).
Since state elites occupy positions in the state, they use state autonomy in implementing policies to construct powers of patronage in the manner in which it is profitable electorally and otherwise. Policy documents may also show a bias in favor of them, a bias that is deliberately inserted by these same elites (Kurien, 1987: AN33). Often, rent-seeking involves the appropriation of state-mandated benefits from the lower classes by officials implementing pro-poor policies as I show in a later Chapter. So, given the relative autonomy of the state, the nature of the policies and whether they will succeed depend, in part, on the rent-seeking behavior of state elites.
75 Both Kaviraj and Bardhan rightly draw attention to the importance of state elites. But pace their contributions I will argue that state elites as elites cannot be considered a part of
the coalition holding state power without diluting the nature of the class analysis of the state.
Their idea, like intermediate regime theory, is conceptually faulty in that it is ownership of the
means of production that decides who has power in a society. At best, we can talk of there
being a partnership between them in the sense Miliband (1983) understands it, or, following
Poulantzas, an alliance between the dominant classes and state elites. And what is also
forgotten is that it is the relative autonomy of the state, rooted in its capitalist character, that
is a pre-condition for the relative autonomy of officials. In consequence the rent-seeking
behavior of officials is one of the contingent expressions of the relative autonomy of the state
as a structure.
The second aspect that theories of the social base of the state draw attention to is the
importance of the landed. All of them say that the industrial bourgeoisie shares state power
with the landed. But why is this the case: why is there a coalition of large landowners and the
industrial bourgeoisie in a social formation where capitalism is the dominant mode. The urban
bourgeoisie depends on the landowners, pre-capitalist or not, who provide legitimacy to the
state by mobilizing and controlling the poor and hence are functional to the bourgeoisie (their
political interests) (see, Lele, 1990). The landed are particularly important because of their
instrumentalist control over the state apparatuses (Shakir, 1986) of which I provide evidence
in substantive Chapters to follow.
The third feature that theories of the social base of the state draw attention to is the
fractionalist character of that social base and its implications for the state's developmental
76 role. For Bardhan, there are two major types of conflict within the social base of the state, a)
While landowners want higher prices for agricultural goods, the interest of the urban bourgeoisie1 and of urban consumers' (including professionals) is in lower prices for these goods, since higher agricultural prices will reduce the rate of profit in industries and increase the cost of living of urban consumers. Given these conflicts of interests and given that state resources are limited, rural and urban classes try to control more resources from the state in the form of subsidies (Bhambri, 1989:80). b) Industrialists are controlled by the license permit raj presided over by the state elites2; the latter control where (e.g.) an industry will be located, and how much and which product will be produced by which capitalist. Thus there is a conflict between the industrialists and state elites; the former want freedom of investment, the latter restrict it.
Given these conflicting interests, the role of the state has been reduced to one of management of conflicts within the dominant coalition, and as a result it is hampered in playing its developmental role. For Bardhan this lies in building infrastructure for agricultural
(irrigation, flood control2, electrification, credit) and for industrial development. The state has tried to resolve these conflicts by giving subsidies: subsidized agricultural inputs, subsidized infrastructure, raw materials and credit for industrial capitalists and subsidized consumption items for state employees) to each class in the coalition. "When diverse elements of the loose
2 The bureaucracy impinges on the interests of rich fanners - because its fiat "gets somewhat weaker as it reaches the distant villages where the local rich farmers have things more under their control", although in matters such as prices of agricultural products, procurement, restrictions on grain movement and trade and distribution of credit and fertilizers, it has many powers to exercise and favors to dispense (Bardhan, 1984:59).
3 There are "problems of externalities and indivisibilities in large-scale irrigation and flood control programs which necessitate state participation in agrarian development" (Bardhan, 1984:37).
77 and uneasy coalition of the dominant classes pull in different directions and when none of them is individually strong enough to dominate the process of resource allocation, one predictable outcome is the proliferation of subsidies and grants to placate all of them"
(Bardhan, 1989: 342-343).
Apart from these subsidies, a lot of money is spent on repressive activities aimed at keeping quiet those outside the coalition trying to get a share of the pie. These include organized labor and small traders. "Thus keeping all the heterogenous elements of the dominant coalition happy, guarding the fortress, and alternatively coaxing and coercing the intermediate groups ... all contribute to the mounting non-developmental expenditure"
(Bardhan, 1984:67), leading to a sort of fiscal crisis "blocking the necessary accumulation function of the state" (p. 68).. "The Indian public economy has thus become an elaborate network of patronage and subsidies" (Bardhan, 1989: 343), and the autonomy of the state thus "is reflected more often in its regulatory (and hence patronage-dispensing) than developmental role (1984:39).
Bardhan and others, however, only talk about differences in interests within the social base at the level of exchange relations and the distribution of surplus. They ignore differences/conflicts at the level of property relations. Thus, unlike in Europe, the universal franchise gave the lower classes an important weapon to bargain with the owners of the means of production for a share in the product, even when overall productivity was low. This was especially so in the urban areas where workers are better organized.
In the face of working class struggle for higher wages and rural turmoil, given mass poverty and starvation, there has always been a pressure to raise agrarian productivity. But
78 there were serious agrarian barriers to doing this. For, I will argue, as far as the landed are concerned, it does not matter how they earn their income as long as they earn a particular sum of money. If they have land, it is contingent whether they appropriate pre-capitalist ground rent (through economic or extra-economic means), or employ wage labor and exploit the immediate producers by using old technologies or modem, Green revolution type technologies. The landed do not by themselves want to switch to a particular mode of exploitation or particular technology simply because that will help the industrial bourgeoisie.
But the latter will want them to: it is interested in the creation of a class of capitalist farmers making productivity-raising investments from the ranks of the landed. In other words, there is an apparent difference between the industrial bourgeoisie and the landed at the level of the form in which surplus labor is produced and pumped out.
This difference in interest can be a conflictual relation. Without the conjuncture of monopolistic control over land by a few landowners, and of industrial backwardness, exploitation in pre-capitalist forms or even capitalist exploitation of labor through the use of old technologies will not be possible.4 If these forms of exploitation have to be undermined to make way for a regime of agrarian capitalist accumulation, the landed have to lose land.
Thus, to the extent that an egalitarian distribution of land will promote agrarian productivity and thus promote bourgeois-industrial development, there is a clear conflict between the landed and the industrial bourgeoisie: the landed have to lose a part of their means of production, if the industrial bourgeoisie is to gain.
4 Its because land is concentrated in the hands of a few landowners, that there is a mass of land-poor or landless people waiting to bid up rents or work at very low wages; there is little industrial employment for them to turn to. This gives little incentive to landowners to make productivity-raising investments. This is an important theme in the substantive chapters.
79 It is only the state that can resolve this conflict existing at the level of production relations. The way the state has tried to solve this has caused changes in the balance of forces within its social basis and also in the balance of forces between its social basis and the lower classes as I will now argue.
The state sought to undermine pre-capitalist property relations through a land reforms policy, as I discuss in Chapter 4. The landed had to lose some of their means of production and extra-economic powers over the tenants. Also as I discuss in Chapter 6, through the
Green Revolution policy, it sought to create conditions where productivity-raising investments by landowners would be more profitable than exploiting immediate producers in pre-capitalist ways and/or employing wage laborers but using old technologies.
So now capitalist farmers, from among the landed, and making productivity-raising investments, are an important part of the social base o f the state. Once the old landlords were converted to capitalist farmers, new sorts of conflicts developed, of the sorts that Bardhan describes, at the level of exchange relations.
Having discussed the fractionalist character of the social base, I want to note the complementarities among the different fractions constituting the social base o f the state with respect to its unity. This is also something that coalition theory and intermediate regime theory have missed. Both the dominant classes have an interest in preserving the state against any attack from the lower classes, for only the state can protect the property rights by virtue of which they can exploit the immediate producers. One might even argue that even the ability of state elites to seek rents presupposes the existence of the present class state itself. One should not therefore view the state in merely fractionalist terms, as Bardhan etc. do. The
80 state's unity lies in its class character, in the idea that it defines and defends those property rights by virtue of which class exploitation -- precapitalist and capitalist -- is possible. The unity of the state does not lie in the deals and coalitions between the classes which are focussed on in the coalition theory.
Fractionalist approaches to the state not only tend to ignore the class-unity of the state as I have discussed above, but they also ignore lower-class politics. They give insufficient attention to class struggle, i.e. the class character of struggles against the class-state and the ruling classes. Conceptually, class struggle is an important precondition for fractional struggle within the bourgeois-landlord combine, one reason for this being that the ruling class fractions differ in their perceptions of how to deal with class struggle (e.g. coercion or concessions).
Besides, I will argue, class struggle sets limits to fractional struggles within the bloc of ruling classes: this is because when class struggle intensifies, different warring ruling fractions will tend to be united. My argument is supported by at least two works (Sathyamurthy, 1985: 18;
Gupta, 1990). I want now, therefore, to discuss the lower-class opposition to the state and its social base.
B. LOWER CLASS OPPOSITION TO THE STATE
The numerically important lower classes in rural areas are the poor peasants and laborers who constitute 70% of the rural population. Democracy has allowed these classes, and the urban working class, to fight against exploitation and political domination. Kohli says that "Separating political equality from economic inequalities [which is a precondition for, though it does not guarantee, bourgeois democracy]... not only lays the basis for legitimate
81 elected governments in egalitarian societies, but also opens up the hope and opportunities... of modifying inherited inequalities through the use of democratic state power" (1988:7; parenthesis added). It is true, "democratic regimes protect and help reproduce socio economic systems based on private property and, therefore, "bourgeois interests" (Kohli,
1988:5). Yet, "Organized political change under democracy offers limited ... hope of mildly egalitarian socio-economic development for modem India" (ibid.).
Lower classes put pressure on the state for creating conditions for an egalitarian development pattern; they can make the state exercise its autonomy on their behalf. Lower class struggles can pose a potential threat to the regimes running the state and hence to the power of the ruling classes. This is particularly true where the masses are becoming more politicized and in a society with a liberal democratic polity. And even if class conflict is not empirically manifested, the structure of exploitative relations faces at least a potential threat from the lower classes and, hence, the necessity of concessions is inscribed in the state-form itself. Many scholars have maintained that important land reforms policies and other anti poverty policies have been indeed produced in response to class struggles (Desai, 1989).
One general implication of these struggles is that these result in a "differential classness" of policies, and this is in the following sense. Although it is true that as long as there is a capitalist state, its policies are capitalist policies in that it cannot abolish capitalist production relations, its policies can be more or less pro—lower class. This varying classness of policies is partly a reflection of the variation in the strength of class struggle from one branch to another within the state, from one issue to another in that some issues are fought over with more tenacity than others.
82 There are two main approaches to the relation between class struggle and the state.
I will briefly look at them.
It is believed that the mobilization of the poor can enable the state to implement pro poor policies. I will call this the "organization of the poor" approach. For example, Frankel attributes the state's failure to implement radical pro-poor reforms, and therefore, implicitly, its restricted autonomy, to its narrow social base, that is, to the relatively weak organization of the poor (1978), She says that "There are, of course, limits on what government can do
... However, within limits, and within limits that can be expanded, it is possible [through the political organization of the poor] to narrow the advantages of the large landowners on the one hand, and increase the opportunities for the small farmer, the tenant, and landless laborer on the other" (Frankel, 1971: 199-200; parenthesis mine).
A sense of optimism is evident in Frankel’s discussion. This optimism, says Kohli,
"stems not only from the possibility of enlightened policies, but also from a faith in democratic, pluralist politics.3 As the lower classes get organized ... they gain political significance. Democratic politics allow political inputs from competing social interests. As the power base of the state is widened, so are the policy outputs ... aimed at benefiting the lower classes" (ibid. 42; emphasis and footnotes are added).
The "organization of the poor" approach however fails to recognize that "inequalities of power are not merely a consequence of the degree of organization. Rather, they are prior to the political... They are very much a function of the position various social groups occupy in the organization of production [i.e. class relations]... This inequality of social power is ...
5 In fact, Frankel clearly says that democracy (not authoritarianism) is essential to solving India's poverty (1978, last Chapter). often reproduced within the dominant political institutions" (ibid. 42).6 1 will add that the approach also seems to be silent about leadership and organizational issues. For example: can state autonomy be exercised on behalf of the lower classes, if leaders are elites?
In a recent book Kohli (1990) says that the mobilization of the lower classes may occur over unequal caste/class relations, but those who are mobilized are mobilized by the elites. Mobilizations of the masses occur because of intra-elite conflict in which sections of the elite in order to gain extra advantage with other sections of the elite mobilize groups whose aspirations take secondary place (Kohli, 1990), and instead of real redistribution, the result is some symbolic gains (Herring, 1983; Arora, 1995:960). Rich farmers mobilizing poor peasants and laborers in their own interests (higher prices for farm products) (Varshney,
1994; Bardhan, 1984a) and the Congress party’s mobilization of the poor (Kothari, 1989b) are examples of elitist mobilization of the poor that serve not the latter but the economic and political elites. Not any sort of mobilization, rather mobilization of a particular sort, will enable the state to exercise its autonomy.
Accordingly, Kohli indicates that mere organization of the poor will not do; their power has to be institutionalized in the form of a left-of-the-center party controlling the state
(1987). With the institutionalization of their power, the state can have a limited ability to
6 Kohli also thinks that class inequalities cannot therefore be reversed within the framework of a stable, developmental-capitalist state. They can at best be mitigated.
84 alleviate poverty through distributive policies. 7 1 call this approach, the social-democratic organization approach.
Kohli says that the lower classes come to possess political power in a bourgeois democracy only under exceptional political circumstances. These circumstances have got to do with the emergence of disciplined left-of-center parties, the parties that "are specifically designed to institutionalize — ideologically and organizationally — the power of the lower classes within the democratic political process" (ibid.: 45; emphasis added). Since,
"Mobilizing hitherto excluded groups ... is by itself an invitation to political instability and reaction", there is a need for disciplined left parties who can bring about what Kohli terms controlled mobilization. Such parties can also insulate the state from society (that is, from the influence of the ruling class) making possible redistributive reforms.
He says that a regime that can introduce "elements of redistribution into the developmental process" needs to possess the following characteristics: a coherent leadership that "allows clear policy thinking but also sustained political attention to developmental tasks"
(p. 143); an ideological and organizational commitment to exclude the ruling class, and ability to create a non-threatening and predictable political atmosphere for the propertied; and an organizational arrangement that is centralized and decentralized (p. 10) 8,
7 Herring's approach is not very much dissimilar to Kohli's For Herring, the power of the state to effect change is a function of an ensemble of forces represented by the parliament and executive, the configuration of regime and class interests and world-views of ruling groups, and the state of consciousness and mobilization of lower classes (Herring, 1983:12).
8 The fact of an organizational arrangement being centralized and decentralized means, as Kohli says, that while the policies are designed at higher levels, the party cadres at local levels help the state officials implement them by excluding the propertied.
85 Now I intend to make two comments on the debate on the role of the political power of the poor in increasing the effectivity of the exercise of state autonomy. First, it is not true, as Kohli says, that Frankel does not realize that the importance of institutionalization of lower-class power in redistributive reforms. Consider (e.g.) what she says in a book that Kohli never even refers to: "Popularly elected national, state, and local governmental bodies can be made into effective legislative agencies for reform only i f a strong party organization can institutionalize popular participation — and pressure — at the grass-roots level" (1971:214, emphases added).9 Yet, there is a difference between her approach and Kohli's. This concerns the method by which the power of the poor can be institutionalized. As I have said above,
Frankel never says that institutionalization of the power of the poor has to be in terms of a leftist party. In fact, she says that democratic parties are required to compete with the left parties in organizing the poor (1971:215); competition between bourgeois parties for votes of the poor will result in pro-poor policies.
Second, Kohli puts a legitimate emphasis on the institutionalization of the power of the poor. But at the same time he (e.g. Kohli, 1990) ignores the grassroots character of much of the mobilization that occurs and that can occur and that has not been institutionalized. In his widely cited 1987 book also he tends to ignore the possibility of the role of class organization in the effective exercise of state autonomy (e.g. its power to implement pro-poor policies) even in the absence of an institutionalization of the power of the lower classes. That is: even if the lower classes do not have representatives within the state, they can put pressure
9 Elsewhere she says: "[U]nless countervailing efforts are made to organize the peasantry in new forms of class-based associations that can build their own direct relationships with outside power centers in the political parties and the administration, the superior numbers of the poor cannot be converted into a potent political resource1' (1978: 549).
86 on the state for implementation of redistributive reforms from outside. After all, class struggle takes place within and outside the state, as I have discussed in the last Chapter.
IIL THE CHANGING BALANCE OF CLASS-POLITICAL FORCES OVER TIME
Having emphasized the social basis of the state — which class holds state power, and the fact that the state is also affected by the claims of the lower classes, I want to now show how the balance of forces in the social base and between the social base and the lower classes has changed over time.
In the first two decades or so of independence, the Indian polity was characterized by accommodative or consensual politics. The Congress party that controlled the state "forged patronage links with regional and local influentials, thus creating a chain of authority that stretched from the capital city to the villages" (Kohli, 1994:89). And, specifically in the context of the rural periphery, the system was "often discriminating and iniquitous in its implementation, patron-clientish in its operating culture..." (Kothari, 1989b). The members of rural landed elites were power brokers "who could use the socio-economic dependence of lower castes and rural poor [on them] to generate votes" for the party (Joseph and Mahajan,
1991:1953). These votes were in turn traded in exchange for favors from higher level politicians. Besides, only a minority of the population - a small group of rural and urban elites
— were involved in the political struggles. "The large majority of the Indian population, especially those in villages, were not as yet actively mobilized political actors" (Kohli,
1994:91).
87 Now this system based on intra-elite consensus proved ineffective and indeed counter productive in dealing with the rise of mass politics from the early and mid-1960s on. This mass mobilization may be in part reflected by increasing voter turnouts in national elections.
Till the early 1960s, it was less than 50%, in 1967 it reached 61%, and in the 1971-1984 period, it was nearly 59.6% (data from Baxter et al, 1991:88). The rise of mass politics was due to the following factors, a) There took place enormous politicization of "an awakened mass" through the democratic process (1989a: xvi, xxii; 1989b:381-381; 503; Kohli,
1994:89). b) There was some erosion of patron-client relations o f the old type following the limited agrarian reforms and penetration of commercial relations subsequent to the implementation of the Green Revolution policy (Frankel, 1971). So, the masses started exercising their voting rights independently of the landed (Robinson, 1988). Besides, they took "the democratic claims of the first generation elite seriously" (Kothari, 1988:276). That is, they believed that through democratic norms they could challenge the vested interests and change could be possible. But they found that "the system failed in delivering the goods in socio-economic terms" (Kothari, 1989b:504) as is evident in the failure of land reforms to benefit them. This contributed to growing discontentment and new demands which could not be satisfied within the framework of an accommodative politics that worked through marginal adjustments.
Now the rise of mass politics resulted in, first, the undermining the power of regional and local elites representing the large landowners; and second, the emergence of the lower middle and lower strata of rural India as independent and significant political forces (Kohli,
1994:93). So the utility of the old Congress System of a chain of influential (mainly the
88 landed) who controlled vote banks and on whom national level leaders depended, was reduced. The problem of getting votes became acute. There was an electoral crisis.
The solution to the crisis was populist politics, policies that would give immediate electoral benefits (Mehta, 1980: 110; Joseph and Mahajan, 1991:1954, Kohli, 1994:92). This is manifested in terms o f instant doles to different class fractions (Kaviraj, 1987; Harriss,
1992:223). As Chhibber notes, all political parties, not just Congress, are involved in an electoral competition which revolves around access to state resources and this results in an increase in subsidies and a decrease in resources for development (1995: p. 76; 92). In the
1960s, subsides were less than 10% o f central government expenditures, but in 1989, they amounted to 24.1 % (ibid).
But more importantly, the lower classes start getting doles through ad hoc poverty- alleviation policies such as the IRDP. 10 Through these the state seeks to establish links with the lower classes directly without the mediation of landlords. The state becomes the new patron trying to replace the erstwhile landlord-patrons, the strongmen as Migdal (1988) calls them. The policy of giving doles suggests that the state has to deliver; the lower classes are not going to be quiet having been politicized through the democratic process.
IV. CHANGING BALANCE OF CLASS-POLITICAL FORCES OVER SPACE
Not only has the balance of political forces changed over time as seen in the gradual emergence of a bloc of politically powerful lower classes, this balance has also changed over
10 This resonates with the recent approach in which multi-class social protest has been responsible for welfare policies in the context of an advanced country like the US (Jenkins and Brents, 1989: 894).
89 space. The latter explains why while state policies have failed, they have not failed equally everywhere. They have succeeded in some States more than in others.
The federal nature of the state has meant that States have some autonomy in framing and implementing policies. When States are ruled by communist parties and/or have strong communist organization, the lower-class bias in these policies has been greater and the implementation of these policies in the interest of the lower classes has been greater too. This shows that the nature of the state's developmental-redistributive role is a reflection of the geographical parallelogram of class forces.
I intend to suggest that the institutionalization of the power of the lower classes can be interpreted in terms of the concept o f "hegemonic project" "around which the exercise of
(the) state power is centered (Jessop, 1990: 161).
“[Hjegemony involves the development of a specific hegemonic project' which ... involves the mobilization o f support behind a concrete, national-popular program of action which asserts the general interests in the pursuit o f objectives that, explicitly or implicitly, advance the long-term interest of the hegemonic class (fraction)... Normally hegemony also involves the sacrifice of certain short-term interests of the hegemonic class (fraction), and flow of material concessions to other social forces mobilized behind the project” (ibid: 161 -162).
But this concept of "hegemonic project" has to be put in the context of the socio territorial organization of the Indian state. A federal bourgeois state-form emerged mainly as a product of class-fractional struggle of the regional bourgeoisies vis a vis the national bourgeoisie for regional markets, regional labor pools, etc., (see Kosambi, 1968), a struggle that reflects the fact of the uneven development of the society. This is not to say that leftist organizations of peasants and workers have not also struggled for regional political autonomy
(see Vanaik, 1990). This territoriality of the state form creates — in the way not perhaps
90 intended by state elites and ruling classes — spaces within the state structure that can, in turn, be exploited through class struggle. This may have unintended consequences for regional coalitions of dominant classes including regional bourgeoisies and the landed whose power is exercised more effectively at regional levels than at the national level. Given a federal structure, and given that the working class struggle is spatially fragmented, structural conditions are created for the lower classes to occupy state structures and influence their junctioning in some provinces and at sub-provincial levels (village or Block level) within the overall national bourgeois state-form, that is, within the constraints of the capitalist economy, and its concentration of power at the center.
Such a bourgeois federal state-form is a part of the national-territorial hegemonic project — whose modus operandi is always fought over as seen in rifts between the center and
States — that allows, within limits, the operation of (militant) trade unions, some freedom to regional bourgeoisies, and even to democratically elected parties representing the interests of the lower classes and/or regional bourgeoisies and/or middle classes at the provincial — and sub-provincial — level. Again, having become a part of this national territorial hegemonic project, the lower classes "ruling" at local levels including the provincial State level can, and have to, put together a counter-hegemonic project that creates an ideological and political consensus on the way the state-form will be reproduced. Namboodiripad says that provincial governments can be used as "means for rallying the people in struggles against bourgeois- landlord rule" (1974:59), class struggle thus taking the form of territorial struggles.
Wherever this counter-hegemonic territorial project has been tried (Kerala, West
Bengal etc.), it has included the following:
91 a) the acceptability of militant working class struggle — no matter how limited that
acceptability is; this is indicated (for example) by the decision of leftist governments
not to allow the police to interfere in struggles between landlords and tenants; "
b) the idea of the need for mitigating class-exploitation;
c) territorial decentralization of power to lower levels which gives power to local
workers (see Lieten, 1988:2069);
d) as Kohli says, a predictable environment where accumulation can go on.
Such a hegemonic project has facilitated the construction of an agrarian "accumulation strategy". Such a strategy has included limited land-reforms, the provision of subsidized inputs, of credit, the expansion of trade-union rights and, particularly, of broad civil rights and the resultant prohibition of those extra-economic coercive practices of landlords that are a fetter on the development of the productive forces. For example, the devolution of power to lower classes at more local levels has enabled the provincial state to "discipline" the semi- feudal landowners: some decrease in crop-share has taken place; some protection against illegal eviction has been ensured; some land has been redistributed.
These hegemonic projects and accumulation strategies at more local levels need to be seen as parts of a national, bourgeois hegemonic project and national bourgeois accumulation strategy, This is because in order to reproduce a stable, cohesive, national territorial political order in which national capitalist accumulation can take place, a national hegemonic project
11 For example, in Kerala the "new police policy" under the leftist regime prohibited the police "from interfering in agrarian or industrial disputes except when lives were threatened (Namboodiripad in Herring, op. cit.: 172); this happened to some extent in West Bengal in the 1960s when Mr. H. Konar was the land Reforms M inister in the State.
92 and a national accumulation strategy have to include sub-national hegemonic projects and sub-national accumulation strategies, even though the latter are sometimes in conflict with those at national levels. This is not, however, to say that such incorporation of sub-national hegemonic states and accumulation strategies into national ones is automatic. Rather, it is struggled for by subordinated groups including subaltern classes whose political power is geographically unevenly developed, and who therefore want to be able to exercise their power where they can.
Recognition of the territorial character of the hegemonic project is helpful in two ways. 1. The concept makes us aware of the spatiality of the state and of its autonomy. At sub-national scales, the struggles of the lower classes can increase the possibility of the exercise of state autonomy (see Fincher, 1981; Duncan and Goodwin, 1987). 2. The concept also makes us aware of the socio-territorial nature of the constraint on state autonomy. Unless we are aware of the territorial character of this hegemonic project we will be more sanguine than necessary as to the possibility as well as to the success of the use of state autonomy. This is a mistake Kohli has made. For example, the federal government has sometimes placed severe constraints on those sub-national hegemonic projects/accumulation strategies put together under lower class leadership. When the leftist government in Kerala pushed land reforms too for in the interests of peasants and laborers, the federal government dismissed it
(see Herring, op cit. pp 12; Franke and Chasin: 1991).
Having emphasized the link between the federal nature of the state and the possibility of effective lower class organization, I want to say that the inter-State variation in the lower class organization is just one of several spatial forms that it can assume. Further and relatedly,
93 lower class organization does not have to be institutionalized -- communist parties do not come to power at the State level everywhere -- yet may affect how state policies work. The more general point I have intended to make in this section is that: given the importance of the landed in the organization and social base of the state, how pro-lower-class a policy will be and whether and to what extent the policy will be implemented in the interest of lower classes will vary over space according to the spatial variation in the lower class organization.
VI. CONCLUSION
At a high level of abstraction, the Indian state is a capitalist state. Its capitalist character has given it some powers and liabilities. The state exercises/suffers these however not just as a capitalist state but as a democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal state. But being democratic, developmental-redistributive and a federal state also gives its some powers and responsibilities. How these are exercised depends on its social base and the nature of the class opposition to it.
The nature of its social base and class opposition changes over time, in part because o f what it does at a previous point in time. As a result, the nature o f its intervention changes.
Land reforms resulted in a class of capitalist farmers thus indicating the possibility of some change in the nature of the state’s social base. But once capitalist farmers assumed importance, they called for different sorts of intervention — subsidies etc.
The nature of the lower class opposition also changes over time. The lower classes have become more vocal. The state has sought to intervene on their behalf too, especially given its democratic form. The nature of the lower class opposition also changes over space.
94 And, given the federal and democratic form of the state, the lower classes seek to exploit any opportunity thrown up by these structures. They try to institutionalize their power in some
States and where they do, they benefit more from state policies than in other States, because state power can be more effectively exercised on their behalf. More generally, whether or not their power is institutionalized, the geography of their organization becomes the geography of the effectivity of the exercise of state autonomy on their behalf
95 CHAPTER 4
LAND REFORMS, CLASS INTERESTS AND STATE INTERESTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT AND REDISTRIBUTION
In this Chapter and in the next, I want to analyze the land reforms (hereafter LR) policy of the post-colonial1 Indian state. This policy is the first window on the nature of the state. I deal with three issues. First, I discuss how the agrarian structure that India inherited from its colonial past created some economic and political problems which the post-colonial state sought to address through the LR policy. Second, I discuss the nature of the legal provisions under the LR policy: what was it that the Indian state tried to achieve? Third, I look at the limited extent of implementation of the policy, and the implications of that for agrarian development. Finally, based on the discussion of these three aspects of LR, I want to conceptually relate the nature of the state to LR in a socio-spatial context.
This Chapter focusses on the first three of these four issues. These three issues are more concrete materials. Based on these I hope in the next Chapter to shed some light on the
social and spatial character of the state.
1 The colonial state in India was a branch of the British imperialist state which created such land tenures as would conserve the feudal exploitation of the Indian peasantry (Kotovsky, 1964:2). More specifically, it created and conserved a class of feudal landlords — zamindars — who became the chief supporters of British imperialism in India. The post-colonial bourgeois state is different from the colonial state in that it sought to undermine feudal landlordism of the type the colonial state had created.
96 The present Chapter is divided into four sections. The first comprises a discussion of what the issues were in LR. It also discusses for whom they were issues and why. I discuss three issues in LR: the colonial legacy of inequality in access to land, tenurial insecurity and high rents. Then I discuss why tenants and the landless, the bourgeoisie and the state were interested in LR. This section to, some extent, is built on the 1970s mode of production debate in India.2 In the second section, I discuss the nature of the LR policy itself. More specifically: I discuss the abolition of statutory landlords; tenancy reforms; and the redistribution of lands above ceiling limits. In the third section, I discuss the effectiveness of the policy. In particular the following issues are addressed: the redistributional limits of the reform legislation; the limits to the effectiveness of the reforms within their own terms; and, the implications of policy effectiveness for an egalitarian agrarian structure and for the development of the productive forces under capitalism. The final section provides an interim summary.
I. THE ISSUES IN LR AND FOR WHOM THESE WERE ISSUES
A. THE ISSUES IN LR
LR had potential benefits. These benefits were to be created by changing the agrarian structure that India had inherited ffom its colonial past. It may be usefUl to give a brief background on this agrarian structure.
2 The aim of the debate was to identify the tendencies towards the capitalist transition of agriculture and what the barriers were to that transition. Many articles contributing to the debate are published in Patnaik (1990).
97 The British created different land tenure systems in different parts of India. In east and north India and parts of south-east India, the British appointed tax-collectors from the ranks of those who had been collecting taxes on behalf of the kings in pre-colonial India but who did not have any proprietary rights in land. At the same time the British gave proprietary rights to these tax-collectors in the land on which they had been collecting taxes. So the immediate producers were reduced to the status of insecure tenants of these new tax- collectors-cum-landlords. The latter would collect as much rent as they wanted from direct cultivators, pass on a part of it to the colonial state in the form of the revenue the state demanded, and keep the rest (Tomlinson, 1993). This system of tenure was known as statutory landlordism or Zamindari and the new landlords were known as zamindars. It covered 57% of all privately owned agricultural land (172 million acres of land) in that part of the Indian territory directly held by the British.3 It should also be mentioned here that many zamindars leased out the rent/tax-collection duties to others who in turn did the same. So, there was a hierarchy of rent/tax-collectors which in some places included twenty different levels (Kotovsky, 1963: 3-4).
In west, south and north-west India, a ryotwari tenure was introduced. Here, the state collected revenue directly from cultivators (ryots) without any intermediaries. In these areas, a stratum of rentiers also came into being. For, if peasants could not pay up revenue, which was "initially fixed at nine-tenths of output before 1820, then modified to two-thirds in 1833"
(Tomlinson, 1993: 44-45), their land was sold by the state. Usually, it was bought up by
3 In the princely States (these were not directly controlled by the British), the feudal landlords were also like the zamindars in the States directly under British rule.
98 money-lenders, urban merchants, etc. The latter having bought the land would rent it out, often to the same persons from whom it was bought.
Thus a class of rentiers existed in colonial India, a class which earned a lot of money through rental exactions from tenants and also through usury. Most of the tenants enjoyed little security in tenure. The colonial state had however passed some laws providing for the security of tenure for some tenants (those who had cultivated land for a long period of time -
6-12 years — continuously).
Tenurial insecurity and high rents were not the only issues. There was the additional issue of the unequal distribution of land, without which, of course, landlords could not have the economic power they had over the poorer immediate producers. Close to the end of the colonial regime, i.e. in 1951, the rent receivers including their family members constituted 2% of the agricultural population of the country, but owned nearly 60% of privately-held land, while landless tenants and laborers made up 71% of the total agricultural papulation
(Kotovsky, 1964: 19).
B. WHO WERE INTERESTED IN LR?
The agrarian structure of colonial India thus threw up three m ain issues that the post colonial LR sought to address. These were: inequality in access to land; tenurial insecurity; and high rents. Then, the question is for whom and why they were issues?
99 1. Tenants and the landless: the issue of land distribution
Tenants, including those of statutory landlords, and the landless/land-poor had strong interests in LR Their objective interests were in tenurial security and a more egalitarian distribution of land. It is not sufficient to note that these lower classes had objective interests in LR It must also be emphasized that these interests were politically expressed through their struggles. The structurally given relative autonomy of the state was contingently expressed through the promulgation of LR partly because of these struggles. The state itself recognized that LR would "eliminate all elements of exploitation and social injustice within the agrarian system" (GOI, 1972: 15).
There have been numerous struggles for more egalitarian agrarian relations (Brass,
1994; Kurien, 1971; Radhakrishnan, 1989; Herring, 1991). These struggles have occurred, in varying forms, at various levels of state-society interaction (see Table 4.1).
Table 4.1: Peasants Struggles In India: A Sample
Regions What Have Peasants Fought Against
Monghyr (Bihar) eviction from land Bengal (1946-47) the practice of the location of threshing-floor at the landlords' place; reduction of rent (from one half to one-third of the gross produce) Northern West Bengal (late 1960s) high rents Surma Valley (Assam) eviction from land; forced labor Punjab eviction from land Oudh (Uttar Pradesh) (1920-21) exactions;tenurial insecurity; high rents;high prices charged my merchants Thane (Maharastra) forced labor, illegal exactions by landlords Tripura encroachment on the rights of shifting cultivators; land alienation T elengana (Andhra PradeshX 1946-1951) extra-economic coercion against tenants; eviction of tenants; forced labor Deccan riots (Maharastra) (1875) usurpation of peasants' land by usurers Malabar (Kerala) (early 1900) high rents; eviction
100 Notes/sources: This sample of struggles is gleaned from Surjeet (1986) and Dhanagare, (1991). Where no date is given, it should be assumed that the struggle took place between the mid- 1930s and the mid- 1940s
To give a flavor of the anti-landlord struggle at the micro-level, I will narrate the following based on my field-work in Orissa in eastern India:
In a cluster of three villages (Kantabania, Rangas, and Karianga) under Mangalpur police station in eastern Orissa, there is a person, who used to be a small-scale landlord, who was collecting rent on behalf of some bigger landlord. He had dispossessed many peasants of their lands by various means including manipulation of records. As people gradually realized what was going on, they started resisting. In one case, the landlord was stabbed on his back; today, for many people, he is known by a name which, in local language, means "chopped11. In another case, a laborer from the untouchable caste challenged him to come to the field which the landlord, for years, had claimed to be his own, but which actually belonged to the laborer. The landlord dared not visit the field.
It is struggles like these at regional and local levels that, to paraphrase Poulantzas, have imposed LR on the capitalist state in its colonial and post-colonial forms. In 1936, an all-India militant organization of peasants was formed (All India Kisan Sabha or AIKS in short). Right from its inception, the AIKS demanded "land to the tiller”. It organized several of the struggles listed in Table 4.1. That struggles such as these were instrumental in forcing the state to promulgate LR is clear even in the official documents. For example, the Zamindari
Abolition Act of 1952 in Uttar Pradesh State was based on the recommendations of the
United Provinces Zamindari Abolition Committee. The latter, in turn, was appointed in 1946 in the wake of a series of peasant struggles against zamindars in the State. The report submitted in 1948 noted that "If abolition is held over for a few years, abolition may mean expropriation without compensation and, quite possibly, bloodshed and violence" (in
Kotovsky, 1964: 65). Similarly, in introducing Zamindari abolition resolution, the Chief
101 Minister of Bihar State said to the Legislative Assembly: "I tell you that you are at the crest of a volcano. The volcano may burst at any moment. It is only to save you from destruction that I have brought this resolution" (ibid.).
The Telengana peasant movement (Table 4.1) in Andhra Pradesh, led by the communists, caused the general fear of a crisis of the legitimacy of the state and of class relations, and drove home the need for LR. in the State and in the federation as a whole.
Indeed, this movement was directly behind the Hyderabad (Abolition of Jagirs) Regulation of 1949.4 Similarly, the 1950 Bargadar (Share-cropper) Act was the major outcome of the tenants1 struggle in Bengal in 1946-47; the Act made eviction of tenants more difficult.
Widespread rural agitations took place in the 1960s in different States. The Home
Ministry of the federal government found that between 1966 and 1969, "The agitations for the distribution of land to the landless" were the largest in number among all rural agitations
(GOI, 1986:38). These agitations were partly responsible for the post-1970s phase of LR, when the ceiling on landownership.
2. The bourgeoisie: the issue of agricultural productivity
While the issues in LR for the tenants/laborers were unequal distribution of land, tenurial insecurity and high rents, the issue for the bourgeoisie was agrarian backwardness.
The sort of agrarian structure that India inherited from its colonial past was a fetter on the
increase in productivity. Let me first explain why that was the case. Later, I will discuss how
LR would benefit the bourgeoisie.
4 "Jagir" is a type of landlordism.
102 Agrarian backwardness has to be situated in the context of the agrarian structure. The tatter was formally, i.e., juridically, capitalist in its property relations, relations that were implanted by the colonial regime. But it was also characterized by a conjuncture of market forces which inhibited the development of productivity:
a) Unequal land distribution: Since land was extremely unequally distributed, there were
lots of land-hungry people who were able to bid up rents, even by self-exploiting
themselves: i.e. by depressing consumption per family labor unit for the sake of
minimum secure income ensured by the leasing in of some land (Patnaik, 1972: 21).
b) Population pressure: Increasing population and consequently a high person-land ratio
further intensified the competition for land for lease and pushed up rents.
c) Lack of industrialization: Since not much industrial employment was available, and
in spite of legal freedom guaranteed by bourgeois juridical relations and upheld by the
state, many direct producers were effectively tied to agriculture (Mitter 1977; Patnaik,
1990: 41-42). This further contributed to high rents. As Patnaik says: "[India] did not
experience that parallel rise of modem industry at a pace fast enough to absorb the
labor force so created [through pauperization of the peasantry under the imperialist
impact]5, which would have stimulated capitalist production in agriculture by steadily
expanding the market for agricultural products" (1990:41). It can also be argued that
uiban industries would have attracted rural labor, and this could have, to some extent,
countered the effects of the unequal distribution of land and of population increase;
5 Pauperization took place because of the high revenue demand which had to be paid in cash and because of fluctuations in world prices.
103 since a reduction in the supply of immediate producers could have increased their
power to bargain for low rents (and high wages; see below).
Under these conditions (a, b & c above), tenants did not pay capitalist ground rent.
The latter is the rent that represents a surplus of produce after all cultivation cost and a normal rate of profit to the cultivator has been met. Rather, they were paying pre-capitalist ground rent. "The rent collected by the landlord ... is not confined to the portion of the
surplus value which remains after deduction of the owners' profits, but embraces the whole
surplus product, and sometimes even a part the necessary product" (Kotovsky, 1964: 22).
The rental income to the landed represented a return to land monopoly p er se, and had nothing to do with any capital outlay (profit) (Patnaik, 1986).
This high level of pre-capitalist rent had adverse implications for productivity. On the
one hand, given that the level of rental income was high, there was little incentive for the
landed to make productivity-raising investments. For, the rate of return earned on the money
invested in buying up land and renting it out was much more than that on the money invested
in productivity-raising investments in farming. Besides, given the exploitation of immediate producers through the levying of very high rents, the immediate producers were in need for
consumption loans. Hris, in turn, created a condition where landowners could invest in usury
which brought a very high annual rate of return — 100-200% in many places (Prasad, 1990).
So, there was further disincentive to make productivity-raising investments (Bhaduri, 1973)/’
6 In fact, Bhaduri has argued that the practice of usury and appropriation of surplus product through rent will require that the available balance of paddy with the tenant must always fall short of his family's consumption requirements. So investment in land productivity might increase the income of tenants, and with increased income, they will not have to borrow from the landlords. As a result, the usury business will be affected. So the landlords have no incentive to invest in improving productivity.
104 To give an idea about the magnitude of exploitation under the conditions that I have described: in 1951, land rent and money-lenders' interest constituted roughly a third of the value o f the total farm produce (Patel in Kotovsky, ibid.: 27).
On the other hand: tenants also had little incentive to make permanent investments, like tube-wells for irrigation, on the land which they leased in. Further, having paid high rents and often high usurious interest, tenants were often left with little surplus to invest in agriculture anyway. Thus the transition to capitalist rent was blocked. The agrarian structure imposed structural barriers to the development of the productive forces.
This discussion may give the idea that it was only rentier-tenant relations that were barriers to yield-raising investments being made. But even if landowners employed wage labor instead of renting land out, they would be discouraged from making these investments. Wage laborers, although juridically free, were also tied to agriculture for the same reasons that tenants were, "even though this source gave a casual adult laborer only 197 days of employment in the whole year in 1956-57" (Patnaik, 1990:41). Given that laborers were not organized and given that there was a vast army of underemployed laborers, wages were barely enough for subsistence. Patnaik says:
"The big landowner does not employ free wage-labor for profit; he maximizes the returns from destitute labor tied to agriculture and forced to accept bare subsistence wages. Such a group of [big landowners] has been in existence for decades [and existed during the colonial period]. The productivity on their holdings very often is no higher than the average for the peasantry as a whole ... The choice between operating with hired labor and leasing out to tenants may represent for such landowners a purely contingent, reversible decision taken on the basis of current circumstances — e.g. the comparative terms on which laborers and tenants are available in that locality" (1990:41).
105 These big landowners during the colonial period did not attempt to raise yields (ibid:44).
"High rates of surplus value were generated on the basis of destitute labor but very rarely did this find its way back into agricultural investment. The commonest avenues of surplus utilization remained the pre-capitalist ones of money-lending, trade, and purchase of land"
(ibid.). Patnaik is right in pointing out that mere employment of wage labor, under the conditions of unequal land distribution, lack of industrialization and a mass of pauperized peasants-laborers wanting credit, does not ensure yield-raising investments and did not do so during the colonial period.
Thus, the sort of agrarian structure that existed in colonial India and after independence was a barrier to agrarian development. Indeed, by 1950 the yield of rice had fallen by 25% on average since 1936-38, of maize 22% and of wheat 5% (Kotovsky,
1964:27).
If capitalist development was to be encouraged by the state, then this sort of agrarian structure had to be changed. The state recognized the need for the abolition of the system of statutory landlordism and tenancy reforms that would "remove such motivational and other impediments to an increase in agricultural production as arise from the agrarian structure inherited from the past" (GOI, 1972: 15). The state also promulgated the land ceiling policy which sought to take away land owned by landowners beyond a certain limit (ceiling) and to redistribute the ceiling-surplus land among the land-poor and landless people. The rationale behind this policy was that like the abolition of statutory landlordism, it would increase productivity. As Gupta notes: "It is possible for a person to own unlimited land, and to derive feudal revenues out of that", but it is impossible to undertake and organize cultivation along capitalist lines over land beyond a certain maximum acreage (Gupta, 1966:30). Hence, the promotion of capitalist cultivation to increase productivity necessitated ceilings, "lest if permitted to acquire land beyond a certain maximum, zamindars would naturally continue to exist as a parasitic class" (ibid.: 29) by renting out land to hungry peasants at very high Tents.
Also given the inverse relation between farm-size and per hectare productivity (Bharadwaj,
1974), the land redistribution program, by creating smaller farms, could potentially increase productivity in the society. In short, through the LR policy, the state wanted to create a class of capitalist landowners from that of the erstwhile landowners, and also, as we will see, from the ranks of the erstwhile tenants. This new class would increase productivity.
The economic rationale or the logic behind LR is in part, however, ideological. This is because the fact that LR would benefit specifically capitalist interests in rural and urban areas is not pointed out. Instead, the logic is said to be one of the national development strategy. Let me therefore explain how LR would satisfy the interests of the rural and urban bourgeoisie, which is why they have supported LR (at least, the abolition of zamindari, and tenancy reforms).
Cheap food and agricultural raw materials (as well as the rural home market) were considered to be important pre-conditions for the development of capitalism. Indeed, the
(ideological) logic of the Planning Commission was that land ceilings and the redistribution of land would stimulate agricultural production and enlarge the market for the growing output of industiy and handicraft. But how? An attack on statutory landlordism would result in the emergence of former tenants as independent proprietors who would invest in agriculture in order to increase production. Abolition of rental payments would improve the cultivators' capacity for technical change and investment. So capital could be employed and a surplus extracted (for investment in urban industries). The abolition of extra-economic coercion
(forced labor, etc.) would create a competing, mobile, rural working class (rural labor markets) stripped of protection by the traditional landlords on whom they had been dependent
(Herring, 1983). Modem techniques of agricultural production, such as new implements, would lead to opportunities for investment in their production and even lucrative dealerships in them. An increase in the rural income of those who would receive some land and of others would produce a vibrant home-market for national capitalists. A new fluidity in land markets would open up opportunities for businessmen and other rich people (rich retired military and civil personnel, etc.) -- Daniel Thomer's (1977:225) "gentlemen farmers" -- to buy land and make productive investments in agriculture. Further, LR, as argued earlier, could lead to the increase in agricultural production, and this would make cheap food available in urban areas.
And, cheap food, other things constant, helps to keep workers and the lumpen in a relatively acquiescent mood (Bell, 1973:195).
Thus the bourgeoisie, especially, the urban bourgeoisie, had very strong interests in
LR which was expressed ideologically as national interests. The state actors shared the same ideology as expressed in (e.g.) the Planning Commission's documents.
The interests of the urban bourgeoisie were in fact politically expressed as seen in their lobbying for LR. Thus, in 1944, a group o f monopoly-capitalists including J.R.D. Tata, G.D
Birla and Shriram and their political representatives formulated a fifteen-year plan for economic development, which influenced the five-year plans by the state. This plan is known as the Bombay Plan. For agriculture, the plan suggested the introduction o f even cooperative
108 farming, which sounds quite radical, and if necessary by compulsion, for this would be the quickest way to ensure a surplus for speedy industrialization (Yechuri, 1992:35). Another piece of evidence is that a pro-business party like Swatantra, which had earlier opposed LR, supported tenancy reforms and ceilings on landownership; this is seen in the party’s election manifesto in the early 1970s (Ramachandram, 1980: 170-71).
3. The state: The issues of productivity and legitimacy
The interests of the state in LR overlapped with those of the tenantry and the landless on the one hand and the (urban) bourgeoisie on the other. I will discuss three issues here: a) the distributional issue and the question of state legitimacy: b) the productivity issue and the question of national development that the state had to promote; c) the need for eliminating threats to the state's monopoly of the means over violence.
a) Many scholars have traced Indian LR to the need of the state for legitimacy.
Leaders of the nationalist movement had promised LR to peasants for their support for it (see
Chatterjee, 1985, 149-50). Joshi says that before independence, elite commitment to LR was a political strategy to win power; that became part of a strategy for legitimizing that power after independence (Joshi, 1970: A 147). Tai in his widely quoted comparative study of LR in some countries including India, has said that perception of the need for political legitimacy prompted political elites to initiate LR (1974:468; 1968).
Recurrent class struggles, for which I have provided evidence earlier, did pose a potential threat to the legitimacy of the state. LR was one of the several policies the state used
109 in order to counter that threat.7 For example, by attacking statutory landlords, the state assumed the role of a defender of the subordinated classes. And, as Herring argues, since the elites running the state came from the privileged groups, dramatic illustration of dedication to the masses was necessary to establish their legitimacy and thus that of the state. Further, the distribution of state lands could be and was a patronage resource for rewarding supporters.Thus, LR was a potential political resource to the state (or, to the regimes running the state at different points in time) and could help in pacifying the land-hungiy and therefore legitimizing the state.
b) As LR could potentially cause an increase in productivity which in turn would promote capitalist development, the state would be interested in LR, for, its revenue depends on capitalist accumulation.
LR could serve the revenue need in a different way also, i.e. by abolishing statutory landlordism (although there is no evidence suggesting that that is why the state did this). The coercive power of the state was far superior to that of erstwhile revenue-collecting landlords.
So it could collect revenue more efficiently than these landlords could earlier. By abolishing
statutory landlordism and bringing millions of peasants who paid taxes to the state directly rather than to the landlords, the state did increase its revenue. State's revenue increased from
480 million rupees in 1951-52, through 676 million rupees in 1953-54 to 718 million rupees in 1954-55 (Surjeet, 1992:39).
7 This resonates quite well with the idea that the state selects, to paraphrase Wright (1978, ch. 1), those policies, from a range of structurally-defined possibilities, that enable it to reproduce the political conditions for its existence.
110 Besides, state-workers - there are millions of them -- most of whom stay in urban areas, are buyers o f agricultural materials such as food and of other commodities whose price is enormously affected by that of agricultural raw materials. Thus their economic interests in
LR coincided with those of the urban bourgeoisie as discussed above; whether or not the state-actors articulated this demand politically is a different matter.
c) In addition to these two major issues in LR for the state, there was another issue.
This had got to do with the abolition of zam indari. The latter I will argue, was, to a considerable extent, a result of the attempt of the post-colonial bourgeois state to remove some of the "residues” of the colonial era that were constraining the exercise of its autonomous power. I will explain this briefly.
Colonialism introduced bourgeois juridical relations (e.g. private property in land and labor in a legal sense), whereas, the economic and political relations in the villages did not have quite such a bourgeois character. The statutory landlords in zam indari areas in the territories directly under the British rule (and also statutory landlords in the territories known as the princely States not directly under the British rule) had some extra-economic power over the immediate producers. In many places, statutory landlords had some juridical powers which they had been exercising even before colonialism and these powers were not disturbed by the colonial state. Statutory landlords were making the poor perform forced labor and imposing feudal levies in cash and kind. One of these (e.g.) was nazarana which meant a bonus that tenants were obliged to pay the landlord on signing or renewing a tenancy; the bonus sometimes amounted to one or two years' rent (Kotovsky, 1964:25). Payment of bonus and most of the other forms of feudal duties were not however legal (ibid.). Further, in the princely States, "the bigger feudals had their own revenue administration offices and their own police" (ibid: 15). All this shows that statutory landlordism was a "drag" on, a barrier to, the exercise of the monopoly over extra-economic coercion by the bourgeois state. It was a barrier, that is, to the exercise of its structurally given relative autonomy. Capitalist ju rid ica l relations were "overdeveloped" as com pared to the development of capitalist production relations. The state was more bourgeois than the civil society was.
Thus there was a structural discrepancy between the character of the state and that of the society. This discrepancy lay behind the state's attempt to abolish statutory landlordism for statutory landlords, unlike other landlords, had juridical powers. By doing this the newly- bom state sought to complete the process of "bourgeoisfication" o f its power. That is, in this way, the process of separation of the political from the economic, which is the hallmark of the bourgeois state, would be brought to completion.
It is this discrepancy between the nature of the state and that of the society that was politically expressed in the form of the Congress party1 inability to penetrate, on its own, into the landlord-dominated rural society, and mobilize votes. In explaining the promulgation of zam indari abolition, Kohli merely points out the surface expression of this structural discrepancy: "Had this system [zamindari] been left intact, over time organized zamindars could have potentially posed a serious political challenge to the Congress party" (1987:70).
Thus, the colonial agrarian structure was a barrier to capitalist development in independent India. Land was unequally distributed. Tenants had little security in tenure. Rents were high. Under these conditions, peasantry and laborers often rose in revolt, and there was in consequence a potential threat to the legitimacy of the state. The fact that statutory
112 landlords possessed extra-economic power was against the very modus operandi of the post colonial capitalist state. LR was supposed to address these issues. In the next section, I want to discuss how exactly these issues were sought to be addressed.
II. THE NATURE OF THE LAND REFORMS
Three aspects of LR policy will be emphasized: the abolition of intermediaries; tenancy reforms; and the imposition of ceilings on land-ownership for redistribution of the ceiling- surplus land to the landless/landpoor. It maybe noted here that laws concerning these aspects were promulgated in the following chronological order: the laws regarding the abolition of intermediaries and tenancy reforms came first (late 1940s and 1950s); those regarding the ceiling-surplus land redistribution were the last, being introduced in the late 1960s and the
1970s. The first two types of reform aimed at changing the tenants' status; so I will discuss these together. The third one aimed at changing the distribution of land.
In discussing these reforms, I will emphasize their class character. Further, given that, as I have said in the last Chapter, States make laws regarding land reforms within the general guidelines from the federal government, I will indicate how the nature of land reforms laws varies from one State to another.
A. REFORMS AIMED AT CHANGING TENANT STATUS
1. Abolition of statutory landlordism
Hie post-colonial state abolished the system of feudal intermediaries ( zam indars). By doing this, the state came into direct contact with the occupiers of the land (GOI, 1972). This
113 meant that tenants were to pay rent to the state, instead of to the zamindars. However, the tenants were able to buy ownership rights from the state. In most States, it is the tenants holding the land directly from zamindars who were eligible to get proprietary rights on the land vacated by the zamindars. Except in such States as Orissa, Madras (now Tamilnadu),
Rajasthan, tenants had to pay compensation to get property rights: i.e. to buy these rights, they also had to pay to the state which would in turn pay to the landlords (Suijeet, 1992).
The zam indars were allowed to retain a big portion of the land for their personal cultivation: that is, the land that had been cultivated by hired laborers or by tenants-at-will who did not have any tenurial security; these latter were evicted. Except in a few regions -
West Bengal, Assam, Hyderabad and Ajmer - no maximum limit was placed on how much land could be retained by zamindars.
The abolition o f zamindaridid not necessarily mean the removal of all tenancies. As
I have said: zamindars had leased out their land to their tenants, who in turn did the same.
Thus there were zamindars, their tenants and their (i.e. zamindars') sub-tenants. "On the abolition of intermediaries, the subtenancies generally remain" (Planning Commission in
Myrdal, 1968:1309). The contradictory character o f the policy is evident from the following.
On the one hand, the abolition of intermediaries was attempted because they were unproductive; on the other hand, money was given to this unproductive class when the state had a scarcity of resources.8
8 The National Commission (GOI, 1976) argues that high compensation was given to provide capital resources to the ex-intermediaries to invest in land for productive purposes. This is not to deny that, it adds, the landed used political pulls and pressures to secure these concessions.
114 2. Reforms of the status of tenants of non-statutory landlords
The policy of abolishing statutory landlordism did not do much for most of the tenants. This was because the abolition o f zam indari system meant that the tenants who had held land directly from the zamindars became owners or were given occupancy rights. Those who had held land from the tenants of zamindars did not benefit. Besides, this policy was applicable only to regions where zam indari existed, not to ryotwari areas. Tenancy reform laws, on the other hand, aimed at providing some security of tenure and other benefits to tenants who could not benefit from the abolition of zam indari.
Both large, medium and small landowners had leased out land. All landowners were allowed the right to resumption of land for "personal cultivation", as under the zam indari abolition laws. For large landowners, the upper limit up to which they could resume land for personal cultivation by evicting tenants was equivalent to three "family holdings". A family holding was defined as "being equivalent according to local conditions and under existing conditions of technique either to a plough unit or to a work unit for a family of an average size working with such assistance as is customary in agricultural operations”
(Surjeet, 1992:47).9 The term "personal cultivation" was defined in effect in such a way that supervision by a family member was a sufficient condition to satisfy it; personal labor in cultivation was not essential.
Tenants of large landowners were allowed to be owners of the land that was above the limit o f personal cultivation (non-resumable land). They would pay for this land, the price
9 The "plough unit" and "work unit” implied respective land-holding sizes that could be profitably cultivated by a pair of bullocks and provide the household with work.
115 of which, depending on local conditions, would be in multiples of rental value or of land
revenue.
Small owners (those who owned less than a family holding) and middle owners (those who owned more than one and less than three family holdings), if they had leased out, also
could resume personal cultivation within five years, failing which tenants of this land could buy ownership rights. These owners could also lease their land to tenants. The law, however,
provided some protection to tenants in that the period of tenancy should be ordinarily five to
ten years - which meant that they couldnt be rotated yearly - and rents should not ordinarily
be more than one-fourth to one-fifth of the gross produce. Tenancy could be renewed, and
resumption for personal cultivation by owners should also be permitted.
The landlord-capitalist bias of the tenancy reforms is quite clear. This is especially
evident in the definition of "personal cultivation" for the realization of which the eviction of
tenants is recommended (Sen, 1962). Such a definition ensured that the erstwhile landlord
class, who did not do any manual labor, would not have to do so in future and hence would not be hurt except in the sense that they would have reduced rental incomes. The criterion of
"personal cultivation", in other words, could be satisfied by employing hired labor, even
though this is a characteristic of capitalism, and not of the socialism that the state claimed it
was building (Sen, ibid). Even supervision by the landowner himself/herself was not treated
as a necessary condition of personal cultivation (Appu, 1989). Thus, a pro-landlord definition
of personal cultivation, deliberately inserted into the LR laws allowed landlords to keep large
parts of their land under "personal cultivation". This enabled landowners to evict a lot of
tenants to save for themselves the maximum area for their so-called "personal cultivation". The National Commission argues that the loopholes in tenancy laws were not necessarily accidental lapses nor were they vicious designs of law makers (GOI, 1976). It says that choosing the areas of land from which tenants were allowed to be evicted were left to the landlords in order to enable them to become modem self-cultivating farmers, which is but a euphemism for capitalist farmers.
As I have discussed earlier there was a hierarchy of tenants. Broadly speaking, there were three groups: occupancy tenants -- those who had held the land on lease for 6-12 years depending on the State — and tenants-at-will and share-croppers, who could be evicted at any time. Most tenancy laws in the different States discriminated between occupancy tenants and other tenants. Only occupancy tenants were covered under the protective tenancy laws.
Share-croppers were not even defined as tenants at all in the laws.
Eviction of tenants from their holdings was permissible on too many grounds — "too many" from the tenant's point of view. This is essentially a continuing hangover of the law governing feudal tenancies (GOI, 1976:65). One of the most important grounds on the basis of which tenants could still be evicted therefore was the resumption of land by landowners.
This shows that when there is a conflict between the interest of antagonistic classes, the interest of the dominant class prevails (Marx, 1977a).
B. IMPOSITION OF LAND-CEILINGS
Ceilings on the owned land under personal cultivation were imposed under the ceiling laws. It may be noted here that the principles of determination of ceilings under these laws were different from those under zam indari abolition and tenancy reforms. In fact, ceilings
117 under the ceiling laws were higher than those specified in laws concerning tenancy and the abolition of statutory landlordism (Suijeet, 1992).
The ceilings under the ceiling laws were kept at a quite high level particularly in the
1960s. These were as high as 355 hectares for a family in Andhra Pradesh and 81 in Bihar.
Ceilings were high, no matter how we may judge how high these were. Considering the fact that the Agriculture Ministry itself says that with irrigation, 1.21 - 2.01 hectares has become a viable unit (Suijeet, 1992:82), such high ceilings as have existed are not justifiable. While more than 60% of holders operated under 2 hectares in the 1950s, the ceilings of the 1960s were veiy high (Chattopadhyay, 1973:106). Ceilings were also quite high when compared to the average holding size in India which was 2.3 hectares in 1970-71. In the 1970s, ceilings were lowered a bit, but by then, most of the ceiling surplus land had been "hidden" through fake transfers, etc.
In the 1960s, in some States — West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Punjab, Orissa, Andhra,
Rajasthan and Haryana — the ceilings were applicable specifically to individuals. This meant that a family of five could have five times the ceiling limit. Even according to the new ceiling laws of the 1970s, the definition of'family1 excluded adult sons. This definition enabled each adult member of the same family to get another full ceiling (Chattopadhyay, 1973:18). Given the low level of "the possibilities of surveillance" by the state (Giddens, 1985: 14), officials will hardly know the age of people. So nothing can prevent parents declaring their biologically minor sons as legally major sons. Legislation provided in most cases that landowners in excess of the ceiling should furnish a statement within a specified time (Chattopadhyay, 1973).
Naturally, they did not do that.
118 The high level of ceilings was not the only fault in the ceiling laws. There were other problems too. One is that ceilings were imposed on owned land under personal cultivation, not on the land cultivated. This means that leasing-in would be permitted and that the owner who leased in land would be able to retain as much land as he/she desired without the ceiling law affecting him/her.
Further, these laws provided for many exemptions from ceilings. The nature of the exemptions confirms the capitalist character of the laws. Consider the type of farms that were exempted from the ceilings: plantations, orchards, sugarcane farms, specialized farms engaged in cattle breeding, dairying, etc., efficiently managed farms consisting of blocks on which heavy investment had been made and whose break-up would lead to a fall in production. But what is the nature of these farms? These are more likely to be (mechanized) farms cultivated by wage laborers under the personal supervision of landholders than peasant-farms. These were capitalist farms. The "secular", socialist" state also exempted the land of religious institutions and cooperative farms, run by capitalist groups, from ceilings!
Furthermore, and most significantly, landlords were to be given compensation in exchange for the ceiling surplus land. Because of this, a majority of putative beneficiaries could not buy land. But compensation itself is illogical. Consider Marx's discussion in Capital
Vol 1 on reproduction (capital and labor) (Marx, 1977a). After a certain number of years, the original capital invested in production disappears because of the capitalist's consumption. If a landlord buys land worth $1000 and gets a rent of $100 a month by leasing it out, and if he/she consumes $50 a year, in 20 years he/she has consumed the original capital. That means he/she does not any longer possess the land that was bought 20 years ago! This Marxist logic flies in the face of those landlords who were demanding compensation for their "surplus" land that was taken away from them; they argued that it was their land that they had bought. But they completely forgot that over the years they had appropriated so much rent from the poor peasants that their original land no longer existed in their hands. However the bourgeois state yielded to their pressure.
HI. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE REFORMS
A. REDISTRIBUTIONAL LIMITS AS GIVEN BY THE NATURE OF THE POLICY ITSELF
There were clear redistributional limits of the LR policy. These limits were derived from the class character of the policy, and were evident in the following ways.
First, the new landowners had to pay compensation to the old owners, which meant that those who could not pay could not obtain land. Second, there were limits to the protection of tenants: tenants-at-will and share croppers were denied any protection. Third, given that ceiling levels were high, relatively little land was to be available for redistribution, even if, that is, the land declared surplus could be successfully redistributed. Further limits were imposed on redistribution of land because zamindars and other landlords were allowed to keep a large amount of land through a generous definition of personal cultivation, through exemptions from laws, etc.
120 B. LIMITS TO THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE REFORMS WITHIN THEIR OWN TERMS
Even within their own terms there were limits to the effectiveness of the reforms. For example: given high level of ceilings, has the ceiling-surplus land been distributed? But the
LR policy was not a complete failure either.
1. Reforms of the tenancy status in zamindari and non -zamindari areas
la. Abolition of zamindari
The abolition of zamindari brought 20 million tenant-cultivators into direct contact with the state; instead of paying rents to zamindars, they paid rents to the state and many of them bought ownership rights from the state (GOI, 1972:15). Zamindars lost their power to use extra-economic coercion including the imposition of illegal levies, (though remnants of feudalism such as bonded labor, etc. still remain).
However, statutory landlordism was abolished at great economic cost: "Feudal burdens have... merely changed their form into money and these have to be paid now by the entire society" (Gupta, 1966:26). Total compensation payable to zamindars amounted to Rs.
6700 millions, which was one-third of the total outlay during the First Plan of the Indian state.
This compensation was financed out of the net increase in rent and revenue accruing through payments by tenants of ex-zamindars to the state, which, with its coercive apparatus, was more efficient in collecting these than the ex-zamindars.
Some scholars have said that abolition produced "merely a change in the source of income" of statutory landlords with some reduction in their size of land (Myrdat, 1968:1307),
121 or it was "a reform of the system of taxation" (Warriner, 1969:159-60). 10 However, at the regional level, there may have been some real changes in either direction, both positive and negative, in the distribution of land. For example, in Saurashtra (now in Gujarat), abolition law resulted in a 30% increase in the self-cultivated land of statutory landlords, but in
Rajasthan they suffered a loss of more than 26.4% (Chattopadhyay, P. 1973:105).
lb. Tenancy reforms
The implementation of these reforms has a mixed record. First, tenancy reforms have been successful, to some extent, in discouraging tenancy. There has indeed been a marked fall in recorded tenancy: the leased in area as a percentage of total operated area has come down from 35.7 in 1950-51 to 10.7 in 1961-62, to 9.25 in 1971-72 and to 7.47 in 1981-82 (Rao,
1989). However, this has to be qualified by the fact that LR cannot be solely held responsible for this, for, the Green Revolution has played a role, as I will discuss in the next Chapter. It
should also be noted that this decline is more due to the resumption of land by landowners, ostensibly for personal cultivation, than to the acquisition of ownership rights by former tenants under reforms. Not more than a fifth of tenants could purchase rights of ownership.
The above-cited figures suggesting a decline in the areas leased-in do not however reflect the area under concealed or illegal tenancy. This is quite sizeable in many States. K.
N. Raj says that as much as 40% of cultivated land can be under this sort of tenancy (in
Dewan, 1990: 29). One reason is that lots of smaller tenants were evicted by former landlords
10 Instead of appropriating surplus in the form of rent they now appropriate it in the form of profit of enterprise, which, since they own the land, incorporates in this instance a portion attributable to capitalist ground rent.
122 to maximize the area under personal cultivation. That is, the land that was actually cultivated by tenants was claimed to be under personal cultivation. These tenants were henceforth employed as tenants-at-will (those who have no tenurial security) or as day laborers.
A second broad effect has been a decline in absentee landlordism. Appu says, given the liberal definition of personal cultivation, i.e. manual labor, even personal supervision, is not necessary, absentee landlords have had no difficulty at all in showing that they have been
"personally cultivating their land"; so no appreciable decrease in absentee landlordism has taken place (ibid.) (1989:186). However, to qualify Appu's statement, absentee landlordism of the type that existed before in the form of urban-based, very big landlords has, to some extent, declined: "the big people are not as big as they once were" (Moore, 1966:391; also
Merillat, 1970: 107). This is due not only to some real reduction in those larger land-holdings that had enabled landlords to afford lavish life styles in cities, but also to some indirect impact of land reforms. Landlords have had to reside in the village and closely supervise operations on their holdings to a degree that was not necessary before (see, Vyas, 1966: 26). One reason is that LR laws have made tenants more conscious of their rights. I found landlords (e.g.) in villages in Mangalpur Station of Orissa, as elsewhere, complain that tenants were withholding crop-share "illegally11. Also, unlike before, landlords everywhere fear that tenants may claim occupancy rights, so personal presence in the village is necessary for keeping an eye on tenants; as a result, before tenants try claiming proprietary rights, they can be changed.
Third, since tenancy reforms could not break the monopoly over land, the problems of tenurial insecurity and high rent exist and continue to hamper productivity. Tenants, who
123 are mainly sharecroppers, can be evicted any time, and pay almost twice the legal rent in most
States.
Ladejinsky (1972a) has also shown that in many areas a vast proportion of land is being leased out to tenants at onerous rental payments (half to three-quarters of the total produce are given as rent). Appu has observed the same in Bihar, Orissa and Bangalore
(1989:182-183).11
Finally, since tenancy reforms discouraged absentee landlordism to some extent for reasons described above, big non-resident owners were induced to sell their land. Resident big owners bought it. Thus tenancy reforms had some indirect effects on land ownership in this way.
2. Land Redistribution Under Ceiling Laws
The implementation of ceiling laws can be looked at by examining the different stages through which it takes place: estimation, declaration (identification), possession and distribution of surplus land, all by the state. Gaps in implementation are seen at each of these
11 Consider also the situation in a cluster of three Oriya villages already referred to in the last Chapter. It was a paddy-harvesting season. The landowner had called for the tenant to discuss with him the post-paddy-harvest cultivation. As far as paddy cultivation is concerned, the landowner does not share the cost of cultivation but earns 50% of the gross produce. But, in the cultivation of black-gram following paddy-harvest, he wanted to be a shareholder. This meant he would share the cost of cultivation, and as the owner of the land, he would get 50% of the produce; of the remaining 50%, he would also get 50% in return for his share in the cost of cultivation. So effectively, the tenant would get 25% of the gross produce. The poor old tenant angrily refused. Immediately, he was told that he had ceased to have the tenurial right next year. I checked from the Orissa Land Reforms Manual (Das and Dash, 1993: 27-28) that the landlord, tike most landlords in the village and in the country, was taking twice the fair rent. The incident also suggests how precarious the tenurial security of tenants is: the poor tenants cultivate their land only at the sweet will of landowners. (My field notebook)
124 stages. I will discuss the following gaps: i) the gap between estimates of surplus by the state and the surplus as revealed in estimates of independent scholars (Tables 4.2 & 4.3); ii) the gap between the officially estimated surplus land and land declared surplus; iii) the gap between the land declared surplus and the land actually taken possession otfdistributed.
Tables (4.2) and (4.3) show the extent of the difference between non-official and official estimates of suiplus. The average official estimate of surplus is less than half the average of estimates made by independent scholars. It seems that state estimates are always smaller than those given by independent scholars. Not only that. The entire part of even the officially estim ated surplus cannot be declared (identified) as surplus (Table 4.4), far less taken possession of and then redistributed. The reason for these gaps has got to do with the various ways in which large landowners have hidden the surplus by making full use of so many deliberately inserted legal loopholes. Let me give some picture of how these loopholes were taken advantage of by landlords.
Table 4.2: Non-official Estimates o f the Ceiling surplus land
Independent Scholars Estimates of surplus land (million hectares)
1. Mahalanobis(1969) 12 25.50 2. Chaubey 12.5 3. Dandekar and Rath 17.0 4. Minhas 17.4 5. Swamy 22.4 6. Average for all these estimates 18.92
Sources: Item no. 1 is from Suijeet, 1992; Item no. 2 is from Chaubey 1988; Items no. 3-5 are from Ladejinsky (1972b:405). Item 6 is the sum of (1-6) over 5.
12 This is the estimate of the Mahalanobis committee. However, the Central Agricultural Minister disagreed and reduced the potential surplus to 16.19 million hectares (Suijeet, 1992:106)..
125 Table 4.3: Official Estimates of the Ceiling surplus land
Official estimates Estimates of surplus (million hectares)
1. 16th Round ofN SS13 (1960-61) 8.87 2. Central Agricultural Ministry (1970) 16.19 3. Agricultural Census (1970-71) 12.10 4. 26th Round of NSS (1971-72) 04.80 5. Agricultural Census (1976-77) 08.88 6. Agricultural Census (1980-81) 05.96 7. Agricultural Census (1985-86) 05.06 8. Estimates made by state governments 02.35 9. Average of all official estimates 08.02 10. Average of estimates in early 1970s 11.03
Sources: Item no. 1,3-6 and 8 are from Bandyopadhyay (1986). Items no. 2 and 7 are from Surjeet (1992).
A survey of 22 cooperative societies in 1956 suggested that these were societies run
on capitalist lines by groups of absentee owners having all the work done by hired workers; these societies belonged to a type of joint-stock estate farm (40-240 hectares) (Sen, 1962).
These were evidently established to be exempted from ceilings laws which were to be promulgated in the 1960s and on which the discussion had started much before that date. In
1958, there were 1357 agricultural producers' cooperatives formed with the intention of
circumventing LR (Nehru in Kotovsky, 1964:171). Further, a land owner could get good
agricultural lands with occasional fruit-bearing trees planted here and there recorded as an
orchard, so the entire area was exempt from the ceiling provisions. Any area with a slight
depression which held water in flood or in rainy seasons could be declared as tank fishery and
retained as ordinary agriculture land and was also exempt (Chattopadhyay, 1973:11). In
13 NSS stands for National Sample Survey, a central government agency for collecting data.
126 Tamitnadu, a landowner converted his 8094 hectares under rice to land under sugarcane, and then got sugar cane plantations exempted from the ceiling law (Warriner, 1969:173).
Much of the ceiling-surphis land was transferred from the owners to people who often did not exist, in order to evade ceilings. There were thousands of fake divorces in order to evade new ceilings (Chattopadhyay, ibid). According to Government estimates, at the national level, nearly 43000 hectares might have been transferred m ala fid e during 1952-54 to escape the ceilings on which legislative discussions had started in the 1950s (Baneiji, 1986:56), although the laws did not come into effect until the 1960s, thus giving sufficient time to the landlords to hide their surplus land.
Even so, it should he noted however that the implementation of LR has not stopped in spite of the attempts of landowners to evade the laws. The land declared surplus as a percent of the average of official estimates of surplus made in the early 1970s has risen, as more and more land is being declared surplus.
Table 4. 4. The Gap Between Estimated and Declared Surplus of Land
Year Land declared surplus as a percent of the official estimates of surplus**
1. By early 1970* 8.49 2. My mid-1980s 27.35 3. By m id-1992 26.71 4. By December 1993 37.08
Notes/sources: Calculated from Surjeet (1992), N1RD (1995), and the data in the previous Table. * = most probably 1972. ** = the average of official estimates of surplus for the early 1970s as in Table 4.3
Not only is it that all the estimated surplus land has not been declared surplus, however, but also not all the land declared surplus has been redistributed (Table 4.5). By
127 December 30, 1993, as much as one third of the land declared as surplus has not been redistributed. This is, in part, because landlords contest the claim of the State governments that they own ceiling-surplus land. They often take the governments to court. Much time is spent there. Even if the governments win in the legal battles, the actual act of redistribution takes iurther time, given the bureaucratic lethargy.
Table 4.5: Land distributed and land distributed as a percent of land declared surplus
Year Land distributed Land distributed as % (000 hectares) of land declared surplus A B C 1. By early 1970s 508.22 54.25 2. By 1985-86 1754.75 58.17 3. By March 1989 1848.90 63.31 4 By March 1990 1881.51 64.34 5. By Jan, 1992 1960.74 66.77 6. By June, 1992 2013.35 68.33 7. By December, 1993 2042.49 68.69
Sources: 1,2 and 5 from Suijeet (1992); 3 from NIRD (1989);4 from NJRD(1990); (6) is from GOI (1993). 7 from N1RD (1995).
3. Redistribution of land, Agrarian Productivity, and the effectiveness of the LR
The LR policy was more effective in laying the basis for a revolution in agricultural productivity than in making the distribution of land more egalitarian. I will first look at the impact of the policy on the distribution of land.
One can look at the distributive impact o f LR by asking if it has had any impact on changes in the concentration of land (Table 4.6 & 4.7).141 will examine these changes in two
14. Of course, population growth would result in the partitioning of holdings and hence a reduction in the concentration of holdings in the hands of large holders, even without land reforms.
128 periods: 1953-54 — 1961-62, i.e. before the ceiling laws came into effect, and 1961-62 and after.
Some land redistribution apparently took place directly due to the abolition of statutory landlordism and the tenancy reforms of the 1950s and the early 1960s; and also indirectly due to the fear of ceiling legislation which came into effect in the late 1960s, the fear o f ceiling restrictions leading to the sale of land.1 s This is evident in changes in land distribution between the early 1950s and the early 1960s. As Table 4.6 shows, the larger landowners apparently lost some land, and smaller and medium holders gained — to the extent, of course, that government statistics can be trusted.16 The gini ratio of household owned holdings declined slightly from 0.75 in 1953-54 to 0.73 in 1961-62.
Data in Table 4.6 can be looked at in a different way by calculating the ratio of B to
A. This ratio shows the share of each group of owners in the land relative to its numerical size under a condition o f equal distribution of land. For example, in 1953-54, if land was equally distributed, given that smaller owners (<2.03 hectares) constituted 74.73% of the households, they should have owned 74.73 % of the land; but they owned 16.32% which was 21.84%
(21.84 = 16.32/74.73) of their due share o f74.73%. So, B/A = 21.84%. The higher this ratio for a group, the greater is its share in the land, and also the more equally is land distributed, at least as far as that group is concerned. For both smaller and medium owners, this share
15 There might have been some speculative sale of land prior to the implementation of ceilings on the assumption that the land market would be more propitious to the seller prior to ceilings than afterwards.
16 One should be cautious in interpreting these data. Big owners may have partitioned their holdings to evade ceilings, and registered therespective parts in the names of their family members, so the land that is officially recorded as belonging to the owners with small or medium holding sizes may actually be in the hands of large holders.
129 increased between 1953-54 and 1961-62 (Table 4.8). For large owners (those owning >10.14 hectares), who owned more than 10 times their due share in 1953-54, this ratio slightly decreased (1.29% decline); however, this rate of decline was much lower than the rate of decline in their absolute share from 36.17 in 1953-54 to 28.25 in 1961-62, or a rate of decline of 22%.
It must however be noted that to the extent that there was a change in the distribution of land during this period, it could not be directly attributed to the actual implementation of ceiling laws. This is because the ceiling laws only came into effect during and after the mid-
1960s. Rather the redistribution occuring at this time was due to the zamindari abolition and the tenancy reform laws.
Table 4.6: Changes in distribution in land in India (1953-54 — 1961-62)
1953-54 1961-62 Size class A B A B 0 23.09 ----- 11.68 0-2.03 74.73 16.32 75.22 19.98 2.04-10.13 21.67 47.51 21.93 51.77 >10.13 03.60 36.17 02.85 28.25
Notes/sources: Calculated from Bansil (1992). Size is in hectares. The size-class "0-2.03" includes the landless. A = households as a percentage of all rural households including the landless ones; B = land owned as a percentage to all land. One should note the arbitrary nature of the size-classification, which has little conceptual meaning.
Now, we can look at land redistribution in the period beginning from 1961-62. (Table
4.7). The gini ratio of household ownership holdings remained at 0.71 in 1971-72 and 1982
(Dev et al, 1994). However, gini ratios give very misleading information, at least in the present context. So let's do a more dis-aggregated analysis.
130 Table 4.7: Impact of Ceiling Laws: Changes in Distribution in Land in India (1961-62 — 1982) 1961-62 1971-72 1982
Size class AB AB AB 0 11.68 ----- 09.64 ----- 11.33 0-2.03 75.22 19.98 81.11 24.44 81.34 28.71 2.04-10.13 21.93 51.77 16.77 52.65 17.23 53.22 >10.14 02.85 28.25 02.12 22.91 01.43 18.07
Notes/sources: Calculated from Bansil (1992). The size class is in hectares. The size-class "0-2.03" includes the landless. A & B are as defmed in Table 4.6.
Since 1961-62, the absolute share of smaller (<2.03 hectares) and medium owners has increased, and that of large (>10.14 hectares) owners has decreased. But when we look at the
B/A ratio as defined above, we get quite different and interesting results (Table 4.8). Table
4.8 shows this ratio which, as I said above, reflects the due share of different groups under a condition where land is equally distributed. For both small and marginal owners, this share has increased since 1961-62. For large owners, who owned a little less than 10 times their due share in 1961-62, and who should have lost land because of the ceiling laws, this ratio has however continued to increase too, although their absolute share has decreased from 28.25% in 1961-62 to 18.07 in 1982. Consistent with all this, is the fact that the rural landless households as a percentage of all rural households has increased between 1971-72 and 1982
(Table 4.7).
131 Table 4,8: Due Shares in Land of Different Groups (The "B/A Ratio")
Size class 1953/54 1961/62 1971/72 1982
0-2.03 21.84 26.56 30.13 35.3 2.04-10.13 219,24 236.06 313.77 308.9 >10.13 1004.72 991.23 1080.66 1263.64
Notes/sources: Calculated from Table 4.6 & 4.7. Size class "0-2.03" includes the landless. If we exclude the landless, from this size-class, the B/A ratios for the four years will respectively be: 31.6, 31.44, 34.20 and 41.01.
According to the Planning Commission, the LR policy is an anti-poverty policy. In light of the above discussion, however, it cannot be said that it has been especially effective in this regard. The total amount of land distributed by 1993 December 30, as a percentage of the net sown area of 140 million hectares in 1990-91 (AggarwaL, 1993) is a mere 1.46, and as a percentage of the land operated by big landholders in 1985-86 (over 4.04 hectares) —
surplus land is going to come from the pool of land operated by these landowners — it is a mere 2.55. In 1989-90, the rural population living in poverty was supposed to be 168.6 millions. 17 Even taking the 1992 figure for land distribution as the figure for 1989-90 to facilitate comparison, it turns out that one poor person in 1989-90 might not have got more than 0.012 hectare. This is highly inadequate given that (e.g.) in a majority of States, the minimum amount of land required to meet subsistence needs of a family is at least a hectare
(Singh, 1990:327). Therefore, the performance of land ceiling laws is not consistent with the
state's claim about the LR policy being a major anti-poverty policy. It is true that rural poverty is more than a matter of land distribution, for, it is also a matter of the labor process and the
17 To be precise, the Seventh Plan target was to reduce the rural poverty population from 222.2 millions in 1984-85 to 168.6 millions in 1989-90 (N1RD.1990).
132 degree to which it is labor intensive/capital intensive and of the power workers/tenants enjoy vis a vis employers/landlords. But to the extent that land redistribution could have played a role in alleviating poverty, it has not succeeded in doing so.
Although the LR policy has not been very successful in terms of its redistributive goals, it has encouraged the development of capitalism by forcing the erstwhile landowners and allowing their tenants to make productivity-raising investments as capitalist farmers. Let me explain this.
First, following the abolition of intermediaries, the state assumed by the middle 'fifties direct responsibility for revenue administration in all parts of the country. This meant better records of land ownership than before. These records are important in getting credits from banks. It also meant that in what used to be zam indari areas the transfer of land through mortgage and sale was placed on a much firmer legal footing. This served to create a more fluid land market, a necessary precondition for agrarian capitalism.
Second, the abolition of statutory landlordism tenancy reforms in the former non- zamindari areas have, to some extent, removed fetters on productivity-rise and contributed to the emergence of a class of capitalist fanners. This was in the following sense. To the extent that the use of extra-economic coercion is a barrier to capitalism as Brenner has suggested (1986), the abolition of statutory landlordism removed a barrier to capitalist farming. The erstwhile statutory landlords now have to earn their livelihood through their participation in the market rather than through the extra-economic coercion of poor tenants.
Since, according to the laws, tenants could claim ownership rights on the land not under personal cultivation by the landlords of all types, the latter had an incentive, and in fact were forced, to show some personal interest in cultivation. Further, those tenants of the statutory and other landlords, who were provided security of tenure according to the law, had an incentive to make permanent productivity-raising investments on the land they now leased in.
Third, ceiling laws also had an indirect impact on the development of the productive forces. To evade these laws, large landowners bought tractors in large numbers in order to show that they cultivated huge tracts of land personally. (Another reason may have been to show that they have efficiently managed farms which come under exemptions). Between 1951 and 1956, tractors in private hands increased by 250% (Gupta, 1966:32).
The fact of the LR policy having contributed to the development of the productive forces under capitalism has two aspects. One it has encouraged a limited, narrow-based, development of capitalism: “narrow-based” in the sense that if the land of the erstwhile landlords had been redistributed more effectively, many more capitalist farmers would have emerged. Since monopoly over land distribution was not effectively broken, opportunities for extracting pre-capitalist rents remain. And, as Utsa Patnaik argues, even if erstwhile landlords were allowed to retain some land, if rent-exploitation was effectively discouraged "a stronger stimulus would have been given to [at least] landlord capitalism" (1972:28). But the state failed to effectively discourage the practice of payment of high rents. 18 The barrier to the development of productive forces remains.
18 However, it may also be noted that, given that in the context of lack of non-agricultural development, rent- exploitation and monopoly over land by a few are internally related, if this monopoly is not broken, regulation of rent-exploitation is very difficult.
134 The second aspect of the contribution of the LR policy to the development of capitalism is that it has been encouraged in a spatially uneven way. One reason for this is the spatial unevenness of the erstwhile tenants’ struggles (more on this in the next Chapter). The second reason has got to do with the class character of the tenancy policy. I will explain this.
One special category of beneficiaries of the zamindari abolition policy and the tenancy policy was the group of the erstwhile large tenants. Before independence, they had some protection against eviction and against an increase in rents. These tenants had a greater incentive to improve cultivation than ordinaiy share-croppers because increases in their output were not directly and immediately associated with increases in rent (Myrdal, ibid: 1310).
In the post-colonial era, the state enabled these tenants to buy ownership rights; and, this was a privilege denied to sharecroppers. Now this policy has had an important geographical aspect. To buy ownership rights, tenants needed money. Further, landlords in many places disputed tenants' right to buy land from them So, money was needed in litigation too (Patnaik, 1976). In areas where there was already some commercial farming, more than in other areas, tenants had some surplus with which to buy land from their erstwhile landlords and spend in litigation. So, tenants in these areas of commercial farming have been able to buy land from zamindars (Suijeet, 1992). Later on, these erstwhile tenants became capitalist formers. However, as commercialization was spatially uneven, so too was the positive effect of the anti-landlord policy on capitalist development in agriculture. If all tenants irrespective of their ability to pay were allowed to gain ownership of land of erstwhile landlords, then this sort of spatial variation would not exist. Besides, the social base of agrarian capitalism would have been much broader. But the class character of the state would not allow it to do that. IV. CONCLUSION
In this Chapter, I have discussed the issues in LR and who were interested in LR and why. I then discussed the nature of the LR. More specifically: I have described the abolition of statutoiy landlordism; tenancy refonns; and the redistribution of lands above ceiling limits.
I have also shed some light on the effectiveness of the LR policy. The policy has played some role in encouraging the development of the productive forces and the emergence of capitalist farmers from the ranks of erstwhile landlords and bigger tenants. Yet, as far as the redistribution of land to landpoor and landless people is concerned, the impacts of the reforms have been quite limited.
How do we make sense of these concrete materials? And what do these materials tell us about the nature of the state? In other words, why was the policy the way it was? For example: no popular participation was allowed which could have helped uncovered the ceiling-surplus land hidden by landowners. Tenants had to pay money to acquire ownership rights, so those who could not pay could not be owners. The policy has also failed on its own terms: it has not achieved its redistributional goals. To the extent that it has failed to completely break the monopoly over land distribution, the latter continues to be a barrier to the rise in productivity even now, although to a lesser extent that earlier. Why? To answer these questions, we have to relate LR to the nature of the state itself.
Paying attention to the nature of the state in this context entails that we look at not only its cla:s character but also its spatial character (“relative autonomy” of States within the state structure). For while, LR may have failed (howsoever, we look at this failure), it may not have failed equally in every State. This means that it may have succeeded in some States
136 more than in others. So the question about LR’s success and that about its failure become the same. Then the question is under what conditions has the LR policy succeeded, to the extent it has? It is to these issues that I now turn.
137 CH APTER 5
LAND REFORMS, LOWER-CLASS POWER AND STATE AUTONOMY: THE SPATIALITY OF CLASS AND STATE POWER
In the last Chapter, I discussed what the issues were in LR, and for whom these were issues. I also looked at the nature of the specific provisions mandated by the LR policy and the effectiveness of these. Based on these more concrete materials, I want here to relate LR to the class and spatial character of the state.
The Chapter has five sections. In the first section, I discuss how the post-colonial capitalist state was under pressure to lay down the foundations for capitalist development through the LR policy but how its democratic form set some limit within which it normally had to act when carrying out that policy. The next section shows that the constraints within which the state worked helped determine the fo rm o f the LR policy. In short, it became bureaucratic as opposed to popular, and also entailed payment of compensation from new to old owners as opposed to expropriation without compensation. The third section shows how and why the state triumphed in imposing this form of LR policy when the lower classes had opposed this, hi the next section, I discuss how with a different alignment of class forces the outcome was, to some degree, different. This was evident in the fact that the pro-lower-class bias in the formulation and the effectiveness of the policy of redistribution of ceiling surplus
138 land positively varied across States with the level of lower-class organization. Given that the
States have a certain degree of autonomy vis a vis the federal government, I present a qualitative discussion of LR in two States to provide further support for this claim The concluding section summarizes the discussion.
I. LR AND THE POST-COLONIAL DEMOCRATIC CAPITALIST STATE
The relation between LR and the state has to be looked at in the context of the specificity of the state which I have discussed in the Indian state Chapter. The Indian state is a post-colonial, democratic, capitalist state. Given that the state is a capitalist state it had a predisposition towards laying down the foundations for capitalist development; and, given its structurally given relative autonomy, it had the power to do so.
What these foundations are going to be at a point in time are however indeterminate at the level of the structural relation between the state and capital. This is because the empirical expressions of the state's relative autonomy exercised to chart out paths of capitalist development are contingent. In other words, while India's predominantly capitalist economic structure sets limits within which a variety of strategies of capitalist development were possible such as importing food and agricultural raw-materials, land reforms, etc., which of these would be chosen at a particular point in time was contingent. The question then is why was LR seen to play in important role in this strategy? The answer has partly to do with the state's post-colonial and democratic character. Let me explain the relation between LR and the post-colonial nature of the state.
139 The Indian state is post-colonial in that colonialism left some imprint on its nature.
Colonial rule and the struggle against it created strong nationalist sentiments. The nationalist character of the post-colonial state in turn meant that national sovereignty was valued: there was a constant fear of foreign political and economic intervention. There was therefore a desire and a pressure1 on the part of the state elites to create an autonomous basis for development. Indeed, Indian leaders were intent on charting out a path for independent capitalism (Masson, 1993:25) because dependence on foreign capital was seen to be the major reason for depletion of sovereignty (Kaviraj, 1994:20). Food perhaps could be imported. But given that food is used by donor nations as a method of economic and political intervention, the state sought to create conditions through LR for the development of agrarian productivity so as to achieve self-sufficiency in food. Further, self-sufficiency in food and agricultural raw- materials would ensure the home-market for indigenous capitalist industries and also the domestic source of capital for investment in these industries. So the LR policy was in tune with the state's overall aim of promoting autonomous capitalist development which was described of course as national development as we have seen in the last Chapter. The pressure to follow such a course of action was further reinforced by the fact that state elites in India, as in the Third World in general, are committed to development; they had a sense of having been left behind because of their colonial experience (Kohli, 1987: 25).
1 The pressure was because the bourgeoisie was too weak (weak in terms of development of the productive forces) to be willing to be inserted into the global market and competition. As it was clear later, American export of food was made contingent on allowing multinational fertilizer companies into the Indian market. International capital was considered a threat to domestic capital.
140 Not only is the state post-colonial, but it is also democratic in its form. Given the democratic nature of the state, in laying the foundations for capitalist development the Indian
state had to steer between the dangers of alienating on the one hand the existing landowners and on the other hand the lower classes who stood to gain from a more radical redistribution
of the land and other reforms and who could be a threat to state’s legitimacy as 1 have
discussed earlier.
This problem was especially acute given the role of the landowners in the Indian state.
The landowners were important as far as the bourgeois state was concerned for three reasons.
First, the large landowners were urban bourgeoisie's (and thus the state’s) political ally in the
rural areas. This was because landowners controlled the masses, who, given their electoral power, were a threat to the entire propertied class (more on this later). While it was in the
economic interests of the urban bourgeoisie that radical land reforms be promulgated, such
a policy would hurt the economic interests of the landed.2
Second, the landed opposed radical LR through its instrumentalist control over the
organs of the state. Such instrumentalist control was facilitated through the democratic state
form. In the decades when the LR laws were being (re)written the 19S0s and 60s --
nearly a quarter to about a third of members of the Lower House of the Parliament were those
2 Agrarian capitalism was already growing within the womb of the pre-capitalist agrarian structure. Some erstwhile landlords made capitalist investments. The LR policy could not have undermined landlordism as such. For, Herring (1983) argues, an attack on all forms of landlordism would include an attack on capitalist landlordism. The coexistence of capitalist landlordism with pre-capitalist landlordism was a reason for many pro-landlord provisions such as very high land-ceilings (low ceilings would have undermined all forms of landlordism). However, I will argue that in a capitalist social formation, agriculture does not have to be capitalist, and so the capitalist state may not be under pressure to reproduce capitalist relations in agriculture. So the idea that lack of radicalism in LR was due to capitalism developing within the womb of pre-capitalist agrarian structure must be viewed with some suspicion.
141 whose primary occupation was agricultural Of course, they could not have been other than large landowners, both feudal and capitalist. At the provincial level in the late '60s and early
'70s, where the actual LR laws were produced within the overall guidelines provided by the central state, instrumentalist control over the state was quite clear and even stronger than it was at the level of the federal government. In the Punjab, 45 out of 64 members of the
Legislature were big landowners; in Haryana, the ratio was nearly 60%; and, in Madhya
Pradesh, 96 out of 220 Congress legislators had ceiling-surplus land (Ladejinsky, 1972).
These landowners could not have been expected to promulgate, and let officials implement, radical LR. In Bihar, an ex-zamindar, whose estate covered 4000 villages, got himself elected to the provincial legislature and finally became a member of the committee to which the
Zamindari Abolition Act was referred! (Dhar in Rao, 1992). Instrumentalist control of the landed extended to the courts too, which have the power to make a piece of legislation null and void. And courts had been instrumentally controlled by landlords both directly when persons with landlord background were lawyers and judges, and indirectly when these have been heavily influenced by anti-lower-class ideas. The following statement by one Chief
Justice represented the attitude of the judiciary toward the LR policy:
"Land for the landless and for the Harijans [ex-untouchables] is not the way to the millennium... Remember that in private enterprise the profit motive is the driving force. Give enterprising cultivators and industrialists large sized farms and ensure politicians are restrained from interfering with production, and you will see the country becoming self-sufficient in food" (Shakir, 1986: 41).
This shows how bourgeois ideology is used to keep landlordism intact. LR studies show that arguments such as this are quite common (Khasnabis, 1986; Herring, 1983; Merillat, 1970;
142 Kotovsky, 1963; Suijeet, 1992). This also shows that the judicial branch may be important for understanding Indian politics. I will return to the role of the judiciary later.
So given this sort of importance of the landed, the state trying to create conditions for capitalist development, could not afford to undermine their interests; in fact, the state wanted to convert the old landlords into new, capitalist landlords. On the other hand, it could not have ignored the interests of the lower classes, given the democratic state form, at least. This context for state action, where opposite interests had to be "balanced", was expressed ideologically in terms of two key ideas: i) while LR policy would serve capitalist interests (by converting the old landed class and some of their tenants into a class of capitalist fanners), it was described as a method of national development; and, ii) while through LR the state sought to maintain a degree of class unity around this objective of promoting capitalist development and thus also reproduce its legitimacy by throwing some crumbs at the lower classes without attacking private property relations, the state described LR policy as one that will "eliminate all elements of exploitation and social injustice within the agrarian system"
(GOI, 1972: 15).
□. THE FORM OF LR POLICY IMPOSED BY THE STATE
The sort of context of the policy I have described — the class-context of the policy, that is -- helped determine the form of the policy. In this regard it was: a) bureaucratic; and b) market-mediated in the sense that it mandated compensation from the new to the old owners. But this form of LR, this form of state action, was not what the lower classes had struggled for. The struggle for LR had not just been for some land, tenurial security, etc. -
143 the content of the policy -- but over a particular form of that policy. More specifically, the
struggle, from the beginning, had been for a non-bureaucratized, non-market-mediated, LR.
The popular demand was for LR through popular participation and for land redistribution without compensation. Let me provide some documentary evidence consistent with this claim.
The Kisan Sabha (Peasants' Union) demanded the "Abolition of landlordism without
compensation and free distribution among agricultural workers and the poor peasants of lands
taken over from landlords" (in Kotovsky, 1964:41; stress mine). Note how the Union sought
the implementation of the LR policy unmediated by the market. Further, the Communist party
of India in 1957 not only called for the abolition of landlordism without compensation but
also for the implementation of LR through "democratically elected agricultural laborers' and
peasants' committees" (ibid: 87), not through bureaucratic machinery. I will return to this
issue later.
While the lower classes fought for non-bureaucratized, non-market mediated LR, the
state precisely discouraged this form of LR. Let me first show some examples of how the
state has discouraged non-bureaucratized, popular LR. In the early 1950s, in Telengana
(Andhra Pradesh), three million peasants in about 3000 villages established "village soviets",
drove away landlords, seized one million acres which were redistributed to the landless/land-
poor through popular committees (Baneijee, 1986). But the state ruthlessly repressed the
movement. It killed 4000 and jailed 10000 (Banerjee, 1986:70; see also Alavi,1969). In
Kerala (southwest India) the judiciary, an important and politically conservative organ of the
state, prevented the leftist government from providing for popular local committees of land
reforms in the legislation (Herring, 1983: 202). In West Bengal (eastern India), the leftist
144 regime sought to register the names of share-croppers, so they could get their legal rights, through their popular participation, but the High Court of the State opposed the registration
(Khasnabis, 1986; 1982); I discuss this later in some details. These are only a few examples to provide clear evidence that the state was against LR through popular participation.
Similarly, the state discouraged a non-market-mediated LR. For example, tenants could get ownership rights only by paying money, not free: expropriation without compensation was beyond the political feasibility frontier for the state. This was very clear when attempts were being made to abolish zam indari in Bihar State. It was no less a person than the then President of India who warned Bihar's Revenue Minister about "dispossessing people of their property rights before they have been compensated for it" (in Suijeet, 1992:
24). The then Deputy Prime Minister of India, Patel, said: "they [zamindars] need not be afraid of Socialists and Communists. To take away Zam indari without paying compensation would amount to robbery. Compensation must be adequate and not nominal" (ibid.).
III. WHY COULD THE STATE IMPOSE A FORM OF LR NOT WANTED BY LOWER CLASSES?
Why was it that the state triumphed in imposing a form of LR that the lower classes did not want? In other words, w hy did the state fail to meet the lower-class demand for non- bureaucratic and non-market-mediated LR? Those who provide mere political explanations of LR — the idea that the state promulgated LR to counter threats to its legitimacy posed by the lower-class struggles (Joshi, 1970; Tai, 1974; 1968; also Herring, 1983) -- fail to raise the question of why the state sought to solve its legitimacy crisis, and therefore the agrarian
145 problem, in the bureaucratic and market-mediatedform which it did. What is important to understand is not just (e.g.) how much land is distributed, which refers to the content of the policy, and why? It is also important to know how it is done, i.e. the form o f the policy. Are politically organized landless people themselves allowed to decide the ceiling and to keep the extra land without compensation, or is there bureaucratic land distribution on payment of compensation? If the latter, we should know why the state seeks to implement land reforms that particular way? I cannot answer this in detail because of the space-constraint. The answer lies only in part in the fact that the landed, as I just pointed out, play an important role in the state. More generally, the non-bureaucratic and non-market-mediated LR as a form of state- society interaction is against the modus operandi of the state that is structurally constrained to serve the basic interests of the exploiting propertied classes. I will briefly make the following points to explain how.
A) The struggles of the rural poor againsteconomic exploitation by the landed and against unequal distribution of the means of production can amount to the struggle against the political precondition for that economic exploitation and inequality. This precondition is the state itself protecting the private property rights in land. In fact, the threat to the state is not just the threat to the political interests of the landed but also to those of all fractions of the exploiting proprietary class including the urban bourgeoisie. There was in other words a real possibility that the threat to private property rights in land could be a threat to private property rights in all sorts of means of production. Thus, and to paraphrase Clarke (1991), agrarian struggles had the potential offu sin g economic and political struggles.
146 B) While class struggle over LR tends to combine the political with the economic in the above sense, the state tends to separate these. The role of the state, as we have seen in the earlier Chapters, is to reinforce the separation between the economic and the political, the economic struggle and the political struggle. The state does this because the reinforcement of this separation ensures that struggle against economic exploitation will not be a struggle against the political basis for that exploitation, the basis being the state, so that the long-term interests of the landed are not hurt and exploitation can continue because the state is intact.
The state has reinforced this separation between the economic and the political by promulgating bureaucratic and market-mediated LR even over lower-class resistance. Let's see how this form of LR reinforces this separation.
The state channels class struggle against landlords into economic concessions in the form of LR. Note the specific manner in which the state does this to reinforce the separation between the economic and the political. The state deals with the economic grievances of tenants individually: a) through courts in the sense that tenants as individual citizens appeal before courts for their rights; and b) through the market since tenants are supposed to pay for ownership rights. Thus, through the "law" and the "market", the state decomposes class forces into "political" ("citizens") and "economic1 individuals: the logic of law and of market3 are imposed on peasants. In this process, the state through its LR policy divides the class forces and decomposes them.
3 Here I specifically refer to markets under capitalism where social relations are determined by market relations and imperatives (competition, profit-maximization, etc.) unlike in pre-capitalist societies where markets existed but were subordinated to other social relations and needs (Wood,1994). In the case of LR, the subsistence rights of peasants are subordinated to the market (money).
147 There are many examples that suggest this. The rule that some tenants of erstwhile statutory landlords can obtain ownership rights over land by paying compensation money to landlords divided the tenantry between those who were legally eligible for buying the proprietary rights4 and those who were not; and, between those who had the ability to pay compensation money and those who did not. Not only that. The better-off tenants who could buy ownership rights withdrew from the struggle for LR and thus weakened the struggle for the remainder. These tenants, who were a part of the struggle earlier, went through a process of embourgeoisment. They opposed such aspects of LR policy as redistribution o f the ceiling- surplus land because these would hurt their interests. Thus the state has succeeded in dividing the class base for the struggle for LR. Whether or not it was intentional is beside the point.
In fact, and ironically, the LR policy has contributed to the split in the communist movement itself that was instrumental in organizing peasants in order to demand LR.
Promulgation of certain apparently pro-peasant reforms like the abolition of statutory landlordism, land-ceilings, etc. resulted in a section of the undivided communist party perceiving that the Congress Party, a major apparatus of the state, had some progressive sections within it and therefore the Party had to be supported; other members of the Party who did not support this view split away from the party to form the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) (Patnaik, A, 1990; Mallick, 1994). Thus the state has been successful in, to borrow
4 They were superior tenants, having some tenurial security during the colonial period.
148 a phrase from Simon Clarke, "fragmenting collective resistance to the social power of property" of landlords through the use of such means as market-relations and the law.5
C) However, the very attempt to promulgate this sort of divisive LR policy has been challenged. As I have shown above, the lower classes have struggled for a different type of
LRthan that which the state pursued. But if class struggle for a solution to the land problem goes beyond the point where it wall not serve the function of reinforcing the separation between the economic and the political6, state repression in the name of maintaining law and order follows. The state has been able to disregard the popular demand for non-bureaucratic, non-market-mediated LR largely because of its power to use physical repression, which is increasing at a fast rate,7 as well as administrative coercion.
I have earlier shown how the state physically repressed the Telengana movement of peasants who sought to redistribute land of the landlords through popular participation. That the state indeed seeks to solve the agrarian problem and contain rural conflicts partly through physical repression is clear. The Home Ministry says: "It will be unrealistic to seek lasting
5And one main reason it has been able to use these means is that it can use coercion against any opposition to its modus operandi. Yet, the struggle for more egalitarian land relations continues and thus the threat to the political power of the proprietary classes and to the state remains.
6That is, if the struggle continues for popular, non-bureaucratic LR which will break the monopoly power of landlords and thus will do more than throwing crumbs to the poor, it will not serve that function.
7 In the face of popular struggles, state repression has increased enormously over the years (Roychowdhury, 1991:34). The government expenditure on police increased 23 times from 1951 (1.07 billion rupees) to 1985 (13.75 billion rupees) (Rajagopal in Mathur, 1992); and the number of police persons increased from 468000 in 1951 to 904000 in 1981, an increase of 93% which is 4% more than the total population increase (Brass, 1994: 59). All this gives some idea about the coercive power of the state.
149 solutions to a socio-economic problem8 ... through coercive measures alone" (GOI,
1986:4 l;stress added). Yet the struggle continues.
hi Kerala, even parliamentary struggle for LR as organized by the Communist party was frustrated by using administrative coercion. The federal government under Article 356 of the Indian constitution has the right to dismiss even a democratically elected State government if the constitutional machinery in the State breaks down. When the radical land reform legislation was passed in Kerala by the leftist regime, landlords organized "liberation struggles" creating the problem of law and order. The federal government dismissed the State government under the pretext that the normal constitutional machinery had ceased to function
(Paulini, 1979: 254).
The coercive actions of the state against those fighting for LR, in turn, have affected to a considerable extent the very nature of struggle for/over LR For example, its actions, such as those in Telengana, are partly responsible for the reformist attitude of communist parties that were fighting milhantly for radical LR Even the more radical of the two important parliamentary communist parties, known as the Communist Party of India (Marxist), seems to have eschewed the program of militant organization of the rural poor. It used to fight militantly in late 1960s on behalf of the rural poor for radical LR Now it is supporting the basic interests of intermediate agrarian classes who are rich and self-sufficient farmers, a
"layer" below the largest landlords, rather than poor peasants and landless laborers who are the poorest of the rural poor (Mallick, 1994:4-5; 16; 230).
8 The problem refers to the various political movements that have taken place because of the non implementation of land reforms.
150 IV. LR UNDER A DIFFERENT ALIGNMENT OF CLASS FORCES
Thus the state could impose bureaucratic and market-mediated LR against the wishes of the lower classes. It could do so through: a) ideological appeals to, and reinforcement of, private property rights, and b) physical repression. However, with a different alignment of class forces the outcome might have been different and to some degree, in particular States of India, it was. This is seen in the inter-State variation in two important indicators: a) the extent of the pro-lower-class bias in the policy reflected in such things as the relative height of the ceilings; and in b) the effectiveness of the attempts to redistribute land and to change the status of tenants. Both a) and b) are a function of class contestation, the degree of which exhibits inter-State variation (Map 5.1). I will provide evidence for this claim by following two methods: the use of regression equations, and a qualitative-comparative analysis of two
States.
A. INTER-STATE VARIATION IN CEILINGS
One important aspect of ceiling laws was that different States fixed different levels of
ceilings, within the general guidelines provided by the federal government. So ceilings were not equally high everywhere. This reflects, in part, the spatially varying political bases of the
regimes in power in different States. More specifically: one reason would be the geography
of the concentration of land itself if land is more unequally concentrated — that is, if there are
many large landowners in a State -- ceilings will be high in that State in part at least to protect
these landlords from losing much land through these laws. However, if we hold land
concentration constant, lower-class struggles cause ceiling levels to be lower, for, the lower LEFT PARTIES* ELECTORAL STRENGTH (% VOTE IN STATE ELECTIONS, 1967-1983)
Map 5.1
152 the ceiling levels, the higher will be the potential for the redistribution of land for which these classes have struggled. This following equation seems to be consistent with this claim.
CEILING = -6.993 + 27.098 (GINI) - 15.654 (LEFT); N=17; R = .655; P - .02 (-1.17) (2.949) (-2.088); V* = .01 and .06. where: CEILING = median ceiling levels in the early 1970s. GINI ~ gini ratio of distribution of land owned by rural households in 1971-72; LEFT = votes polled by left parties as a percentage of all valid votes in State elections between 1967 and 1972. GINI = a proxy for the dominance of large owners.
Not only is it true that lower class struggles were instrumental in the origin of the LR policy, as I have discussed in the last Chapter. But also these can make LR somewhat less pro-landlord.
B. INTER-STATE VARIATION IN CEILING-SURPLUS LAND DISTRIBUTION
There is also a good deal of variation in the success the various States have had in redistributing land. Of all the land distributed, nearly a third is accounted for by West Bengal and Kerala, the States where powerful peasants' movements had taken place under the leadership of various leftist organizations. When we take land under middle-and-large owners
(more than 2 hectares) as a proxy for surplus land available and thus for the extent of the land-monopoly to be broken, it is seen that only in West Bengal has more than two-fifths of this surplus land been distributed. In other states the ratio is very low, except for Jammu and
K ashm ir (see Map 5.2). This latter is a special case where given its geo-political importance relative to Pakisatan, state power was effectively utilized to bring about some real land distribution.
153 PERFORMANCE OF LAND-CEILING LAWS (% OF THE SURPLUS LAND DISTRIBUTED) Fig. S. 1: Land Redistribution and Left Fig. S.2: Land Redistribution and Electoral Strength Peasants’Organization
LOGSUC =-1.876 +0.833(LOGLEFT) LOGSUC =-4.73 +.515 (LOG AIKS) (-3.173) (4.282) (-20.963) (4.024) N=16; R=0.753; P=.001 N=16; R=.732; P=.001 where: LOGSUC = log (success); success = land distributed by December 1993 over the potential surplus land; total land operated by households operating more than 2 hectares in 1970-71 is taken to be a proxy of the potential surplus land (data from Bansil, 1992). LOGLEFT = log (votes polled by left parties as a percentage of all valid votes polled in State elections between 1967 and 1983). This is a proxy indicator of the political organization of the lower classes which has played a crucial role in the implementation of ceiling laws over the resistance of land owners having ceiling-surplus land. LOG AIKS = leg (AIKS); AIKS = the average of the proportion of the members of the All India Kisan Sabha (a national level organization of peasants) affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the rural population in 1978-1990 (data from various AIKS publications). AIKS members data are for 1978, 1979, 1981, 1985 and 1990. Rural population data are for 1981. Jammu and Kashmir is deleted because it is an outlier (see the text).
I have earlier argued in the second and the third Chapters that lower-class struggles have some bearing on the effects of the exercise of the structurally given autonomy of the
155 Indian state. In the context of the LR, these struggles play an important role in the effective deployment of state autonomy on behalf of the lower classes when it comes to redistributing the ceiling-surplus land to these classes over the resistance of the larger landowners. The geography of redistribution of land is the geography of these struggles (Figures 5.1 & 5.2).
The regression equations presented above are consistent with this claim.
C. COMPARISON OF LR IN KERALA AND WEST BENGAL
Having discussed inter-State variations in LR using quantitative data, I want to look at these in a more qualitative manner. I have said that lower class struggles make a difference to the formulation and implementation of LR. I want to discuss this issue further by comparing two States - Kerala, a state in south-west India and West Bengal in the eastern part of the country — where the communist-based organization of lower classes is the strongest among all the States.
A communist party was elected to office in Kerala in 1957. Nowhere else in India or in the world had this happened by that date. West Bengal (henceforward, WB) is known for having a democratically elected communist party in office for the longest time anywhere in
India or outside: a period of almost twenty years from 1977 till today. It will be interesting to note how these two States have framed and implemented LR.
Communist regimes in these two States have had to work under the same constraints laid down by the Indian state as have regimes in other States. For example, if the land reforms legislations are too pro-lower- class, the federal government has the power to veto these.
Then why is it that they have succeeded more than the regimes in other States? But there is
156 another question since the degree of success of LR in the two States has not been identical.
LR seems to have been more effective in Kerala than in WB. As Kohli (1987) indicates, if the existence o f a cadre-based party with a pro-poor ideology can effectively implement redistributive policies, then we would expect similar levels of success in LR in these two
States. But that does not seem to have been case. Once again, why?
To answer these questions, I will make a brief and qualitative analysis of LR in these two States. That communist States have done better than non-Communist States has been widely studied. For example: Hart and Herring (1984) have compared LR implementation in
Maharastra and Kerala; Kohli (1987) has compared the same in West Bengal and
UP/Karnatak. But, comparison of communist States themselves has been a relatively neglected theme in the study of the politics of agrarian development in India.
1. Political contexts for land reforms in Kerala and WB
In Kerala a Communist government was elected to office in 1957, and proclaimed an ordinance within a week to prevent eviction of tenants until comprehensive legislation was passed. Drafting of the latter started immediately. It was quite pro-lower-class. This Bill, known as the Agrarian Relations Bill, was passed in the Assembly on June 10, 1959.
Within two days, opposition to this bill was mobilized by the landed. As I have discussed before, the State government was dismissed by the federal government. In the next election, the communist party improved its percentage of the popular vote from 35 to 39 percent. But since the opposition parties were united, the party could not form a government
Congress in alliance with a petty-bourgeois socialist party (Praja Socialist Party) formed the
157 Ministrywhich revised — for it could not jettison the Bill as it had wide political appeal — and passed the Agrarian Relations Bill again. It became a law known as the Agrarian Relations
Act in January 21, 1961. This Act gave concessions to the landed in several ways.9 Even then, important sections of this Act were invalidated by the judiciary, so it could not be operative.
Yet, this Act influenced agrarian politics in the State. On the one hand, landowners evicted tenants in anticipation of losing land. On the other hand, the poor militantly organized for legislated, if compromised, benefits. Demonstrations were held by the communist party against the dilution by the Congress ministry of the Bill it had drafted. The Congress then passed a new law. In this, the abolition of landlordism was removed from the agenda. Such a pro-landlord Act invited once again massive demonstrations.
The Congress ministry fell in 1964. By then the communist party had been divided into the Communist party of India (CPI), a more compromising party, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), a more radical party. In 1967, a United Front coalition led by the left parties came to power under the leadership of the CPM. Congress was eliminated (it got
9 out of 133 seats). The United Front got 113 out of 133 seats. CPM got the largest number of seats. Immediately after assuming office, the government proclaimed an ordinance that provided for the protection of tenants until comprehensive legislation was framed.
A new Bill was drafted which revised the earlier 1964 Congress Act and was passed in 1969. It became known as The Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act. It restored to a targe ext ait the original provisions of the 1959 Bill drafted by the undivided communist party.
9 For example: the definition of small holders was enlarged to give benefits to more landowners at the expense of tenants; evicted tenants were given no benefits.
158 But the government fell, and was replaced by another regime led by the CPI — i.e. the more reformist communist party — in informal alliance with Congress. The CPM was in opposition in the Assembly.
The CPM was in a dilemma. If it cooperated in implementing the reform which it had drafted, it would mean supporting a government that it was opposed to. If it opposed the government it would mean land reform would be jeopardized, to the extent the new regime was intending to implement the reforms.
The CPM accused the government of going slow on reforms. Before the date from which reforms were to implemented, the CPM held a mass meeting of 15000 delegates for peasants and laborers' organizations and resolved that hutment dwellers (laborers living on plots of land owned by landowners) pay no rents and should forcibly occupy one acre of land containing the huts; all ceiling-surplus land should be forcibly occupied; all repressive actions by the government or landlords to prevent these actions should be resisted. Major incidence
of agrarian violence took place in 1969-70. Peasants and laborers were thoroughly politicized
and radicalized. One impact was that all parties showed some commitment to reforms. In May
1970, a CPM-led peasant association urged hutment dwellers to occupy their hut-sites without going through legal channels. In some districts, more people benefited from direct
extra-legal than through legal action.
The CPI-led regime called for an election to mobilize support for its policies. The
1970 elections produced new alliances. A formal alliance (known as the United Front) was welded between the pro-Indira Congress faction (a bit more progressive than the other
faction) and the CPI; two socialist parties also joined the alliance. The CPM, which won the
159 largest percentage of votes, led the People's Democratic Front. The far right representing landlords was virtually eliminated. The United Front had a clear majority. But implementation of the policy was tardy until the end of 1971. So the CPM initiated the "Excess land agitation" in 1972 that lasted 80 days (Krishnaji, 1979: 519). In some places, a struggle council was formed to investigate land holdings and its results were compared to official records and such comparison showed significant differences. The movement, in which 200,000 participated, uncovered 175,000 acres hidden by the landowners from the government. It demanded a law which was even more radical than that it itself had earlier drafted.10 Further, at the State level, an action Council of Peasants and Farm Workers led by the CPM demanded that the government speed up implementation or face mass agitation. The CPI-affiliated peasant association and the Youth Congress too threatened an agitation approach. The Chief Minister
(of the CPI) himself admitted that there were gaps in implementation; he blamed it on the inadequate administrative mechanism and inadequate mobilization of the people.
The CPM renewed its mass agitations when the government was not quickly acting on the proposed popular committees for land reforms. Such actions made the government leaders appeal to the CPM for a halt; the CPM agreed to suspend agitation provided serious efforts were made to form popular committees.
The cycle of agitations that occurred in Kerala had a significant impact on implementation. Agitations impressed officials with the urgency of the task of reforms. These helped in uncovering the land hidden by landowners from officials. The CPI Ministry resigned
10 It was to provide for: expropriation without compensation; ceiling returns by landowners (showing their ceiling~surplus land) to be published for public scrutiny, and so on.
160 on the issue of dilution of land-reforms. In January 1980, the CPM came back to power, leading a coalition called Left Democratic Front including the CPI. By then land reforms, at least reforms aimed at changing the status of all sorts of tenants, were nearly "complete".
The history of the politics of LR was not as tortuous in West Bengal as it was in
Kerala. In West Bengal, LR took place under the Congress regime until 1966. Under the
Congress regime the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act 1953 provided for the abolition of all zamindari interests on the payment of compensation. One significant feature of this Act was that it provided for ceilings (25 acres) on the personal land of intermediaries. This was not a general feature of the abolition of zamindars elsewhere in India; in most States, there was no limit to how much land zamindars could keep for personal cultivation. The West
Bengal Land Reforms Act of 1955 provided for a ceiling level of 25 acres on all agricultural lands. This Act also provided for the official recording of share-croppers so that they could get their rightful shares and be protected from eviction. This was in contrast with other States, where share-croppers were provided with no protection. Yet, during the Congress regime, little was done in this respect. This was because the registration of share-croppers would hurt the interests of rentiers who formed the social base of the Congress party. Not much land was distributed under the Congress regime either.
Between 1967 and 1970, a Left coalition came to power twice. It stayed in power for
19 months. It encouraged the rural poor to mobilize and seize ceiling surplus land. But the
State came under the Congress rule again from the early 1970s until 1977. During this time, much of the land seized from the landlords went back to them with the support o f the regime.
161 In 1977, the Left Front came to power with an absolute majority, under the leadership of the CPM. It sought to implement the Congress laws by suitably amending them. Earlier, for example, landlords used to show one of their family members as sharecroppers for official recording, and the actual sharecroppers could not be officially identified. Now the Left Front government amended the law. The burden of proving that the claim of a particular sharecropper was invalid was shifted to the landlord. Recording of sharecroppers with the active collaboration of beneficiaries, officials and peasant organizations now took place.
However, such grassroots interaction was challenged by the court, as I have shown earlier.
So, the implementation of the policy of recording sharecroppers has been slowed down. As far as the ceiling surplus land distribution is concerned, the CPM has given up the early strategy o f direct action (land seizure by peasants) because this led to dismissal of its government by the federal government and then subsequent repression of its cadres by police under the Congress regime. So it is taking a parliamentary approach. The implementation has been quite tardy. While nearly 300,000 acres of land were redistributed during the 19 months of left rule in the 1967-1970 period, only 80,000 acres were redistributed during the period ofleft rule between 1977 and 1985 (Mallick, 1992).
2. Nature of implementation of Land Reforms in Kerala and WB
According to many scholars, WB's land reforms program is a remarkable success
(Sengupta, 1981; Bose, 1981; Dreze, 1990; Kohli, 1987). On the other hand, there are scholars who are skeptical of the record there (Mallick, 1994). Kerala's record has been more
162 sympathetically evaluated by Khasnabis (1986), among others. Let's compare the record of implementation o f the policy in the two States.
As in all States, Kerala and WB sought to redistribute the ceiling-surplus land and to change the status of tenants. In WB, there was land redistribution through the zamhtdari abolition since the ceiling-surplus land of zamindars was redistributed, and also through a separate ceiling law. In Kerala, land was redistributed mainly through tenancy reforms, and, to some extent, through a separate ceiling law.
As far as changing the status of tenants is concerned, there was a crucial difference in the legal provisions in the two States. In Kerala, tenancy was abolished altogether (Herring,
1983). In WB, abolition of tenancy, a program of bourgeois-democratic revolution, was never tried (Khasnabis, 1981). Tenancy, which was mainly sharecropping, was rather perpetuated
(ibid; also Rudra, 1981 :A65) in that it was legalized. All that the leftist regimes at different points in time, and especially the one since 1977, did was this: they amended the policy — which was framed by the Congress party — of getting the names of sharecroppers officially recorded to enable them to enjoy their legal rights. These included rights to cultivate land and get 75% of the produce with the rentier sharing 50% of the cost and protection against eviction. They then sought to implement it.
In Kerala, nearly 1.3 million tenants, amounting in 1971 to 43% of all agricultural households, received 2.4 million tenanted plots or 2 million acres which was 37% of the net sown area: in other words, 1.6 acres per tenant. Almost all tenants benefitted. In WB, the goal of recording the names of sharecroppers has only been partially realized. By the time tenancy reforms in Kerala were essentially complete, barely 50% o f sharecroppers had been recorded
163 in WB. Further, though recorded sharecroppers are free from legal eviction (see also Bose,
1981: 2053), they are perennially liable to illegal eviction because of the vast difference between them and landowners b power b almost every sphere of life (Ray, 1987). Among other thbgs, the majority of the sharecroppers are not receivbg their stipulated share — 75%
— of the crop (Khasnabis, 1986). Mallick (1992) says that if the program of sharecroppers' recordbg achieved anythbg it consolidated the hold of big sharecroppers-landowners who leased b land from small owners who had no resources or political influence to prevent the loss of control over their land to the former (p. 740).
Clearly, there is a problem b comparing the performance b LR b the two States. In
Kerala, tenants got ownership rights by paybg the price of the land, but at below-market value. In WB, tenants were allowed the rights to cultivate land and get 75% of the produce with the rentier sharing 50% of the cost. But b practice, sharecroppers get less than 75% of the produce; normally they get 50%. So for comparing performance levels, I converted 1 acre of land on which occupancy rights were granted to tenants (as b WB) to an equivalent of 0.6 acre of land on which ownership rights were received (as b Kerala).11 By June 1984, on
1,088,693 acres of land under sharecroppbg b WB, sharecroppers were granted occupancy rights; most of them were operatbg small farms of less than 5 acres. This land will be equivalent to the transfer of ownership rights on 653,216 acres of land.12
11 Since in practice, sharecroppers get 50-75% of the produce, I took the median value which is close to 60%.
12 We are ignoring any difference in physical quality between the two different types of land. We are also ignoring the fact that in Kerala, unlike in West Bengal, tenants can sell the land and the price will be higher than paid for buying the ownership rights.
164 Table 5.1 shows the amount of land redistributed in the two States by the mid-1980s through various provisions. If we examine the extent of land distribution to poorer tenants, i.e. those with less than 5 acres, in Kerala and WB, we find that in Kerala, by early 1980,
1.0689 million acres were distributed; in addition .047873 million acre of ceiling surplus land was redistributed to landless and land-poor families for a grand total of 1.117 million acres.
In WB, in contrast, by early 1980, 0.673 million acre of ceiling surplus land was redistributed to landless and land-poor families.Also by that time nearly one million sharecroppers were given hereditary occupancy rights through the recording of their names.
Performance in the redistribution of land from big holders to the landless and land-poor has been better in Kerala than in WB.
Table 5.1: Implementation of Land Reforms in Kerala and West Bengal (Land in million acres)
A BC D
West Bengal Kerala (C)/(B)
(1). Land distributed only through ceiling law (up to 1984-85) 0.081 0.058 0.716 (2). (1) as % of land operated under bigger holdings 1.22 3.63 2.98 (3). (1) as % of State's cultivable area 0.55 1.04 1.89
(4). Land distributed to land-poor households through: Kerala's tenancy reform and ceiling laws and West Bengal’s law regarding ceilings in West Bengal Estates Acquisition Law and also Ceiling Law 0.673 1.117 1.66 (5). (4) as % of land operated by bigger holdings 10.17 69.81 6.86
(6). Total amount of land distributed 1.44 1.125 (7). (6) as % of land operated under bigger holdings 21.75 70.31 3.23 (8). (6) as % of all operational land 11.55 28.63 2.48
165 Notes/sources: I have tried to present data for both states for comparable dates as much as possible. Column (4) indicates ratio of (C) to (B) which means how many times Kerala performance has been better than WB's performance. (1) from Mallick (1990). (2) "Land under bigger holdings" here and elsewhere in the Table refers to land under holdings above two hectares in rural areas in 1970-71, and is an estimate of the potential pool of land sought to be redistributed through land reforms. Data on bigger holdings are from Social Information Handbook, ICSSR. (3) from Mallick (1990). (4) "Land-poor households" refers to households operating less than 2 hectares. WB data pertains to Dec. 1980 from Eashvaraia (1993). Kerala data pertain to early 1980 and are based on Herring (1980) and Raj and Tharakan (1983). (6). "Total amount of land distributed" in WB equals: the owned land equivalent of the amount of land on which hereditary rights were granted to sharecroppers through a major tenancy reform in WB (see the text for detail) by June, 1984 (653216 acres) plus land distributed through ceilings provisions in Estates Acquisition and ceiling laws (790761 acres) by Dec 1984. Source on sharecropped land on which hereditary rights has been granted is Ghose (1986) and source for ceiling-surplus land is Eashvariah (1993). Figure for Kerala equals: 1.0689 million acres over which ownership rights were purchased by poorer tenants (those operating less than 5 acres) by early 1980 (data based on Herring, 1980 and Raj and Tharakan, 1983) plus 56109 acres redistributed through ceiling law by Dec. 1983 (data from Eashvaraiah, 1993) (8) operational land as in 1970-71 and is from ICSSR.
Table 5.2 (on page 167) shows the success of the Land Reforms policy in the two
States in terms of the number of beneficiaries of the policy. As the Table shows, Kerala’s LR policy has benefitted a higher percentage of the landless/land-poor (<5 acres) than WB’s.
My claim that Kerala's LR policy has been more successful than WB's is further supported by the following. LR implementation, to some extent, contributed to the reduction in inequality in land distribution in both States. But gini ratios for the distribution of ownership holdings including the zero-holdings (i.e. the landless) have shown greater reduction between 1953-54 and 1982 in Kerala (-17.97%) than in WB (- 6.6%); the figure for India is -5.79%.
166 Table S. 2: No of persons benefitted from land reforms (Numbers in million; land in million acres)
(1). No. of tenants who got land West Bengal Kerala ownership right or its "equivalent" a. by the early 1980s 0.567 1.27 b. by June 1984 0.781 c. by Dec 1991 0.863
(2). (1) as % of all tenants a. by the early 1980s 22.68 100.0 b. by June 1984 31.24 c. by Dec 1991 34.52
(3). No. of hutment dwellers who got house-sites. Dec 1982 0.15 0.275
(4). No. of persons who received ceiling surplus land. Dec. 1983 1.47 0.149
(5). Total no of beneficiaries [(la)+ (3)+ (4)] 2.187 1.694
(6). Total no of rural families owning less than 5 acres including the landless families in 1960-61 (most of the reforms started after this date) 4.229 2.356
(7). (5) as a % of (6) 51.71 71.9
Notes/sources: (l):(la) Kerala figures are from Herring (1980: A60) and Raj and Tharakan (1983). WB figures for the early 1980s are from NripenBandyopadhyay (1984) and those for 1984 from Ghose (1986), and for 1991 is from Economic Times. In case of WB, "tenants" refers to "share-croppers" in this Table. For reasons explained in the text, 100 sharecroppers who received occupancy rights in WB will be equivalent to 60 tenants who received ownership rights in Kerala. So actual figures for sharecroppers for WB were deflated by this ratio. (2) Estimates of sharecroppers in WB vary from 2 to 2.3 to 3.3 millions. I took 2.5 millions. (3) Data from Eashvaraia, 1993.(4) WB figure = average of Dec 1982 and Dec 1984 figures (data from Eashvaraiah (1993); Kerala figure is from Eashvaraiah (1993). (6) Data based on Oommen (1973) and Raj and Tharakan (1983).
4. Why was the LR policy implemented better in Kerala than in WB?
It seems that the implementation of LR has been better in Kerala than in West Bengal.
The question is: why were the communist regimes in WB less effective in bringing about land reforms than in Kerala? Dasgupta (1984) says that there were two sorts of constraints on the
167 proper implementation of LR in WB. These constraints were the anti-reforms officials and private property rights enforced by the courts. But didn't Kerala also face the same constraints? Khasnabis (1986) says that WB's Left Front (LF) Government lacked political will to abolish tenancy. For example, when the sharecroppers' recording was opposed in the courts, it did not put up any resistance. Mallick says that the Left in WB did not have the organization and lower class leadership capable of supplanting the rural elites who opposed the communists’ progressive reforms (Mallick, 1990: 160). It did not develop a peasant movement; not a single rally was organized on the demand for the speedy approval of the proposed amendment of 1981 to the Land Reforms Act of 1951. But in Kerala, Khasnabis
(1986) says, the CPM roused the initiative of the peasants. This created a political compulsion for land reforms: so much so that all political parties, even the Congress, were committed to radical reforms (p. 179). In WB, political compulsion had developed during the late 1960s when the communists had formed United Front governments. Later, the Left Front discouraged mass movement and stuck to a bureaucratic solution (also Mallick, 1992: 744).
Having come to power in the 1960s the two leftist regimes encouraged mass movement and achieved more, in the sense of redistributing more ceiling-surplus land, than the leftist regime that has been in power since 1977, and this shows that mass movement is being discouraged.
(Mallick, 1990:744). The task of political education was neglected by the regime (Mallick,
1991:739). That ideological consciousness has rarely improved is noted in Rudra also.
But then why did the communist regimes lack political will in WB, and not in Kerala?
After all, communist parties operating in both the States are just provincial branches of the same national-level organizations. I want to briefly deal with a few factors that created a
168 differential political compulsion for radical reforms between Kerala and WB. These were: a) differential pressure for LR; b) the nature of electoral politics (the timing of the emergence of left politics; and the electoral competition between two left parties (CPI and CPM); and c) the nature of communist organization.
a) Differential pressure for LR
The agrarian situation in Kerala was worse than it was in WB before the attempt to implement LR policy (Table 5.3). Labor productivity in agriculture was lower in Kerala than in WB. Kerala had a greater proportion of landless households than did WB. The degree of inequality in land distribution and also in consumption expenditures (as a proxy of income inequality) were higher in Kerala than in WB too. Therefore, the urgency and the pressure for
LR was greater in Kerala than in WB.
Table 5. 3: Pressure for LR in Kerala and West Bengal
West Bengal Kerala 1. % of landless rural households to all rural households 12.56 30.90 2. Average size of operational land-holding 1.2 0.69 3. Inequality (gini ratio) in distribution of land (1953-54)* 0.7271 0.7898 4. Inequality in consumption expenditures (gini ratio) (1960-61) 0.26 0.33 5. Labor productivity (agriculture) (1962-63) Rs per worker (1964-65) 998 742
Notes/sources: 1 is from Oomen (1971); 2 from 1CSSR. 3 is from Sharma (1992); 4 from (Dev et. al. 1994); 5 from Dev (1986); * refers to ownership holdings including the landless. b) The nature of electoral politics
The realization of the pressure for LR is however always contingent. In the context of the pressure for LR, electoral politics at the State level, within the constraints of the federal government, was important. More specifically: the successful and early emergence of communist parties in the electoral landscape and competition between them to expand their support-base played quite crucial roles in Kerala, as opposed to WB.
Unlike in WB, in Kerala, the communists were elected to office right from the days when LR was attempted. In WB, by the time communists came to power, landlords had enough time to hide their ceiling-surplus land and evict tenants.
Competition between communist parties in Kerala was much stronger than in WB. Let me expand on this point. In 1964, the Communist Party of India was split. The CPM was more radical and less compromising than the CPI. But it was the CPM which, while it had promulgated radical land reforms in Kerala, had never been in power sufficiently long between
1960 and 1980 to implement them. It was the CPI which was in power in 1970s. On it fell the responsibility for implementing the reforms, with the CPM in opposition. The CPM once in opposition forced the CPI to implement it, threatening it on more than one occasion to launch a mass movement if it did not, as I have said earlier. The CPM could do so in part because it was not in power: it could take the risk of creating the "law and order problem". It was this inter-communist party competition and the consequent extraordinary combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary strategies by two left parties that was responsible for a higher degree of implementation of radical tenancy reforms than was possible elsewhere.
170 In contrast, in West Bengal, not only did left parties come to power later than they did in Kerala, but also this sort of competition between left parties -- one in power and another in opposition -- did not exist. The CPM has achieved a degree of dominance within the left- combine that it never had in Kerala since it has not had to face tough competition from the left. The threat from the Maoists, who departed from the CPM was quickly undermined by physically eliminating them and otherwise (Mallick, 1994). Once in power and without threat from other Left parties, it has shunned extra-parliamentary actions against the landed.
c) The nature of communist organization
A necessary precondition for the emergence of communist parties and the competition between them to implement LR is the organization of the rural masses over that particular issue. In Kerala, the strength of leftist organization has been greater than in WB. There are several factors that have facilitated this.
i) The agrarian structure played a crucial role in the mobilization of lower classes for
LR in both the States, but produced different results. In West Bengal, large landlordism was rare. Low- and middle- income land lessors engaged in exploitation of sharecroppers could not be treated in the same way as big landlords, says Konar who was the Minister for LR during the 1960s when the Left was in power briefly (in Barua, 1990:133). So, the convergence of interests of aU those who leased out land, including the many small holders, made it politically difficult to pursue the communist goal of land-ownership to the actual tiller
(Barua, 1990; Ray, 1987: 50). In WB, in 1970-71, when the leftist regime was trying to implement LR, land under share-cropping accounted for 90.84% of all land leased out; now, 54% of the lessors owned less than 2.5 acres (and accounted for a quarter of the leased out land). Another 23% owned between 2.5 and 5 acres. Further, in the same year, larger land owners (>5 acres) leased out less than 50% of all area leased out. In contrast, in the Kerala of 1961-62, when the leftists were trying to mobilize the lower classes and promulgate LR laws, larger land owners (> 5 acres) leased out more than 80% of all area leased out.
So, in Kerala, there was a greater degree of polarization in the agrarian structure than in WB. What this inter-State difference in the agrarian structure meant was that it was easier to isolate the few large lessors and organize the masses against them in Kerala than it was to isolate numerous lessors who are small-owners in WB. So tenancy was legalized, instead of being abolished, in WB. But tenancy was abolished in Kerala altogether.
If we look at tenants we find a difference too. In Kerala tenants were operating bigger holdings than the tenants in WB. O f the total area leased, in Kerala (1966-67), nearly 45% was leased in by large tenants operating more than 5 acres and who accounted for 8.5% of all tenants. But in WB (1970-71) large tenants, again operating more than 5 acres, accounted for 12% of all tenants and leased in 29% of all the leased-in area. The implication of this difference in the agrarian structure is this. Tenancy reforms that aimed at abolition of rental obligations would elicit no opposition from tenants in Kerala. They would in fact support such reforms. In contrast, in WB, in view of tenants' lower economic strength, their support could not have been counted on as much as was possible in Kerala.
ii) Besides this difference in agrarian structure, there is a difference between the two
States in terms of the social base of the communist organization, at least until early the 1970s.
This is revealed by two polls in the early 1970s analyzed in Zagoria, 1973). In the Zagoria
172 analysis, the respondents were those who said that they would vote for one of the two major communist parties (the CPI or the CPM) in the ensuing elections. The analysis shows that communist supporters of Kerala, as compared to those of WB, are more overwhelmingly rural, more likely to be landless/landpoor, more likely to be from the poorer strata, more likely to be literate (though not highly educated) (ibid: 21) (see Table below). Kerala's communism is much more a mass phenomenon than WB's which is more elitist (ibid; see Kobli, 1990).
Further, Kerala's communist supporters are more militant, more hostile to and alienated from the state and more loyal to the communist cause than those in WB (ibid: 24).
Table S.4: Supporters of the Communist Parties in West Bengal and Kerala (%)
West Bengal Kerala 1. Owner cultivators 1.43 7.9 2. Rural lower classes 21.96 45.0 3. Landless and those owning up to 3 acres 91.34 92.85 4. Those owning > 3 acres** 52.0 6.42 5. Those earning up to Rs. 150 per month 36.51 52.86 6. Rural supporters 47.49 87.86 7. Illiterate 13.6 0.94 8. Politically Ignorant*** 54.33 15.0
Notes/sources: Rural Lower classes = Unskilled workers, farm laborers, sharecroppers/tenants, unemployed. ** This is expressed as a percentage of all landowners-supporters of communist parties. The sample-size for WB for all items is 419 (except for item no. 8 in which case it is 208). The sample size for all items for Kerala is 140. *** A communist supporter is politically ignorant" if she/he says "don't know" or says "it represents the poor" to a question as to whether the Old Congress represents the poor, or the rich or all classes. This is an important question given that the communist media had for years stressed the pro-business stance of the old Congress (The Congress was split in the mid-1960s). All figures are calculated/taken from Zagoria (1973).
There are many reasons for this difference in the social base of the communist movement on which I cannot go into detail. So I will be very brief. First, Kerala's high level of literacy (Table 5.5) ~ especially the fact that its lower classes including the landless laborers are literate - coupled with the fact that the society, because of historical trade
173 connections with other countries has been for long exposed to the outside world -- has made people receptive to new and alien ideas like communism (Zagoria, 1973: 25). Second: in
Kerala, and unlike in WB, there is a large, homogeneous, literate, low-caste (e.g. Ezhava) and low-class of laborers and poor peasants. In WB "Borderlines between castes ... are not as clear and not so rigidly observed as in [Kerala]" (Bergman, 1986). Further, the Ezhava community, in the process of struggling for its social and political rights generated their own
"organic" intellectuals and leaders who became communists. So, Zagoria says: the gap between the leaders and the led is much smaller in Kerala than in West Bengal or indeed in most Asian societies" (ibid: 25). In WB, the communist leaders are Brahmins or other upper caste people with few organic links with the lower classes. Even in the 1980s, in WB, 95.4% of the Left Front Cabinet members were of the upper three castes who constitute less than
10% of the population (Kohli, 1990). Even though many Kerali communist leaders come from the upper castes, they have strong ties to the village (Zagoria, op. cii.).
Table 5.5: Some Social and Economic Features of Rural West Bengal and Kerala
West Bengal Kerala 1. Rural Literacy (%) (1961) 34.1 51.0 2. Landed farm laborer households as % of all farm labor households (1964-65) 10.65 19.76 3. Laborers as a percentage of cultivators in 1961 39.73 83.0 in 1971 82.74 172.43 4. No. of Rural poor per hectare of cultivable area (1970-71) 4.4 5.6
Sources: Sharma (1992); GOI (1983)
The third reason for the difference in the nature of communist organization between the two States is that in Kerala, the ratio of landed farm laborers to all farm laborers is greater
174 than in WB. This is important because landed laborers have a greater degree of independence from landowners than the landless laborers and therefore have a greater degree of radicalism
(as I have discussed in detail in Chapter 7) (see also Zagoria, 1971: 151; Krisbnaji, 1979:
516). Further, in Kerala, the fret that the ratio of laborers to cultivators is much higher than — more than twice — that in WB (Table 5.5) facilitates the struggle of laborers against the landed. "(W]herever the rural proletariat outnumbers or comes close to outnumbering the owner class, it often becomes bolder politically" (Zagoria, 1971: 153). Also, the spatial concentration of the lower classes facilitates close contact with fellow workers, contributes to their self-confidence, and thus makes a difference to the radical activities against the landed. Kerala has a higher degree of spatial concentration of lower classes than WB (in Table
5.5 above "the poor" is a proxy for lower classes which refer to poor peasants and laborers).
Hie fact o f the matter then is that it was easier to build a movement against rentiers in Kerala than in WB. It is this strength also that facilitated the redistribution of more land because historically rentiers had been large landowners; it was they who had ceiling-surplus land. So the nature of the communist organization and agrarian structure have been important frctorsthat explains the difference in the success of LR between the two communist States.
V. CONCLUSION
In this section, I will sum up the discussion in this and the last Chapters. I will also point out how the discussion of Indian LR reinforces some of the theoretical insights on the state discussed in the second and the third Chapters.
175 The bureaucratic LR of the Indian state was well within the limits set by the capitalist economic structure; it never undermined capitalist private property rights. From a set of policies, possible within the limits of the capitalist economic structure, LR policy could be selected by the state because the state had relative autonomy vis a vis the landed class. And such policy was selected by the state partly because of the lower-class struggles against a pre-capitalist agrarian structure and against the unequal distribution of land. Besides, the state's need for revenue which could be augmented through the (indirect) beneficial impact of LR on "national" development also coincided with the capitalist need for LR (cheap food and agricultural raw materials, etc.). In addition, the discrepancy between the bourgeois juridical character of the state and the pre-capitalist character of production relations in villages was an important political-structural reason for the abolition of statutory landlordism.
The state structure had also thrown together two important groups of actors whose interests were in LR. First, state actors as consumers had an interest in the production of cheap agricultural raw materials including food, whose prices affect many other commodities that they buy, and which LR could potentially achieve. Second, the abolition of landlordism and the redistribution of land were important resources, both symbolic and real, in electoral struggles which are cmcial for the production of political legitimacy of the state and of class relations.
So in other words, (i)the interests of the urban bourgeoisie, (ii) state actors as buyers o f commodities in "economic markets" and of votes in "political markets", and (iii) the interests of the rural class-strata including erstwhile tenants of parasitic landlords in villages coincided. This created a condition where relatively autonomous state power could be
176 potentially used against statutory and other forms of landlordism and the monopoly in the distribution in land, and through these measures, create favorable conditions for accumulation of capital in the manner suggested earlier. This gives credence to, and resonates with, the concept of "partnership" given by Miliband and the concept of "institutional self-interest" of
Offe. The partnership between state-actors and capital — the institutional self-interest of state- actors — contributed to the promulgation of LR policy.
LR shows the interrelation between the state and class struggle, a) the origin of LR partly reflected the success of the class struggle for LR. Also, the policy presupposed and reflected the fact of the separation of the political from the economic (the bourgeois state form)', if the state was not separate from propeity-units, concessions in the form of LR would no be possible, b) These concessions themselves became a particular form of state-society interaction in that these were used as a method of reinforcing/reproducing the separation of the political from the economic, as discussed above. Points a) and b) mean that the cause and effect of state power are the same. As Simon Clarke says, and to reinforce the above points, whenever class struggles have threatened to challenge the separation noted above by challenging the very political basis of exploitation13, the state seeks to give economic concessions "in the attempt to reestablish the rule of money and the law and to restore the
separation" of the political from the economic (1991:33). This is how the capitalist state-form is reproduced, c) Further, the form and content of LR reflected not only the extent of state repression which is the condensed power of the ruling classes but also the struggle of the
dominated agrarian classes over both the form and the content of LR.
13 Property rights form this political basis. The state enforces these rights.
177 A most interesting aspect of LR is that while class struggle for/over LR has been quite enduring, the concrete nature of this struggle (e.g. which class participates in these struggles) changed over time. First, in the early stage of LR, the bigger tenants along with others were struggling against erstwhile landlords for tenurial security and lower rent. The abolition of statutory landlordism has to be considered, in part, a result of this struggle. Second, following the abolition of this type of landlordism, smaller tenants and the landless have been fighting for more egalitarian land-distribution, and also for their own security of tenure and low rent.
The erstwhile tenants, who were a part of the struggle earlier, went through the process of embourgeoisment. They opposed such aspects of LR policy as redistribution of the ceiling- surplus land because these would hurt their interests. This has led to the relative attenuation o f the lower-class support for LR.
The struggle over LR has also varied over space. As a result in those States, where the lower classes are better organized, the implementation of the policy has been better.
No matter how the policy was described, that it was thoroughly bourgeois was very clear. The bourgeois character of LR was particularly evident in the abolition of statutoiy landlordism First, by abolishing the interests of statutory landlords who had extra-economic powers, the state subjected the landlords to its own power. The bourgeois democratic state form allowed them and other landlords to ''capture" state apparatuses in many places and thus control these instrumentally. So it seems as if what was taken away from landlords with one hand seemed to have been given to them with the other! Second, those landlords were legally allowed to retain their economic power (a large amount of land under their "personal cultivation"). In the 1960s, many of these landlords were enabled by the state to exercise their power in organizing capitalist production14 thus creating a condition for what Ellen Wood calls the "privatization of political power" (Wood, 1981. 88-89) as manifested in power over the workers working on farms.
Thus both in this sense and in the sense of capturing political power embodied in and exercised through state apparatuses, landlords "doubly" "privatized" political power; their power again, and pace Kohli, was not destroyed. It wasn't supposed to be. As Gupta rightly says, and, pace Kohli, "the Congress was opposed to the landlords not as a group of individuals... but only to the feudal characteristics of their economic existence. They [as true
Gandhians!] hated the sin not the sinners. Therefore, to expect the Congress to liquidate the feudals root and branch altogether and throw them out of the body politic would amount to
... being a visionary, a romanticist" (Gupta, 1966: 31; stress mine). The state, I insist, could not expropriate the expropriator and undermine its own class-basis. It created a new landowning class from the old one.
Not only could it not expropriate the expropriator, but also it implemented a technocratic policy through which it further enriched the class. In the next two Chapters, I will discuss this policy. This policy will be the second window on the class and spatial character of the Indian state.
14 I am referring to the Green Revolution policy: the state provided subsidized agricultural inputs to farmers.
179 CHAPTER 6
THE GREEN REVOLUTION: POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ITS ORIGIN AND ITS SPATIAL OCCURRENCE
As we have seen in the last Chapter, the Land Reforms policy could not be implemented properly. So it could not significantly change the agrarian structure. The latter continued to be a fetter on the development of productive forces. Agricultural productivity did not increase much between the early 1950s and the mid-1960s. And increasing agricultural productivity, especially, productivity offood-crops, was very important in a country like India where a massive population was and still is suffering from absolute poverty. So the state sought a technological and market-oriented fix, as opposed to one based on institutional changes through the implementation of the Land Reforms policy, to the food problem. That fix was the Green Revolution (GR) which is the focus in this Chapter and the next. The GR policy is the second window, after the Land Reforms policy, on the Indian state.
There are four sections in this Chapter. The first section provides the evidence showing that the GR has taken place. The next section shows that the GR has occurred differentially over space, and explains why that is the case. In the third section, I discuss why the GR was promoted by the state when there was an alternative way in which food production could have been increased. The final section provides an interim summary These
180 materials provide a background for my discussion on the consequences of the GR policy on
several aspects of agrarian "development'Vchange in the next Chapter.
I. THE GR IN INDIA: SOME EVIDENCE
At the outset, a distinction must be made between the GR and GR technology (GRT),
one that is not always made. A technology itself cannot constitute a revolution. Only the
adoption of a farm technology (whatever that is) can constitute a revolution, provided that the social relations permit the successful use of the technology, due to its widespread nature
and revolutionary implications for productivity.
By the GR, I refer to the integrated use of HYVs (the area under High-Yield-Variety
of crops as a percentage of total area under these crops), irrigation (the percentage of area
irrigated) and fertilizer (consumption of fertilizer per unit area). I have combined these three
through a factor analysis and have used the factor scores as the indicator of the incidence of
the GR across States in this and the next Chapters. Factor scores for different years have been
used. This is partly because data for different aspects of agrarian change/development
(dependent variables) are available for different years.
Since the mid- 1960s, there has been widespread use of GRT. The use of HYVs, of
irrigation and fertilizers has increased at the all-India level (Table 6.1).
181 Table 6. 1: Increase in the use of the GR Inputs and Food Production Over Time
Year IRRIGN. HYVFERTILZR. PRDFODNAF A BC D
1965-66 19.34 02.00 05.50 81.3 480.1 1970-71 22.17 15.10 13.13 109.4 455.0 1975-76 24.42 30.70 16.08 117.1 405.5 1980-81 27.76 41.30 31.95 125.7 410.4 1985-86 29.80 53.50 47.39 144.8 453.7 1986-87 30.75 53.90 48.86 138.2 478.3 1988-89 ------59.61 50.00 161.4 451.2 1989-90 32.64 67.64 497.2(p) 1990-91 33.35 64.38 474.6{p) 1991-92 67.45 70.27 ------
Notes/sources:IRRIGN. = net irrigated area as a % of net sown area; HYV = area under the high yield varieties of five crops (rice, wheat, maize jowar, bajra) as a % of total area under these crops; FERTILZR = fertilizer consumption in kilogram per one hectare. PRDFOD = index no. of food-grain productivity (base: triennium ending 1969-70 = 100). NAF = per capita net availability of food-grains (grams per day) (this an important proxy variable for consumption of food-grains). Net availability = Net production + net imports - change in government stocks. Net production = 87.5% of total production (feed, seed and wastage constitute 12.5% of the total production). P= provisional. NIRD (1995) for A, B, C. Bansil (1992) for D and E; * = for 1966-67.
The use of GRT has contributed to higher land productivity (Singh, 1990; Sharma,
1992; Lipton, 1989) (see Figure 6.1 below). This is because, as Lipton (1989) says, HYVs
are more efficient in converting soil nutrients into grain and thus produce more per unit of land than traditional varieties. Lest there should be any technological determinism implied
here, I want to however note that HYVs themselves cannot increase productivity. These have to be used and are used under a particul ar regime of property relations and political relations
at the level of the state that underpin them. Given India's agrarian structure (rent-usury barrier), without state investments in social and physical infrastructure and state provision of
subsidies, the quantum jump in yields through the use of HYVs would not be possible, and
if the quantum jump in yields cannot be obtained, HYVs would simply be not used (more on this later). So, it is HYVs1 physical structure and the structure of India's political economy that made the rise of productivity possible.
Land productivity is more in the States where the use of HYVs is more widespread
(Table 6.2). Land productivity has also increased at a much faster rate in the States where the
GR is more successful than in the States where is it less so. For the sake of convenience, I will call the former States "More Developed States" and the latter "Less Developed States".
Table 6.2: Productivity (kgs/hectare) (food-grains)
1962-65 1970-73 1980-82 1 1990-93 More Dev. States Punjab 1117 1934 2653 3460 (209.8) Haryana 687 1135 1545 2489 (162.3) Tamilnadu 1116 1351 1395 1959 (75.5)
Less Dev. States Orissa 864 811 780 1042 (20.6) Bihar 761 882 907 1200 (57.7) Madhya Pradesh 600 651 704 976 (62.7)
All-India 708 848 1038 1402 (98.02)
Notes/sources: Calculated from Chadha (1995). Figures in brackets — % increase 1 “dev.” = developed.
Labor productivity is treated as the most important indicator of the development of the productive forces (Roemer, 1986) and of the income and living standards of people
(Bhalla and Tyagi,1989:A-54). In the context of agriculture, labor productivity is a function of land productivity, cropping intensity and the land-person ratio (Dev, 1988), as I have shown in Chapter 1. The GR contributes to increased labor productivity by contributing to an increase in land productivity and in multiple cropping (HYVs are short-duration crops).
Given that even if land productivity goes up, labor productivity may not rise because of a
183 decline in the cropping intensity and/or land-person ratio, the relation between the GR and labor productivity is a contingent one.
4000 ------f ■■■ • '---T------1------1------1
3000
a § 2000 £ ' * ‘
1000
o Jill c1 2 3 4 6 FACBI066
Figure 6.1: Green Revolution Technology and Land Productivity
FACBI085 = Factor scores for the GR PRDFOD93 _ Productivity o f Food crops in 1990-93 (Kilograms/hectare)
The following equations show statistical associations between the GR and land and labor productivity:
LNDPRD93 = 789.954 + 590.974 (FACBI085); N= 17; R=.875; P=.000 (t = 5.756) (t = 6.986)
LABPRD93 = -175.274 + 1042.083 (FACBI085); N=17; R=.778; P=.000 (t = -.497) (t = 4.791) where: LNDPRD93 = food-grains crops productivity (kg) per hectare in 1990-93 (calculated from Chadha, 1995); LABPRD93 = food-grains production in kg in 1990-93 over number of laborers and cultivators in 1991 (calculated from Chadha, 1995); FACBI085 = factor scores for the GR in 1983-85.
184 Over time, there have heen increases in both the production and yield of food-crops.
Yet, very sharp increases do not seem to have taken place at the all-India level. From 1950-51 to 1988-89 (i.e. this includes both pre-GR and GR periods), the trend rate for food-grain yields was 1.8% per annum, and the trend rate for food-grain production was 2.7%. In contrast, during the GR period only, the corresponding figures are 2.5% and 2.7% We may also note that the per capita net availability of food-grains (NAF) has not increased much or has been constant at the all-India level. This means that in some areas, NAF may have actually declined, given the geography of the GR.
Q. THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE GR
The use of GRT shows a great deal of spatial unevenness (Map 6.1; Appendix 1).
Partly as a result of this, there is a good deal of spatial variation in productivity (Map 6.2;
Appendix 1).
Not only are there regional variations in food grain production and productivity, but concomitantly, the rural poverty-level (i.e. the percentage of rural people below the line of absolute poverty) varies a lot across States. In the States, where the GR has been more widespread, there has been greater reduction in the poverty level than in other States.
Regional inequality just does not exist. In fact, regional inequality as measured by the coefficient of variation across States has, in several indicators of agrarian change, increased
1 I got these rates using the equation: log y = a + bt (y = food-grains yield or production; t = time in years; b values give the rate of increase. Data from Bansil (1992) were used.
185 India - Use of HYVs, 1983-1985 LAND PRODUCTIVITY (1990-93)
t
m
*
N/A 0-1000 NM 1 Nm 1001-1600 1601-2200 BTm lTJ,r*T?-r i i iii iiai-1
Map 6.2
187 050
036
030
YEAR
Figure: 6.2:Regional Inequality Figure 6.3: Regional Inequality in In Land Productivity In Rural Poverty Level
Notes/sources: Regional inequality is here measured by a coefficient of variation across States; Poverty = rural poor as a % of rural population (Satyanarayana in Dev et al, 1990); Landprod = State-level food- grain production per unit of land (CV is calculated from data in Bansil, 1992),2
Byres had said that "Embedded in it [the GR policy] was the certainty o f an increase in regional inequality” (1983:30; stress mine). What he meant was, given the emphasis on costly inputs, richer landowners in resource-rich regions, where there is controlled water, for example, will use the technology more than others (see also: Patnaik, 1986, 1990b).
However, as I will show, this is to simplify the issue to a certain extent.
The fact of uneven adoption of the technology can be conceptualized in the following way. In mral India, there is a vast pool of legally free wage laborers dependent on landowners
2 There is an implication that the two trends shown in these figures are related. In the next chapter I discuss the relation between rural poverty and land productivity.
188 (and others) for work. Inputs in agriculture increasingly come from the (capitalist) industrial sector (Table 6.1), thus implying that there is commodity production. So, landowners in India have to make profits as capitalists elsewhere: they can lose their means of production if they do not run their fiirms efficiently, appropriate and reinvest profits. Yet, how they make profits
- the actual patterns of accumulation and investment — is contingent. The availability of GRT in 1960s, along with many other conditions (e.g. state subsidies, price support, etc.) offered one historically contingent opportunity to make profits by making productivity-raising investments. So large farmers used this technology. To repeat, their use of the technology is one of the contingent expressions of the pressure on them to make profits, the pressure that emanates from the structure of social relations they are inserted into (i.e. capitalist relations).
As Utsa Patnaik has pointed out many large farmers instead of cultivating through tenants and extracting pre-capitalist rents started directly cultivating land by using hired labor and GRT.
Some others who were already using hired labor but traditional technology also used the modem technology.
In addition to the large farmers, there are millions of cultivators who use family labor.
They are the petty commodity producers. They have been inserted into the market economy.
They are forced to sell what they produce so they can pay their bills. But they have to sell at a competitive rate. To do so, they have to produce more per unit of land used. The use of
GRT is a means of doing that. Given that they have to buy inputs for which they need money
189 which they often get at usurious interest rates, there is all the more reason why there is a pressure on them to produce more.1
Thus there is a pressure on large and small cultivators to produce more by making productivity-raising investments. However, whether or not this pressure is realized and how it is realized are contingent. Since the mid-1960s, the pressure to produce more can be realized by using the new technology. Yet, given the availability of the new technology, whether or not it will be used is contingent on three factors: the nature of the new technology and crop-ecology; property relations; and the role of the state. The geography of the GR is rooted in the geography of these factors.
1. GRT and crop ecology: Rice is cultivated over a far greater area and in more varied environments than wheat, so "new varieties of a sufficient range to suit India's varied environmental circumstances of height, soil, temperature etc., simply have not been developed" (Byres, 1972). This fact, at least in the initial stage of the GR (till the mid-1970s), created a condition for the uneven spread of the technology package. The GR was basically a wheat revolution till the mid- 1970s. GRT has not shown much success, even in more recent years, in the case of rice, or in coarse grains such as maize (which are the crops for the poor people). So the areas where these crops are grown tend to lag behind in terms of technological development. In 1991-92, in India, the percentage of area under HYVs of wheat to the total area under that crop was 88.1; the corresponding figures for paddy, jowar, bajra and maize were: 65.7,55,53.8 and 47.8 (NIRD, 1995: 64). This also partly reflects the
3 This pressure on the petty commodity producers is contingently expressed in the fact that (e.g.) the cropping intensity and the amount of commercial fertilizer used per hectare of fertilized area are higher on small farms (< 5 acres) than on larger farms (Rao, 1994).
190 feet that areas used for different crops are unequally irrigated. For example: in 1991-92, 82.9
% of the area under wheat was irrigated, while the corresponding figures for rice, jowar, bajra and maize were 46, 6.4, 6.2 and 22.3 (NIRD, 1995: 62).
2. The geography of property relations: The GR succeeded in areas where the pre existing property relations were conducive to capitalist (and peasant) fanning. The British had created different land tenure systems, as I have discussed in an earlier Chapter. GRT has been used much less widely in areas such as those in Eastern India where there was zamindari tenure (statutory landlordism) than in the areas in western India and parts of southern India where there was ryotwari tenure (Rao in Khusro, 1993) or in the Mahalwari tenure areas of the Punjab "where land rights were vested primarily in the cultivating castes" thus encouraging the development of a class of self-cultivators (Panwar, 1992:22) rather than absentee renters.4
Besides land tenure, unequal distribution of land is an important aspect of property relations. In many areas, as I have suggested in Chapter 4, the unequal distribution of land coupled with a conjuncture of other factors has resulted in a rent-usury barrier to the development of productive forces. But, the conditions for the rent-usury barrier existed and do, to some extent, exist even now, though in some areas more than in others. This is partly because of the spatial variation in the extent of inequality in land distribution and also because of spatial variation in person-land pressure, etc. This creates a differentiated terrain on which
GRT has been introduced (Bharadwaj, 1982:606-607).
4. Both the Ryotwari and Mahalwari tenure systems were based on peasant proprietorship, but they differed in that in the former peasants directly paid taxes and in the latter taxes were collected through the village institution.
191 3. The spatially uneven role of the state: The state has played two important roles in the uneven incidence of the GR and in the production of uneven agrarian development. These are: a) changing property relations; and b) making investments in the infrastructure and providing subsidies (I am abstracting from the price support to farmers).
The state by abolishing feudal-type landlordism (zamindari) and through tenancy laws broke, to some extent, pre-capitalist barriers to capitalist farming. Larger landlords did lose some land. Their power to exploit the immediate producers through extra-economic coercion, where it existed, was taken away. But its success in breaking these barriers has been spatially uneven. One reason is the uneven development of anti-landlord organization. But another important reason, as I have discussed in Chapter 4, was that only in those areas where commercial farming had already existed due to production of cash crops and for other reasons, did tenants have the money to buy land from landlords. So the exploitative character of landlord-tenant relations could be changed by (the mildly) pro-tenant policy only in a few areas (e.g. northwest and west India). Here the GR has become more successful.
I do not intend to reduce the success of the GR to the changes in property relations however. For, another reason why the GR was more successful in north-west India was that,
as I have indicated earlier, it was a prime wheat area. This is important because at least in the
early stage of the GR, the latter was a wheat revolution. So the success of the GR policy was
overdetermined by both these factors — crop ecology and property relations.
The second aspect of the state is its investment activity and the provision of subsidies.
One crucial condition for the GR has been state investment in the infrastructure. For example, the area under irrigation has increased as shown earlier. And so has the availability of credit:
192 the proportion of the institutional credit3 to the total outstanding debt of cultivators increased from 18.4% in 1961 to 31.7% in 1971 to 63.3 % in 1981 (Desai, 1988: 327). The rate of interest on this credit is very low (hardly more than 20%) as compared to usurious rates which can be as high as 200% (Prasad, 1989).
This public investment has increased the profitability of agriculture and has thus induced capital-owning and surplus-producing landowners to make productivity-raising investments. For example, when state-provision of irrigation creates the potential for a productivity-increase, farmers are induced to invest in (e.g.) HYVs and fertilizers. This is seen in the fact that increases in gross domestic capital formation in the private and public sectors respectively go together. This is also indirectly supported by the fact that there is a positive and high correlation between the level of adoption of HYVs (as measured by the percentage of the area under hyv-cereals in 1973 to the total area under cereals) and public expenditure in agriculture per agricultural worker (laborers and cultivators) between 1969-74 (R = 0.7;
N=14 States).
The more interesting aspect of state investment however is shown in the following terminal equation: give new equation, no dummy
LOGPROD = 7.294 - 0.031 (LFARMP)* + 0.001 (LFARIRRG)**; N = 54; R =.84; P=.000 (t= 124.33) (t=-l 1.096) (t=4.594); *,** = .000, .000 signfi levels
where: LOGPROD = log of per hectare land productivity in 1970-71/1972-73; LFARMP = percentage of large farmer households (Le those owning more than 7.5 acres) to all rural households in 1971 -72; LFARIRDU = IRRP multiplied by LFARMP (IRRP = the percentage of area under irrigation in 1971). All data are from Bardhan (1984a).
5 This includes credit from public sector banks and from co-operatives in which the state makes investments.
193 This equation suggests the following, a) A particular regime of property relations — i.e. the monopoly of a few landowners over land distribution is responsible for lower land productivity for the reasons discussed earlier, b) Yet, this causal relation is weaker in areas where (state-funded) irrigation facilities are available and where therefore, productivity-raising investments by landowners become more profitable than elsewhere. Instead of investing in usury and/or buying up land to rent out to poor tenants, landlords start investing in GRT when there are favorable conditions such as irrigation facilities and other infrastructural conditions. Investments are switched over to capitalist farming from the sphere of what Marx calls the antediluvian capital (usury, etc.). Thus state investment has played some positive role in the (incomplete and spatially uneven) transition to real subordination of labor under agrarian capital. This finding is also consistent with that of a very well-known study by
Athreya et. al. (1986) (see also Harriss, 1992).
Thus the state has created the conditions for profitable farming by providing agricultural inputs. And these inputs including irrigation water, credit and fertilizers have been provided at subsidized rates to encourage the diffusion of GRT.6 Subsidies partly explain how the profitability of commercial agriculture is artificially maintained. These subsidies are crucial to the success of the GR policy. In the areas receiving greater subsidies per unit of land cropped, private use of GR inputs has been greater and so has productivity.
6 I am not discussing the regional implications of the fact that the state has guaranteed higher prices for agricultural goods which in turn entail huge food subsidies (see Subbarao, 1981). Without state-supported prices, food prices will go down owing to the increased production. With state-supported prices, food prices are kept high-But to protect the consumers (mainly in urban areas) — and therefore to protect the interests of industrial capital (increased food prices will cause workers to demand higher wages) ~ the state provides subsidized food- grains.
194 However, state spending in agriculture has been unevenly distributed over space
(Table 6.3). This is reflected in the fact that (e.g.) irrigation facilities, which are crucial to the success of the GR policy, have spatially unevenly developed (Appendix 1). The availability of the credit from institutional, as opposed to private, sources also has a geography (Table below).
Table 6.3: The Geography of Public Investment (Rs.)
States Public Expenditure Subsidies Credit/hectare A B C
More Dev. States Punjab 4433 1376 621 Haryana 5887 1145 303 Tamilnadu 1458 928 224
Less Dev. States Bihar 1645 951 24 Orissa 1998 606 83 Madhya Pradesh 1840 318 76
All-India 2296 632 165
Note: A = public expenditure per agricultural worker (laborers and farmers) in 1969-85 (Reserve Bank, 1984); B = input subsidies per hectare of gross sown area in 1986-87 (Parikh and Suryanarayati, 1990). C= credit from Primary Agricultural Credit Societies (where a part of the investment comes from the state) in 1984-85 (Desai, 1988).
One implication of the spatial concentration of government spending in certain areas
is that — and such concentration is possible because -- other areas are, through conscious
state actions, being starved of public money. As Shiva notes, it is precisely the concentration
of resources in a few areas that has led to the lack of resources for other regions, and this has
led to regional imbalance in levels of development (1991:35; Subbarao in Joshi, 1986: 41) which I have discussed above. In other words, uneven development at sub-national levels
seems to have become a pre-condition for national development.
195 But one might counter-argue that if public spending in one place facilitates growth, this can result in an increase in state revenue to allow some spending elsewhere without undermining the increased productivity in the originally favored region. But such a counter argument assumes that the state has the ability to tax the capitalist farmers in the few areas which were the main beneficiaries from state investments, and the tax receipts invested in the lagging areas. But landowners including those who have benefited from public spending have become economically powerful, and therefore, and contingently, politically powerful. So the state cannot tax them. Let me elaborate the issue o f their power and its spatial implications.
Commercial farming including, and not limited to, that based on the GR has enriched large landowners. So, they have more material resources. The net income per family7 of farmers (in Rupees at current prices), including cultivators of all land holding sizes, has increased from 2188 in 1980-81 to 2541 in 1984-85 (Bansil, 1992: 118); the rate of increase will be much faster if we consider larger farmers in the agriculturally developed areas only.
In the Punjab between 1965-66 and 1982-83, per hectare net income from agriculture increased by 88.46% at 1960-61 prices (Gill and Dhaliwal, 1991). Because of their increased economic power, their ability to fight in bourgeois elections, which means buying votes, sometimes literally, and/or to put up candidates that support their interests has been enhanced.
The political clout of farmers cannot however be reduced to their economic power and/or to the GR policy. It has also to be seen in the context of India's democracy. Unlike in the present-day advanced countries, India has a representative democracy at a stage of its
7 This refers to the net income (NETPF). NETPF = [gross value of output - value of inputs - (wages paid + rent + interest)]/number of families (Bansil, 1992:118).
196 development where the agriculturally dependent population is the majority (Varshney, 1994).
There is no necessary relation between (representative) democracy and capitalism; yet, democracy in India's capitalist society -- and, pace Varshney (1994), not democracy as such
— allows its capitalist farmers to be self-mobilized and to mobilize other agrarian groups in their own interests.8
In the (bourgeois-)democratic context, what matters is not just economic power of farmers but their numerical size. Farmers' numerical strength is indeed enormous and is increasing.9 Thus they are a large vote bank. They create a still larger vote bank by appealing to smaller farmers in the name of peasant unity (see Krishnaji, 1990). They are successful in this because: since smaller farmers also sell a part of their produce, they unite with large farmers on issues such as higher prices for crops, and subsidies (Harriss, 1991: 81).
Given that the farming population is large, and given electoral competition, all parties support their demand for (e.g.) higher remunerative prices. As De Janvry and Subbarao say:
"[T]he landed interests can swap their control of the large rural vote for favorable price policies and input subsidies in agriculture" (1986:96). Even the communist parties support their demands. When I asked an official of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the
8 One must also note that the rich farmers' mobilization is over the realm of exchange relations, as opposed to production relations over which the lower classes (poor peasants and laborers) have fought. So rich farmers' mobilization is not a basic threat to the property relations and therefore has been much more tolerable than (e.g.) lower-class mobilizations which are violently and totally crushed. Most of the literature, especially Varshney (1994) and Rudolph and Rudolph (1987) on farmers' movements has ignored this basic fact.
9 One proxy indicator is that the number of cultivator-families (as measured by operational holdings) of all holding sizes increased from 88.88 million in 1980-81 to 97.16 million in 1985-86. Of the 97.16 million families, labor-hiring, profit-seeking farmers (who are among the leaders of the cultivators.) will be nearly 10- 12% (in 1985-86,12% of operational holdings were more than 10 acres). Given that the average family size was 4.8 in 1991, and if each of these profit-seeking cultivator families has 3 adult people, the number of members of these families will be quite large.
197 State office in Bhubaneswar (Orissa) why they supported the demand for higher prices when higher prices benefitted mainly richer farmers, not the smaller ones who are net-buyers of food, he replied philosophically. To paraphrase him: "We do not look at the amount of foodgrains sold by smaller farmers, we look at the social relations [read: electoral relations!]".
By that he meant that a large number of smaller owners were selling foodgrains. It was clear to me that the large rural vote-bank was in the mind of the communist official, although he did not say that.
Farmers are not merely objects of electoral mobilization by political parties. They are not just led. They themselves have occupied important positions in the legislative apparatus through elections: their numerical strength in the Lower House of the Parliament increased by 74.67% between the 1950s and the mid-1980s (Figure 6.4). Besides, they have occupied positions also in the bureaucracy at local and national levels including the Commission that advises the national government on the levels of prices for agricultural products (Harriss,
1992; Varshney, 1994:185). They have influence over the police and the administration. They have also formed many non-party farmers' organizations. An editorial in a leading newspaper,
The Times o f India discusses farmers' power:
“The peasants have started to flex the political muscles that their economic betterment has given them ...[I]t is precisely because the farmers have been enabled to move beyond subsistence economy that they have acquired the capacity to launch the kind of sustained struggle they have” (quoted in Varshney, op. cit: 182; my stress).
In short, farmers-as-a-class-in-itself, including the GR farmers, have been transformed into
a class-for-itself.
198 There are two consequences of the increased political power of commercial farmers, including the GR fanners. And one consequence, and once again, this consequence did not have to follow necessarily, is that they use their political power to undermine the power of the state (e.g.) to tax them. Direct taxes on agriculture as a proportion o f the total tax revenue of all branches o f the Indian state have dropped (Figure 6.4). Between 1961-62 and 1988-89, the percentage of direct taxes from agriculture to total governmental revenue has declined at a rate of 7.2% in spite of a 2.1% trend rate increase in food-grain yield and 2.7% increase in food production (calculated from Bansil 1992).
1957-58 -i—i—>—'—
1963-64 3 t—3 1967-68 . 1977-78 1971-72 • 1984 1-85 1980-81 27 4 20.i 3 0 £ 3 3 S 360 384 3S3
FAFM&EAT
Figure: 6.4: Farmers’ Political Power and Direct Tax from Agriculture
TAX = direct tax on agriculture as a percentage all tax revenue of the federal and State governments (Bansil, 1992) FARMSEAT = seats in the Lower House of the Parliament occupied by farmers as a percentage of all the seats (Varshney, 1994).
199 The second consequence o f the increased farmers' power is the following. Farmers have put pressure on the state to give subsidies. And, to the extent that the state has had to give a large amount o f subsidies, which mainly benefit rich farmers in the advanced regions, it is left with a limited amount o f resources for infrastructural development such as irrigation projects which can play an instrumental role in bringing about a more regionally balanced agricultural development and in transforming rent-usury barriers where they exist now. The fertilizer subsidy as a proportion of the agricultural GDP rose from less than 1% 1977-78 to
2.71% in 1987-88 (Shetty, 1990); the average rate of growth in the fertilizer subsidy as a percent o f agricultural GDP is 12.3%. Partly because of these subsidies, the share of public investment in total investment in agriculture fell from 39% in 1980-81 to 35.2 in 1985-86 to
26.9% in 1990-91 (at 1980-81 prices) (Chadha, 1994:263). Further, between 1979-80 and
1986-87 the trend rate of state investment in gross capital formation in agriculture as a percentage of agricultural GDP has been minus 3.3% per annum
However, we cannot reduce the constraints on public agricultural investment to commercial farmers' pressure for subsidies and for reduced farm-taxation. For, one might ask why can't the state redirect investments from, say, industry? This is not possible however.
Over the years, the percentage of total plan outlay/expenditures in the five-year plans for agriculture and irrigation as well as for industry, mining and energy has been quite constant since 1950-51; in fact, the latter sector seems to have attracted a higher percentage of spending than the former (Figure 6.5). That reflects in part fractional conflicts in the coahtion of dominant proprietary classes: the urban bourgeoisie also puts pressure for subsidies and other forms of public spending (Bardhan, 1989). Given this, there is a limit to how much the
200 state can spend on agriculture. Within this limit, as more and more money is spent on subsidies and less and less revenue accrues from agriculture (in the form of direct tax), there is less and less money for direct productive investments in agriculture by the state.
VEAfl
Figure: 6.5: Sectoral Public Expenditures Under Five-Year Plans
Y axis - expenditures as a percentage of total expenditures under a five-year plan; for the last plan period, figures refer to outlay, not actual expenditures The upper curve = for industry, minerals and power/energy The lower curve = for agriculture and irrigation (and since 1980-85, also rural development programs) Data from Aggarwal (1993) are used.
There can be an objection to my discussion of the twin consequences of the increased farmers' power. One might ask: how does one know that it is the GR fanners that put pressure on the state for pro-farmer policies? My response will be this. First, this has been empirically shown by many authors (Byres, 1989; De Janviy and Subbarao, 1986:96; also
Rudolph and Rudolph, 1987; Varshney, 1994; Harriss, 1992; JPS Special Issue, 1994, No.
201 3/4; Bentall and Corbridge, 1996). Further, there is a conceptual reason to argue that the fanners who have become politically powerful are commercial farmers (and petty commodity producers), who have benefitted from the state's pro-farmer policies such as the GR policy, as opposed to the old renter class. For, the latter will not be interested in the state's pro farmer policies; they will be satisfied with their rent-and-usury business (and for that reason, they may be interested in slowing down land reforms). Given that the old renter class controls less land and less land over the years — less than 10% of land is rented out according to official statistics at the all-India level -- one can expect that the pressure like the one for reduced agricultural taxation comes primarily from the class of commercial farmers.
Let me sum up my discussion of farmers' power and its spatial implication. The agrarian capitalism encouraged by the state through its strategy of geographically concentrating investment has empowered capitalist farmers. The latter thus empowered in turn appear to have constrained the exercise of autonomy on the part of the state to act against their interests like taxing them and intervening on behalf of those in less developed regions. But the question is: instead of distributing resources among smaller farmers everywhere, why did the state seek to implement a policy that would enrich the larger farmers in a few areas? In other words, what led to the state's GR policy? Answers to this question in the next section will shed some more light on the political economy of both the GR policy and of uneven agrarian development.
202 m . WHY THE GR POLICY? THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE GR
At the most abstract level, at the heart of this discussion should be what I consider to be the intersection between the Marxist-structural theory of the state and political geography.
1) The Indian state like any capitalist state is forced to create conditions for capitalist accumulation. But what these conditions are, beyond, that is, the protection of property rights, is contingent. How these conditions are created is also contingent.
2). The availability of cheap food can be an important, though by no means a necessary, condition for accumulation. This is more so in a less developed country. Given the lower level of development of the productive forces and hence the lower standard of living of the laborers, food-expenditure is a very high proportion of total expenditures. So higher food prices will affect the value of labor power and hence profit rates.
3) But just because cheap food is so crucial to accumulation does not necessarily mean that it is the state that will have to make cheap food available. In the context o f the political economy o f India, however, it is the state that has had to do this. This is because: i) neither landowners on their own could augment agricultural productivity because of the rent-usury barrier that landowners themselves could not destroy. Further, there was the problem of (e.g.) infra structure which needed lumpy investments with long gestation periods. It is the infrastructural investments by the state that partly destroyed the conditions for the feudal-like disincentives, as we have seen before, ii) Nor could industrial capitalists import cheap food; this was due to the lack of foreign exchange, especially given the low level of development of the productive forces and their retardation as a result of the colonial experience.
203 4) But even if the state has believed that it had to make cheap food available as a condition for accumulation, in what manner it has done so is by no means predetermined.
What the state has done is to primarily rely on relatively large landowners in infrastructurally rich regions to produce more food. They have been provided with all sorts of support, like subsidies, as a part of the GR policy. As Kohli (1987) says, the GR policy was:
designed to subsidize the profitability of those landowners who were in a position to facilitate rapid growth in output. Regionally, these were farmers in areas with secure access to irrigation and, in terms of class distinction, they were the better-off middle and rich peasants, well positioned to secure loans against land, invest in chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and take risks by experimenting with high-yielding seeds.
Now, why did the state try to solve the food problem this way, rather than relying on smaller farmers? One possible reason for the state pursuing the GR policy is that, as Sharma
(1973) argues, the state had to serve the interests of the landed classes, given the instrumentalist control of these classes over the Congress party, a major organ of the state.
Kohli says this contention cannot be supported because, members of the Congress representatives of the Lok Sabha (the Lower House of the Parliament) were actually against the GR policy, and were for "top priority to irrigation, electrification and water supply in the rural sector [as a whole]" (Kohli, 1987:76). For, the provision of these inputs, rather than the narrow pursuit of landlord interest, would widen electoral support. So Kohli thinks, and I believe rightly so, the GR policy was not especially designed to serve the landlords' interests
(more on this later). Besides, and conceptually, the instrumentalist control is merely a contingent way in which the state serves ruling class interests. Landowners (or their
204 representatives) might not have put pressure on the state for regionally concentrating investments.
Rather than the instrumentalist control by the landed, it was the very fact that the state sought to increase food production through market mechanisms, as opposed to institutional changes (land reforms). This automatically meant that those who had land and investment resources would benefit. As Lockwood (1972: A-113) says, in areas where farmers are already better off, they are able to invest in costly inputs and can be relied on to contribute to the increase in production by using the costly GR inputs. The instrumentalist control over the state or the intention of state actors to serve landowners' interest is immaterial in this instance. The very reliance on market mechanisms meant creating conditions for profitability in fanning, and thus the state was structurally forced to serve the interests of the landed. And, given the scarcity of resources any state will face, the state has had to concentrate investments in a few areas: regional concentration of investments is an effect of state's reliance on market mechanisms. In feet, the state's regional concentration of investment has been at the expense of the landed classes in infrastructurally lagging areas such as those in Eastern India.
The foregoing discussion in (4) above can be expressed in a different way. The pressure on the state to create favorable conditions for accumulation, one of which happened to be, but did not have to be, the production of cheap food, is an aspatial one. This is in the sense that within the territorial jurisdiction of the capitalist state, the state will be susceptible to this pressure everywhere. Yet, the empirical expression/ realization of this pressure, i.e. the policy implemented to create conditions for accumulation, and its effectivity, vary spatially.
205 In the context of the GR policy, it can be said that the pressure has tended to be realized more where there are favorable infrastructural conditions and large landowners who are able to make investments and increase the production of the food which was so much necessary for industrial capitalism.
5) But then the question is why did the state have to rely on market-mechanisms and thus capitalist farmers for promoting food production? A capitalist state does not have to promote capitalist farming. Let's see what the explanations are in the literature.
It is argued that the US, as a donor nation, which was providing "food aid" to India in 1960s, was pressuring the Indian state to adopt a more market-oriented technology intensive agricultural strategy (Byres, 1983; Frankel, 1978). One reason was that the GR policy would allow US fertilizer companies to sell fertilizer in India. Such pressure was consistent with the need of domestic industrial capital for cheap agricultural raw materials and cheap food, as discussed earlier. For lack of space, I am not able to pursue in more details the role of the donor nations in the state-promotion of the GR; the role o f donor nations is indeed very crucial to the understanding of the political economy o f development in the Third World locales (Brown, 1991).
Another explanation is that in the 1960s and the 1970s, the Indian state was facing a
"legitimation crisis" as seen in the declining popularity of the Congress government running the state: the ratio of the percentage share of Congress's vote to that of national opposition parties had been decreasing from 1.97 in 1952, to 1.9 in 1957 to 1.33 in 1962 to 1.15 in 1967
(calculated from data in Brass, 1994:101). State actors believed that this was caused by such factors as declining food production (Kohli, 1987). Shortage of food was also responsible for
206 urban food riots (Bhagavan, et al. 1977). By investing in a few areas where there were already resource-rich farmers who would invest in GRT and produce more, the state sought to find a quick spatial fix to the problem of the legitimation crisis (see Kohli, 1987). So urban class
stmggles -- potential and real — and the electoral crisis of the regime-in-power, among other things, were very crucial to the bias of state policies towards capitalist farmers in the
resource-rich regions.
I think both of these explanations are valid. However, I do not want to emphasize the political origin of the GR policy, as Kohli does, nor the role of donor nations, as Frankel does,
at the cost of the class biases of the state. It is important to emphasize these biases because,
owing to these biases, agrarian structural barriers to the increase in yields that could have been possible without GRT, could not be broken.
India's dependence on the US for food was because of India's inability to produce food which was in turn because of agrarian structural barriers to increased yields. The US did not
force India to buy food from it.
Further, food production would have been surely crucial for any political regime given that a vast majority of people were ill-fed and given the financial as well as the political10
difficulty in importing food. According to Subramanium, the Food Minister of the Congress
regime and the person quite responsible for the GR policy (Frankel, 1978), it was instituted
because "Our political survival was dependent on food production" (quoted in Kohli,
1987:78; stress mine). Similarly, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, said: "When it (the
10 American export was made contingent on policy changes.
207 “green revolution) had been evolved, it was a question of sheer survival. It was hardly time to think of anything except increasing production" (quoted in Kohli, ibid.; stress mine).
But then wasnt the LR policy also important? Consider that Indira Gandhi herself said this in the late sixties: "Land reform is the most crucial test which our political system has to pass in order to survive" (quoted in Joshi, 1986: 48; stress mine). Then, if the LR and the GR were both important for the survival of the regime (note the similarity in the way the importance of these two policies was being verbally expressed), why was it that the GR was prioritized at the expense of the LR?
This question is important to ask especially because: given the facts that: i) a greater proportion of the land cultivated by smaller cultivators is devoted to food-grain production; ii) on their lands cropping intensity is higher than on the land cultivated by larger landowners; so that iii) state support to them as well as a successful land distribution policy could have been quite successful in producing more and cheap food (Swamy, 1983; also Mencher, 1974), and, that also, in a more socially and spatially equitable way. The state could have relied on smaller farmers that existed in the 1960s when the GR policy was started. It could have created more smaller farmers by implementing the land reforms (LR) policy, that is, by redistributing the land of larger landowners. The smaller farmers could have produced food as members of cooperatives or even as petty commodity producers.
Let's return to the question I asked: if the LR and the GR were both important for the survival of the regime, why was it that the GR was prioritized at the expense of the LR? I believe that one important answer is that the effective implementation of the LR would hurt large landowners, but the GR would not disturb their position. Given their instrumentalist
208 control over the state (mainly, the Congress party, the courts, etc.), the state made the policy choice against LR. Even if the agrarian structure could have been changed, dependence on
LR to create an egalitarian agrarian structure and reliance on the new small farmers so created as well as the small farmers already existing to produce food would have taken time, given bureaucracy's class bias.
The instrumentalist control by the landed over the state was quite crucial in preventing the state from implementing LR rather than in making it implement the GR policy. In other words, I will claim, the instrumentalist control by the landed played an important role in the
LR policy being selected out rather than in the GR policy being selected in. And once the GR policy started, the better-off farmers became not only economically powerful, but also politically powerful, as I have shown earlier. So retracting from the policy became difficult.
In other words, the instrumentalist control played a role in the continuation of the GR policy and the continuation of the LR being placed in the back-bumer.
What may further have reinforced the belief of the state elites in the usefulness of the
GR policy, in retrospect, must have been the functionality of the GR in changing pre-capitalist property relations. Before the GR policy, the state did try to encourage cultivators to use fertilizer, improved seeds, etc. by spreading investment very thinly across areas; but productivity did not increase much (Moore, 1966). One important reason must have been that such investments did not create conditions for a quantum jump in yields, so large landowners were not interested in making productivity-raising investments. This is due to the fact that there are opportunities for making money by renting out land and by usury. In contrast, the regionally concentrated investments by the state in the form of the GR policy made such
209 quantum jump in yields possible which in turn induced larger landowners to make productivity-raising investments in farming. So productivity rose. It is this realization of state actors about the GR policy’s functionality for productivity-rise that must have contributed to the continuation of the policy. Further, the policy of regionally concentrating investments did not call for drawing significant resources away from the heavy industry strategy (Brass,
1994:280) which was supposed to create conditions for the development of industrial capitalism.
IV. INTERIM SUMMARY
In this Chapter, I have provided evidence that the GR has occurred in India, and have looked at the geography of its occurrence. I have also explained why it was pursued at all.
The use of GRT has shown much increase over the years. With this, productivity has also increased. Like most social objects, it shows spatial unevenness in its occurrence. I have explained this unevenness in terms of the nature of HYVs and crop ecology, the geography of the property relations and the role of the state. Further, like all social objects, the GR policy has determinate conditions for its existence. I have looked at why the state promoted the GR This discussion sheds some light on the sorts of pressures that impinge on the state, how these are realized and what the spatial implication of that realization is. These materials provide a background for my discussion on the consequences of the GR policy on several aspects of agrarian "development'Vchange in the next Chapter.
210 CHAPTER 7
THE GREEN REVOLUTION: ITS DISTRIBUTIVE CONSEQUENCES
In the last Chapter I discussed what the Green Revolution (GR) is about, why the state promoted it and why it has occurred in a spatially uneven way. In this Chapter, I want to discuss some of its distributive consequences.
There is a vast amount of quite rich literature on this topic. This has been dealt with by both mainstream (e.g. neo-classical) and more critical (e.g. Marxist) scholars. In trying to discuss some of the distributive consequences of the GR I assume a Marxist-realist standpoint. In this way I hope to suggest that the standard ideas about these consequences of the GR need to be modified.
I want to distinguish between two types of distributive consequence. One is the distribution of the direct gains (i.e. productivity-increase) from the GR. In discussing this, I want to focus on wages, poverty (of rural population and of labor), inequality in income between capital and labor, and consumption inequality in the rural population as a whole. The second type of distributive consequence refers to the effects of the GR on the distribution of the means of production, in particular land.
2 \\ The Chapter has five sections. In the first section I briefly outline the conventional arguments about the distributional consequences of the GR, present a critique of them and discuss an alternative approach to analyze these consequences. In the next three sections, I discuss the effects of the GR on wages; poverty and income inequality; and inequality in the distribution of land, respectively. In the last section, I summarize the discussions in this
Chapter and in the last one and unpack the contradictory character of the state's GR strategy.
I. THEORY OF DISTRIBUTIONAL EFFECTS OF THE GR
At the risk of simplifying, I argue that the GR debate seems to be polarized between what I will call green revolutionists1 and scholars of the critical school. The former argue that the GR has beneficial impacts on smaller farmers and laborers. Small farmers benefit because of the land-augmenting effects of the GR technology (GRT) (Lipton, 1989; Sharma, 1992).2
Their income has increased. Laborers have benefited from employment-augmenting effects and from increased productivity (Singh, 1990; Sharma and Poleman, 1993; Vaidyanathan,
1986; Bhalla, 1993). The GR is also argued to have lowered poverty levels (Prasad, 1985;
Parthasarathy, 1987; Rao, 1994). However, some radical scholars have identified several mechanisms that emanate from the GR and that can cause peasants to lose access to land
(Heble, 1979; Bardhan, 1989; Nadkarni, 1976; Byres, 1983). It is also argued that mechanization has countered the employment-augmenting effects of the GRT and the GR has
1 I want to note that in the work of a particular writer both green revolutionist and critical views may be present.
2 This is in the sense that what was being produced on a five-acre holding earlier can be, with the GR technology, produced on less land. So "the new technology has tended to help the small farms overcome their most restrictive bottleneck, that is, limited land area, to a great extent" (1992: 183).
2 1 2 caused greater inequality in income and land distribution (Yapa, 1979; Rao, 1975; Singh,
1990).
These arguments about the GR's positive and negative consequences, which I will
discuss in more detail later, are marred by technological determinism, an approach in which the GR itself is said to cause good or bad things for the people, when, in fact, GRT, like any technology, should be viewed as working within an ensemble of property and political relations. This is particularly true about the green revolutionists. The most extreme form of
their view is that the technology, by increasing food production, can produce revolutionary
improvements in the conditions of the poor without radical changes in relations of power, i.e.
without political revolutions (in Lipton, 1989:3; Cleaver, 1972:81). As far as radical scholars
are concerned, they sometimes attribute the adverse conditions of laborers and smaller
farmers to the GR as such rather than to the interaction between GRT and the political-
economic context in which it occurs.
In addition, and relatedly, both green revolutionists and the critical school often seem
to read off the GR's impacts from abstract ideas about technology (e.g. HYVs will benefit
laborers by increasing productivity) and society (e.g.smaller farmers will be displaced by
larger ones through competition) respectively.3 What they miss is the point that there can be
mechanisms such as state interventions that counteract the effects of how GRT and society
3 I want to distinguish between the politics of the existing critical approaches to the GR and that of my own. The politics of the former approach is, I argue, at some risk of overextending the analogy, quite akin to the Luddite approach to exploitation (machine-breaking). This is the 'technology-is-to-blame' approach. What 1 am arguing is that it is not the technology perse which is bad - the technology can be used in a political- economic context vastly different from what exists in India now. It is the interaction between the technology and the social relations, and more specifically, the latter, which are to blame and have to be changed (I am abstracting from the ecological consequences of the technology).
213 work. This is especially important from a geographical standpoint because: given the federal character of the Indian state, and given that actual agricultural policies are made by the States within very general guidelines from the center, these interventions and their effectivity vary across States.
In response to these problems in the literature, I will take an alternative, Marxist- realist approach. This is the property relations approach in which the distributional consequences are a function of a particular regime of property relations including the class struggles entailed by these relations and the political relations at the level of the state which underpin them. I will make three main claims. 1) The GR in the context of private property rights in land (which is also unequally distributed) as well as interventions of the state that has to work within the constraints of private property in the means of production has caused greater inequality in the distribution of land cultivated. 2) Certain negative consequences of the GR have been offset by some reformist interventions of the state. 3) The gains of laborers from the increased productivity are a function of their struggle over it.
Let me briefly discuss how I will conduct my empirical analysis. I will use several approaches, i) In an historical comparison I will compare the agrarian conditions before the
GR took place (the mid-1960s) to the conditions after it took place, ii) In a second approach which emphasizes spatial differentiation I will compare two sets of States. In the States o f the
Punjab, Haryana, and Tamilnadu, HYVs have been more widely used than elsewhere
(Appendix A). The use of other inputs as well as productivity has been greater in these States than in others. In contrast, there are States like Orissa, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, where
HYVs are not as widely used. For the sake of convenience, I will call the first set of States
214 technologically more developed States or simply developed States, and the second set, technologically less developed States or just less developed States, iii) I will use regression equations including terminal equations based on what is known as Casetti's expansion method
(1992; 1972). These equations will be for different scales.
D. THE GR AND WAGES
I have shown in the last Chapter how the use of the GRT has been responsible for a rise in productivity. In fact, the GR by definition refers to that. Then the question is: if productivity has increased, who has benefited from this, how, where, and why? In other words, what does the political geography of the GR look like? In this section, I will examine the impacts of the GR on laborers.
It is argued that the GR contributes to the increase in wages because, as Sen (1970) says, it causes a rise in the demand for labor. The latter happens for at least two reasons, i)
HYVs mature sooner than traditional varieties and thus allow multiple cropping which needs more labor input, ii) The development of non-agricultural activities occurs due to the increased expenditure of the minority o f large farmers. And this will create job opportunities
(e.g. agro-service workshops where tractors of large fanners will be repaired; non-agricultural consumption by the richer strata leading to the emergence of trading activities in these)
(Lockwood, 1972: A123; Sharma and Poleman, 1993; Sharma, 1992:185; Vaidyanathan,
1986). This is, for me, in accord with the trickle-down assumption of some of the scholars and of the state.
2 1 5 Not only is the demand for labor increased, but also there is an increased demand for labor within a specific period of time. This is because certain operations such as harvesting and transplanting have to be finished within a short and highly specific period of time. This can, argues Bardhan, increase laborers' bargaining power during peak seasons (1984a: 188;
Aggarwal, 1971:2365) and thus increase wages. In addition, the use of GRT has increased labor productivity. This in turn makes possible an increased share of the total product for laborers (Bhalla, S. 1976, Bhalla, 1993).
The idea that the GR can benefit and has benefited laborers has been challenged by radical scholars on the ground that although the use of HYVs and other biochemical inputs may have increased the demand for labor in the initial stage of the GR (mid-1960s to the mid-
1970s), ance the mid-1970s, mechanization has started to erode these advantages (Roy and
Tisdell, 1993). More specifically, the elasticity of employment with respect to output has
declined because of mechanization in the GR States (Vaidyanathan, 1986). Even an
apparently optimistic green revolutionist and a World Bank person, Indeijit Singh, says that the potential impact of the bio-chemical innovation on employment has been eroded by mechanization (1990: 189).
But one may ask: why are farmers using machines when there is plenty of labor
available? There are several interrelated reasons. First, Byres (1983) says that the use of
HYVs by allowing multiple cropping in a shorter growing period will set up pressures toward mechanization to cope with the increased time constraint mentioned above. For example, the
mechanization of irrigation via pump-sets cuts down the time required for irrigation by as
much as 75%; a persian-wheel, a tractor, a thresher, and a reaper require 20-25% of the man-
2 1 6 hours required by the indigenous methods which these machines will replace (Billings and
Singh, 1969).
Second, ance the use of HYVs can increase the need for more labor-input which can result in pressure to increase wages, mechanization is resorted to in order to reduce farmers' dependence on laborers and thus break their bargaining power. Even the threat of hiring a combine during harvesting time can potentially reduce the bargaining power of labor.
Third, in spite of the availability o f cheap labor, mechanization can reduce costs and increase returns. "[Mechanization of certain operations like ploughing and irrigation turn out to be cheaper even with the availability o f migrant labor" (Rao, 1994:54). For example, the return per rupee of investment on tractor-operated farms is Rs. 1.28 compared to that of bullock operated farms (Rs 1.23) (Umesh and Mathew, 1990).
Fourth, farmers in the GR areas are resorting to mechanization in spite of the availability of migrant labor, "because migrant labor lacks certain skills locally required" (Rao,
1994: 54).
I am not disputing that large farmers using HYVs resort to mechanization. But I want to stress the context-dependency of the relation between the use o f HYVs and mechanization.
The role of the state is quite crucial to mechanization. I will argue that mechanization is taking place because of what the state failed to do, and because of what it did.
Given its class-bias, the state failed to "break" the monopoly of large landowners, for it is they who can marshall the resources to buy machines. Consider (e.g.) tractorization only.
The GR is positively associated with tractorization (Byres, 1983). Even if we hold the incidence of the GR constant, there is a very high degree of association between tractorization
2 1 7 and the incidence of large farmers across States. This is not only because larger farmers will tend to use tractors to cope with the large amount of work (Rudra, et al. 1990: 32), but also because they are likely to have the resources to use tractors more than others. So, tractorization may be greater in States where large farmers, whether or not they use the GRT,
cultivate higher percentages of land than elsewhere. The following equation shows the expected relation between tractorization (which can be a proxy for mechanization) on the one hand and the GR and the share taken by large farmers in the total operated land on the other,
a relation which can be just contingent.
TRACT89 = -16.14 + 13.33 (FACBI085)* + .51 (OPERL85)**;N = 17; R =.906; P=.000 (t=4.173) (t=7.368) (t=3.256); *,** = .006,.000 signf. levels where: TRACT89 = no. of tractors per 1000 hectares of gross sown area in 1989 (Singh and Singh, 1993); FACBI085 = factor scores for the GR in 1983-85; OPERL85 = proxy for the incidence of large landowners = area operated by large cultivators (those who operate >10 hectares) as a % of total area operated in 1985 (calculated from Bansil, 1992).
Mechanization is also taking place because of what the state did do: it provided
subsidized credit; subsidized machinery for the purchase of machines, subsidized electricity,
etc. Thus recognizing the context-dependency of the HYV-mechanization relation reveals
(e.g.) the political economy of the state.4
What, however, of the empirical evidence on wages? The time-series data at the all-
India level and at State levels seem to suggest that with the progress of the GR, money wages
have indeed risen (Table 7.1). Further, money wages tend to be much higher in
4 There may however be some context independence of mechanization. If irrigation is a necessary aspect of GRT, then the following has to be true. To the extent that the use of pump-sets is necessary to irrigate land and will be used no matter what the context, i.e. agrarian structure is, and to the extent that the use of pump- sets has a labor-displacing effect, the GRT package has an in-built tendency to minimi7e labor use.
2 1 8 technologically developed States than elsewhere (Table 7.1). Real wages show the same pattern: real wages in 1990-91 in the Punjab and Haryana are one and half times those in most other States (Appendix 1).
Table 7.1: The GR and Money Wages (Rs/day) (male agricultural laborers) 1964-65 1970-71 1975-76 1980-81 1984-1
More Dev. States Punjab 3.28 6.39 9.16 12.23 18.13 Haiyana 3.28* 6.64 8.55 12.41 19.35 Tamilnadu 1.85 2.53 4.52 5.95 8.83
Less Dev. States Orissa 1.92 2.19 3.49 4.79 8.42 Bihar 1.61 2.64 4.48 5.85 9.88 Madhya Pradesh 1.38 2.15 3.78 4.67 8.53 All-India 2.55 2.93 2.74 2.94 3.61
Notes/sources: Figures for States 1970-71 and the rest are from Josef 1988); Figures for 1964-65 are from Jose in (Lai, 1970). * = The figure for Haryana is taken to be the same as that for the Punjab. All-India Figures are from Acharya and Papanek (1989).
However, changes over time are less reassuring. For, real wages have declined in developed states in recent years, or, if they have increased, they have increased at a much slower rate than in less developed states. Besides, the gap between the rate of increase in land productivity and the rate of increase in real wages is much greater in more developed States than in less developed ones; in (act in less developed States, real wages have increased faster than land productivity (Table 7.2), and the opposite is true for the Punjab and Haryana.
2 1 9 Table 7.2: Real Agricultural Wages (male) and Food-grains Productivity (Base= 1970-71)
States Index of real wages* Index of produety.** Ratio*** (1990-91) (1988-89) More dev. States Punjab 106 169 .63 Haryana 117 183 .64 Tamilnadu 119 132 .90
Less Dev. States Bihar 181 154 1.18 Orissa 176 115 1.53 Madhya Pradesh 170 137 1.24
Notes/sources: * - Ratio of real wages (Rs per day at 1960 prices) in 1990-91 to that in 1970-71 (calculated from Pandey and Kumar, 1993). ** = Ratio of productivity (kg/hectare) of all food-grains crops in 1988-89 to that in 1970-71 (calculated from Bansil, 1992). *** = Index of real wages over the index of productivity (the ratio of more than 1 means wages have increased faster than productivity, and vice versa).
There maybe several reasons why real wages, after having risen earlier, have started declining recently in technologically advanced States. These reasons are only contingently related to the GR 1) There may be some upper limit to increases in the real wages given, in particular, that capitalist landlords have power over laborers and therefore can depress money wages if (e.g.) a rupee buys more food with increased yields made possible by the GR
(Lipton, 1989). 2) Given that the GR has occurred unevenly in space, laborers from lagging regions migrate to technologically developed States. 3) Farmers have resorted to mechanization in the high-wage States, as in the Punjab, which is limiting wage-hikes there.
Having provided this background on wages and their temporal-spatial variation, I now want to look at the politics of the relation between productivity and wages. I want to suggest that given the GR, and given the political economic conditions under which it occurs, wage increases are possible, but not necessary. In other words, although the use of GRT has contributed to the rise in productivity, this does not make a wage-increase automatic. The
2 2 0 strength of the relation between wages and productivity varies in space (not just over time) and it depends on the effectivity o f the exercise of the political power of workers. Here I use the electoral strength of communist and left parties as a proxy for the existence of conditions that favor laborer success in putting pressure on landowners for higher wages. But it needs to be recognized that this electoral strength cannot be the actual measure of that success, partly because laborers are also organized outside the radical parties, both collectively and otherwise.
Consider the following terminal equation:
REALWG = 3.828 + .001 (LABPRD)* +.004 [(LABPRDXLEFT)]**; N=15; R= 885; P=.00 (t=6.726) (t=3.683) This equation seems to show that the higher labor productivity which, as I have shown earlier, is made possible by the use of GRT does in turn make possible higher real wages. But laborers seem to gain more from higher labor productivity in States where they are more organized (as reflected in the left parties' electoral strength) than elsewhere. One piece of corroborative evidence is this: in Kerala State, a bastion of agrarian radicalism, food-grain productivity was 1697 kg/hectare in 1988 (Bansil, 1992) but the real wage in 1990-91 was Rs. 3.17 (at 1960-61 prices) (Pandey and Kumar, 1993); in the Punjab, not quite known for its radicalism, the corresponding figures were 3152 and only Rs. 3.5. How do we interpret these results conceptually? I will make the following points. 1) The GR, by changing the property relations, i.e., by allowing the rent barrier to be breached, has, as I have shown in the last Chapter, contributed to the increase in productivity. The latter, in turn, has made wage-increases possible, not necessary. 2) This is because the struggle of the laborers isnecessary if they are going to have a greater share of the increased product made possible by the GR. This in turn is because the increase in productivity has taken place in a class society, i.e. under a particular regime of property relations, that involve exploitation. The latter entails conflict between workers and employers. For, while individual employers will have every interest in paying low wages, workers will demand higher wages. So, the distribution of the surplus produced is necessarily, if only in part, a function of the balance of class forces. Direct forms of struggle are especially necessaiy given that the Indian state directly affects this balance in a contrary direction, often by supporting landowners in local conflicts, as many case-studies show (see Breman, 1990). Mathur says that when laborers challenge landowners, the conflict is often seen as a breach of the peace to be dealt with by law and order instruments. So the administrative system becomes status quo-ist (p. 17) and becomes an ally of the landed. The repressive apparatus of the state is also subject to a great deal of instrumentalist control by the farmers which further facilitates their exercise of power over laborers. Given the power of landowners who will be, individually, always interested in lower wages, and given the power of the state that counters laborers' exercise of their bargaining power — although this does not preclude occasional state support and a shedding of crocodile tears (!) for laborers, as long as the basic capital-labor relation is not challenged — if the latter are to achieve some success in wage-strikes, they have to be organized and strongly. 3) While the laborers' struggle is necessary if they are to increase their share of the increased product that is made possible by the GR, the GR has also made their struggles possible in another sense. Before the GR, landowners had an interest in holding direct producers in debt bondage and others forms of pre-capitalist dependency. Direct producers were involved in relations of personal dependence; they were dependent on the landed for land-on-lease, for credit etc., and these survival strategies could be easily withdrawn according to the sweet will of the landowners. Now that the GR technology has made it possible for landowners to appropriate surplus value from immediate producers (i.e wage workers), holding the latter in pre-capitalist bondage is not necessary. Direct producers were earlier free de jure. Now they became free de facto. As free wage laborers, they can challenge the landowners in a manner not possible before. They can move around for employment as seen in the fact that (e.g.) thousands of migrants laborers from Bihar and other States are going to the Punjab for wage-work. The dissolution of relations of personal dependence and thus the fact that laborers can now move around for wage-woTk gave them a new power to contest landowners over issues such as low wages. The contribution of the rise in productivity to higher wages is contingent on the success of this contestation, i.e. on the political organization of the workers. Where they have been able to contest landowners more strongly, they seem to have gained more. This is what the equations given above suggest. Now, there are also certain conditions which constrain/enable the organization of workers, which varies over space. So the success of laborers in bargaining with landowners for higher shares of the increased per worker product varies accordingly. One of these conditions is whether or not the laborers have access to land or some asset. This is important because given that laborers are mainly casual, i.e. daily, laborers with no security in employment (nearly three quarters o f rural male laborers are casual laborers), access to some asset like land provides some entitlement to income which affects the effectivity of the exercise of the bargaining power. Other things constant, the more asset-poor laborers are, the more difficult it is for them to fight against landowners. Consider the following equation: REALWG = 26.57 + 0.002 (LABPRD)* - 2.232 LOG [(LABPRDXLANDLES)]**; R = 915 [*=.000; ** = .001; P=.000; N=15 States] where: REALWG = real wage per day of male casual farm laborers in Rupees in 1987-88 (at 1977-78 prices); LABPRD = labor productivity = value in Rupees (in 000) of output of 19 major crops over male workers (cultivators and laborers) in 1980-83 (Bhalla and Tyagi, 1989); LANDLES = landless farm laborers as a percentage of all farm laborers in 1983 (GOl, 1990). The equation for the 46 agro-climatic regions shows similar results: REALWG = 9.141 +.001(LABPRD) - .669 LOG [(LABPRDXASETPOOR)]; R=.614; (3.45) (5.059) (-2.415); *=.000; **=.020 where: REALWG = Real wages (in Rs.) of male agricultural laborers in 1984-85 in States (Acharya, 1989); LABPRD = labor productivity in 1978 (Dev, 1985); ASETPOOR = proportion of rural households that possess assets worth of Rs. 1000 or less on June 30,1971 (Bardhan, 1984a). These equations show that wages are positively associated with labor productivity, but this association is stronger where the labor market is less crowded by landless/asset-poor laborers. There may be two reasons for this. First: "the opportunity cost of hiring oneself out is higher for small farmers than for pure wage earners" (Bardhan, 1973:947). Since the small 2 2 4 fanner has always something to fall back upon (e.g. some land), he/she won't hire himself/herself out unless wages are higher than would be the case for a landless person. Second, "given other things, the small farmer on account of his [or her] income from land may be somewhat less undernourished than the non-cultivating wage-eamer and hence his [or her] productivity may be higher than the latter" (ibid.). Because of these two reasons, the effectivity o f the exercise of his/her bargaining power is increased. Even if a laborer owns a fraction o f an acre of land, say, a hutment dwelling, that can increase his/her bargaining power. This was quite evident in the case of Kerala, one o f centers of agrarian radicalism, where the leftist regime allowed the laborers to own the hutment dwellings which used to belong to their employers earlier. Landowners no longer could discipline laborers by threatening to evict them Besides, laborers grew some crops -- coconut, etc. -- on the small pieces of land around their huts, which added to their income. The latter in turn increased their bargaining power during strikes. The asset-poor/landless people are economically poor and therefore they tend to face problems getting organized (Chambers, 1983), problems that are not absolutely insuperable however (see below). What further contributes to the problem of getting organized is the overcrowding of the labor market by the landless/land-poor laborers. Kalpana Bardhan (1989) notes that the more the labor market is flooded by those with very little or no land, the weaker is likely to be the bargaining power of laborers. It may be counter-argued that it is the poorest and the most-asset poor who are more rebellious for they have, to paraphrase Marx, nothing to lose but their chains. This may not be true, at least in the context of wage-strikes. The poorest strata have to negotiate a knife 2 2 5 edge between attacking the landowners on the one hand and risking their economic and social support (e.g. some credit, some land on lease, some employment, some mediation with outside people including state officials, etc.) from landowners (see Alavi, 1965). This is not to say that the landless do not strike. They do. But they will be more likely to do so when (e.g.) a local organization promises to at least provide them some support (e.g. feed them and their families during the strikes) (see Wolf, 1971). In my study of Khandadeuli (a village in South East Orissa), I found that wage strikes became successful when the local communist organization had provided food for the strikers during the strike-days, and this food- provisioning had increased the staying power of strikers. But this sort of support does not exist everywhere. This discussion on wages shows that the GR — or the development of productive forces as such — cannot benefit laborers automatically. The effects of the GR on wages are mediated by property relations, especially, the class struggle that underpins these relations. Given that the main source of subsistence is land, the position of laborers in the structure of the distribution of land -- the fact of their possessing some land — makes a difference to their bargaining power which, in turn, affects the extent to which they will benefit from the increased productivity. III. THE GR, POVERTY AND INCOME INEQUALITY The relations between the GR and wages as discussed above may be reflected through the relations existing between the GR on the one hand and poverty and income-inequality on the other. I will first deal with poverty. 2 2 6 According to many scholars, the GR has resulted in a reduction in the poverty levels5 of landless/land-poor laborers and also of smaller farmers. A negative association between poverty and agricultural performance has been noted by many scholars (Ahluwalia, 1978; Chadha, 1984; Chadha, 1994; Ninan,1994; Prasad, 1985; but cf. Kohli, 1987). First, the GR has reduced smaller farmers' poverty levels because of its yield-augmenting effects (Upton, 1989). Second, it has reduced laborers' poverty levels through its favorable effects on wages (Sharma, 1992: 185). Some argue that in the absence of GRT and because of demographic pressure, employment opportunities would have become more limited and wages would have been lower (Parthasarathy, 1991). Third, the GR, by contributing to lower food prices, benefits the food-deficit farmers and landless laborers as consumers who often lack the necessary means of exchange (Parthasarathy, 1987; Dantwala,1987; Rao, 1994:54). Lower food prices benefit especially laborers who spend the larger part of their income on food.6 It is said that food prices would have been much higher without the GR (Singh, 1994:196). The rural poverty level in India has indeed been considerably reduced. In 1960-61, i.e. before the GR, 57% of the rural population was below the poverty line, but by 1989-90, that figure had declined to 28.4% (NIRD, 1989; 1995). The trend rate of change in the percentage of the rural population below the poverty-line between 1960-61 and 1989-90 is minus 1.5%/year.7 5 The poverty level refers to the percentage of the population below the line of absolute poverty. The latter is defined as the mid-point of the monthly per-capita expenditure class having a daily per capita intake of 2400 calories for rural areas. 6 In 1988-89, the rural labor households — who are the largest single group of poor households — spent 66.3% of their consumption expenditure on food (NIRD, 1995:41). 7 This is significant at all levels; N = 17 years; and R = ,794 (data from NIRD, 1995 are used). ZZl Table 7.3: The GR and Rural Poverty Rural Poor (% of the rural population) 1964-65 1970-71 1977-78 1986-87 Trend* More Dev. States Punjab 25.87 16.43 10.70 7.59 (-70.7) -1.067 Haryana 25.18 27.8 19.85 12.20 (-51.6) -0.666 Tamilnadu 57.46 57.98 48.75 31.34 (-45.5) -1.223 Less Dev. States Orissa 60.68 60.51 61.49 40.13 (-33.9) -0.859 Bihar 52.95 58.53 55.02 41.20 (-22.2) -0.729 Madhya Pradesh 40.50 52.56 51.61 33.52 (-17.2) -0.762 All-India 45.73 45.39 40.21 25.58 (-44.06) -1.117 Notes/sources: Poverty levels from Sinyananyana in Dev et aL (1994). Figures in brackets refer to the percentage reduction in poverty levels between 1964-65 and 1986-87. * = trend rate = average rate of change in the poverty- level. Trend rate is the value of b in regression equations. I have calculated trend rate for each State over a 12- year period from 1964-65 to 1986-87 by using the equation; poverty level = a + bftime). For time variable I have taken 1 for 1964-65; 2 fix the next year, and so on. "b" is significant at least at 3% for all equations. The data-set on poverty used for this Table is different from the one on which the previous paragraph is based. Across the different States, the poverty level tends to be lower in the more technologically developed States (Table 7.3). The poverty level has also tended to show a greater reduction in more developed States than elsewhere (Figure 7.1). 3 . I, ff 1 O c12 3 4 Figure 7.1: The Green Revolution and Rural Poverty-Reduction 2 2 8 where: POV6486 = the poverty level in 1964-65 as a percentage of that in 1986-87 (the higher the ratio, the greater the reduction in the poverty level) (data from Dev et al, 1994); FACBI073 = factor scores for the GR in 1973). The following equation also shows the relation between the GR and poverty-reduction in rural areas: POV6486 = 1.321 + 0.506 (FACBI073); N=15 States; R=.781; P=.001 where: POV6486 and FACBI073 are as defined above. Not only the rural poverty-level as a whole, but also the poverty-level of farm laborers seems to bear a relationship to the GR. The poverty level of agricultural labor households at the all-India level increased from 52% in 1963-64 to 56% in 1977-78, but dropped to 45.8 in 1983 (Dev, 1988: 16). It is lower in States where the GR has been more widespread: LGPOVLAB = 4.198 - .244 (FACBI076); R = .647; N = 15; P = 0.009 where: LGPOVLAB = poverty level for laborers in 1977-78; FACBI076 = factor scores for the GR in 1974-76. I must however make some qualifications. In the first place, in the above discussion, I have abstracted from the contribution that the various redistributive, poverty-alleviation, programs started by the state since the mid-1970s have made to poverty-reduction. The very fact that the state could not rely on the GR for poverty-reduction and thus started what it calls a "direct attack" on poverty through these policies is an indirect indicator of the limited impact of the GR under the existing structural conditions. Second, these statistical associations — pace green revolutionists and ideological apologetics of capitalism and the state in India — do not at all suggest any necessary relation between the GR and poverty-reduction. Any such claims to necessity are conceptually 2 2 9 indefensible. Bardhan says that "Agricultural growth in general seems to be helpful, but big farmer-dominated growth dependent on private ownership of modem equipment need not be" (Bardhan, 1984a: 197). The GR certainly creates the possibility of poverty reduction through enhanced productivity. But, whether that will be translated into greater employment and/or purchasing power is indeed a contingent matter. This is because of several factors. 1) Increased production may not lead to greater access/entitlement to food by the poor, for, farmers can and do demand higher prices for what they sell. They lobby the state successfully for minimum/support prices. Without the latter, food prices in the market would be much lower than they actually are because of the increased production made possible by the use of the GRT. So to what extent the benefits of the GR through low food prices will go to the poor depend on farmers' success in lobbying for higher prices for grains. 2) The extent to which smaller farmers can benefit from the GR is further limited by the many disadvantages they face in the input and land markets,8 although these disadvantages are not necessarily related to the GR Thus whether or not small farmers will benefit from the GR and cross the poverty line depends on state support for them to counter these disadvantages. 3) Laborer gains from the increase in productivity are also contingent on factors outside the market for food. This is so for several reasons. Larger farmers resort to mechanization which displaces labor. Further, if land is quite unequally distributed which may mean that a large number of laborers have to work for a minority o f larger landowners, the 8 For example: the smaller farmers do not have much land, so they cannot enjoy economies of scale where they are; they have to borrow from private sources at very high interest rates as low-interest institutional credit is monopolized by larger owners. 2 3 0 tatter can depress wages. All this means that the magnitude of gains horn productivity for laborers will negatively vary with the control over land by larger owners. The following equation shows that whether or not laborers will gain enough (in terms o f high wages and more employment) to be able to cross the poverty line is, in part, contingent on the concentration of land. POVLAB = 75.57 + 022(PRODUCT) - .00l(PRODUCTXLARGFARM); N=14;R=.758 where: POVLAB = % OF LABORERS under the poverty line in 1977-78 (Dev 1985); PRODUCT = land productivity in 1970-73 (Bhalla and Tyagi, 1989); LARGFARM = % of fanners owning more than 10 acres (calculated from bansil 1992). As the equation shows, the contribution of higher productivity to the chances of laborers crossing the poverty line is weakened where there are many larger landowners. 4) We have seen earlier that the contribution of productivity to the share of laborers (in terms of wages) in the increased product is a function of class struggle. Given that if other things are constant, the poverty level will be negatively related to wages, we should expect that the contribution of the GR/productivity to poverty-reduction will be positively affected by class struggle. This is seen in the following equation. POVCH6486 = 30.54 + 37.94 (FACBI073)* + 133.203 [(FACBIOXLEFT)]*; N = 15 ; R = .84 where: POVCH6486 = % reduction in poverty level between 196-654 and 1986-87; FACBI073 = factor scores for the GR in 1973; LEFT = % votes obtained by left parties to all valid votes in State elections between 1967 and 1972. Further, the highest trend rate in poverty reduction has not been in the Punjab or Haryana (the bastions of the GR and of agrarian capitalism) but in Kerala State9, which is 9 For Kerala,” b” in the trend equation is minus 2.292. 2 3 1 known not for the GR but for the re-distributive policies of various leftist regimes that have been in power in that State (see Franke and Chasm, 1991). In fact, Haryana, the foremost GR State after the Punjab, has one of the lowest trend rates in poverty reduction (Table 7.3). This discussion shows that as in case of wages, the effects of the GR on poverty- alleviation are mediated by property relations and state policies. The technology itself cannot reduce or increase poverty-levels. Changes in the poverty levels signify one sort of — albeit mediated — distributional change dependent on the GR. Changes in inequality in income are another. In empirically analyzing these, however, encounters two problems. Given that there are no time-series data on household incomes of the total population across States, one has to use a proxy indicator for income inequality. In this regard inequality in consumption expenditures, as measured by the gini index, is often used. Further, one has to isolate the possible impact of the GR on inequality from other possible influences, the most important of which is the unequal distribution of land. The following statements seem justified here. First, there does not seem to be any clear relation between the GR per se and changes in expenditure-inequality at the all-India level and at the State level (Table below). It can however be said that: since, as we will see later, the GR is positively associated with inequality in operational distribution of land, and since the latter itself affects inequality in consumption expenditures, we should control for inequality in operational distribution of land to see whether the GR is associated with inequality in consumption expenditures. Interestingly, when we control for inequality in operational distribution of land, the GR seems to be negatively associated with inequality in consumption expenditures: the latter seems to 232 be lower in the States that are more affected by the GR. Consider the following equation. CONINQ83 = -0.09 - 0.021(FACBI080)* + 0.676 (GINOP81)**; N= 15; R - 67; P=028 (t=-.751) (t=-2.088) (t=3.13); *, ** = .009,.059 signf. levels where: CONINQ83 = gini ratio for consumption inequality among rural households in 1983 (Dev et al. 1994); FACBIO80=factor scores for the GR in 1980*81. GINOP81 = gini ratio for inequality in distribution of land in 1981 (Haque, 1987). Table 7,4: The GR and Gini Index of Inequality in Per Capita Consumer Expenditure in Constant Rupees 1965-66 1970-71 1977-78 1983 1986-87 More dev. States Punjab .343 .280 .303 .279 Haryana .298 .276 .288 .271 — Punjab-Haryana .324 .282 .303 .278 .285 Tamilnadu .286 .261 .319 .325 .299 Less dev. States Orissa .273 .282 .301 .266 .269 Bihar .302 .265 .258 .256 .245 Madhya Pradesh .314 .308 .331 .293 310 All-India .297 .283 .336 .297 .296 Notes/sources: Figures for Punjab and Haryana (separately) are from Bhattacharya et al. (Poverty, Inequality. 1991); all other figures are from Suryanarayana in Dev et al. 1994. This equation seems to be inconsistent with much of what has been said about the GR- inequality relation, but is quite congruent with what I have been arguing: the fact that the effects of the GR depend on the regime of property relations. In particular, the argument that the GR is responsible for inequality attributes to the GR what should be perhaps attributable to the agrarian structure within the context of which the GR has taken place (i.e. private property and unequal land distribution; pro-large farmer policies, etc.). Studies of a GR area in South India (North Arcot) in fact show — although this finding may not be generalized - that smaller farmers and laborers gained more from the GR relative to other groups (Hazell and Ramaswamy, 1991:242). One reason is that inequality in land distribution there has not increased, and the average size of land holding is very small. Further, agricultural and non- agricultural wage earnings have increased because of the GR. Having discussed the relation between consumption inequality and the GR across States, I also want to make some qualifications. First, to the extent that the GR has been contingently responsible for increased inequality in the distribution of land as 1 will show in the next section, I have held the inequality-creating effect of the GR constant by holding the inequality in land distribution constant in the above equation! And if the latter is not held constant, there is no statistical association between the GR and consumption inequality. Second, the analysis of consumption inequality, like that of poverty, is based on a faulty ontology: for, just what are these consumption-groups but formally related, as opposed to necessarily related, ones? Even if the GR has inequality-increasing effects, it is not necessary that these effects will be expressed in terms of consumption inequality. Unlike the logic of capitalist exploitation, there is no logic of consumption inequality. Besides, even if the GR has encouraged capitalism, it is not necessary that consumption/income inequality increase, for capitalist development and increases in inequality are not necessarily related (although capitalism necessarily creates changes in patterns of inequality). Considering the faulty ontology involved in the analysis of consumption inequality, I will now look at inequality in terms of the relative share of laborers and employers in the benefits from the GR. Here, the picture is different. There is some empirical support for the view that the relative share of wages in output has declined over time. The compensation to employees (e.g. wages) as a percentage of total NDP from the primary sector at current prices declined from 26% in 1965-66 to 23.1% in 1984-85. In contrast, corresponding figures for profits and dividends are 3% and 4.8% and those for interest were 3.3 and 6.2 (Dev et al. 1994:226). Also: compensation to employees per Rs. 100 worth of farm output has declined from Rs 16.9 in 1970-71 to Rs 15.1 in 1984-85 at current prices. The reasons why this has happened are those that affect wage levels which I have already discussed. For these reasons also, the absolute difference between profits (per cultivator) and wage earnings (per laborer) — the absolute difference being profit minus wage earnings — is greater in States where there is greater use of GR inputs. It is also very highly and positively associated with tractorization (which is, as we have seen, very strongly, if contingently, associated with the GR). Consider the following equations: ABSDIF = 798.37 + 760.02 (FACBIO80); N = 15; R=.67; P=.007 (t=2.141) (t=3.215) ABSDIF = 1029.87 + 181.41 (TRACT81); N = 15; R = .915, P=.000 (t=6.72) (t=8,194) where: ABSDIF = net profit per cultivator minus wage earnings per agricultural laborer (mean values of profit and wage earnings for 1980-81—1987-88 at 1980-81 prices) (Acharya, 1990); FACBIO80 = factor scores for the GR in 1980-81; TRACT81 no. of tractors per 1000 hectares of gross cropped area (Sharma and Mahajan, 1992). In more developed States the absolute values of profits per cultivator and earnings per laborer are both higher than in less developed States. In the more developed States such as the Punjab and Haryana per farmer profit is Rs. 7008 and Rs. 4732, and per labor earnings are Rs. 1966 and Rs. 1196 respectively (these were mean values for 1980/81—1987/88 at 1980-81 prices). In contrast, in less developed States like Orissa and Bihar profit per cultivator is Rs. 1619 and Rs. 2003 and per labor earningS are Rs. 491 and Rs. 247 2 3 5 respectively. Thus the GR appears to have benefited farmers and laborers but at the same time, it is positively associated with income-inequality between farmers and laborers. However, this relation between the GR on the one hand and the income-inequality between farmers and laborers — like the level of wages which we have discussed earlier - is a function of class struggle. Consider this: ABSDIF = -762.7 + 1109.6 (FACBIO80)* - 360.9 log[(FACBIO80XLEFT)]** (-.776) (3.674) (-1.697); *,** : .115, .003 signf levels [N = 15; R = .74; P = .008] where: ABSDIF = net profits of cultivators minus wage-eamings per hectare (mean values of profits and earnings for 1980/81-1987/88) (Achaiya, 1990); FACBIO80 = factor scores for bio-chemical inputs in 1980-81; LEFT = log (FACBIO80 multiplied by LEFT. LEFT = % of valid votes polled by communist and left parties to all valid votes in assembly elections between 1967 and 1984) (calculated from Singh, 1990). This equation shows that while the GR may be positively associated with the absolute difference between profits per hectare and wage-eamings per hectare, this difference is less where workers are more organized and therefore have been able to successfully demand higher wages. Once again, the effects of the GR are mediated by property relations, in this case, the class struggle that these relations entail. IV. THE GR AND INEQUALITY IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF LAND I will now turn to the question of whether the GR policy has affected inequality in the distribution of land. This issue is a very controversial one. In considering the GR's impact here, I will start out by briefly discussing the mechanisms posited in the literature that can cause smaller farmers to lose access to land. Given that the application of bio-chemical inputs is subject to economies of scale, there is a pressure on larger farmers to displace smaller ones so as to augment their land supply (Byres, 1983). Since GR farming is profitable, erstwhile landlords evict tenants so as to cultivate land on their own account by using hired labor (Heble, 1979; Bardhan, K. 1989). Besides, given the high cost of inputs, and their greater difficulties in achieving economies o f scale smaller farmers in competition with larger ones run into debts and sell their land to pay them (Gill, 1988). Often, poor peasants also lease out their land to larger farmers because they are unable to afford the high cost of cultivation (Nadkami, 1976). They lease out land also because higher wages in the GR areas have persuaded them to give up cultivation, if not land (Bardhan, K. 1989) which implies that they will earn more from wages than from the cultivation of their tiny holdings. Before I present the empirical evidence regarding changes in the distribution of land, however, I want to emphasize that these effects on smaller farmers cannot be reduced to the GR. They are rather a product of the way the GR works under certain conditions such as those defined by private property rights in land and unequal land distribution, unequal power relations between smaller and larger farmers and the nature of state intervention. Let me explain this. First, the pressures on small farmers losing access to land cannot exist without there being private property rights in land ownership/control. The GR affects small farmers in and through the structure of these rights that allow the larger land owners to take over the land of smaller ones. Second, unequal land distribution and unequal distribution of power place larger owners at an advantage relative to smaller ones. This is in the sense that unlike smaller farmers, larger farmers (e.g.) get credit from institutional sources at low interest rates by presenting their land as collateral and by exercising political power over these institutions; they can reap scale economies, where there are these economies, by investing more resources, and so on. If political relations were such that (e.g.) the state would provide inputs free of cost to smaller owners, they would not have as much difficulty as they do now in competing with larger farmers. So the feet of higher prices for inputs that contributes to the displacement of smaller owners has no necessary connection to the GR but emanates from the political- economic context in which the GR has taken place. Now, if the mechanisms causing displacement of smaller farmers discussed above indeed work, we can expect to see that the GR has been a condition for increased inequality in access to land. In examining this issue, one has to take into account two types of land distribution. One is the distribution of owned land, and another is that of the operational land (owned land plus the land rented in minus the land rented out). At the all-India level, landless households as a percentage of rural households decreased from 11.68 in 1961-62 to 9.64 in 1971-72 and then increased to 11.33 in 1982. This may indicate a positive association between the GR and landlessness, other things constant (e.g. population growth and inheritance laws leading to fragmentation of larger holdings; break-up of larger feudal holdings into smaller capitalist farms). However, the gini index for owned land holdings decreased from 0.73 in 1961-62 (pre-GR period) to 0.713 in 1982 (Dev et aL 1994). In addition, nationally, the share o f the top 10% o f landowners in the total land owned also decreased between 1971 and 1981 (Nair et al. 1990). But one may ask: how do we know that an increased concentration in the GR States has not been offset by decreased concentration in non-GR States of India? So, consider the State-level evidence. The gini index and the share of the top 10% landowners have decreased in the technologically developed States such as the Punjab and Haryana, and these have not increased in less technologically developed States such as Orissa and Bihar (Table 7.5). In Tamilnadu and Madhya Pradesh, there seems to be a very small increase in the gini index and in the share of top 10% landowners. Table 7.5: The GR and Changes in Inequality in the Distribution of Owned Land Gini Index Share of top 10% of land owners’ 1971 1981 1971 1982 More Dev. States Punjab .776 .767 (-1.16) 55.25 54.65 (-1.1) Haryana .753 ,699 (-7,17) 51.06 47.53 (-6.9) Tamilnadu .751 .756(0.67) 51.90 51.74 (-.31) Less Dev. States Bihar .719 .685 (-4.73) 48.76 49.69(1.9) Orissa .645 ,614 (-4.81) 42.86 41.40 (-3.4) Madhya Pradesh .621 .647 (4.19) 41.23 41.23 (0.0) All-India .710 .713 (-.42) 51.20 50.84 (-.7) Notes/sources: * = percentage share of top 10% of land holders in the total land owned (Nair, et al. 1990). Figures in parentheses show % of change. Gini index from Haque (1987). All this evidence shows that there does not seem to be any (strong) association between inequality in owned holdings and the GR. It may be safe to say that inequality in owned land has not increased. This is consistent with some recent local studies of the GR (e.g. see Ramaswamyet al, 1991: 56). But if we look at the operational land distribution, the picture is different (Table 7.6). At the national level, the gini index has increased from 0.586 in 1971-72 to 0.629 in 1981-82. The percentage share in land operated of the top 10% of cultivators has also increased at the national level from 44.63 in 1971 to 46.98 in 1981, while the percentage share of bottom 40% has decreased from 6.95 to 4.52 in the same period (Nair et al. 1990). Table 7.6: The GR and Changes in Inequality in Operational holdings Gini Index Share of top 10% * 1971 1981 1971 1982 More Dev. States Punjab .418 .702(67.94) 30.96 47.66(53.9) Haiyana .464 .598(28.88) 31.91 40.93(28.27) Tamilnadu .516 .640(24.03) 39.29 46.27(17.77) Less Dev. States Bihar .556 .606 (8.99) 40.34 43.41 (7.61) Orissa .501 .526 (4.99) 37.39 37.46 (0.19) Madhya Pradesh .533 .535 (0.38) 38.71 38.08 (-1.6) All-India .586 .629 (7.34) 44.63 46.98 (5.27) Notes/sources: Same as above Table. Figures in parentheses mean % change. * = percentage share of top 10% of cultivators in die total land operated (Nair, et al. 1990). Figures in parentheses show the percentage of change. At the State-level: the gini index has increased in both sets of States, but the rate of increase is much faster in advanced States than in less developed ones. The share of the top 10% of cultivators in the land operated has also increased in developed States at a much faster rate than in less developed States. This perhaps suggests some association between the GR and increased concentration in operational land (at least in the early years of the GR). The relation between the GR and changes in inequality in operation land distribution is also shown in the following equation (see also Figure 7.2 below). GINOPCH = 0.986 + 0.139 (FACBIO70); R = 0.76; N = 17 States; P = .000 (t=22.617) (t=4.5) where: GINOPCH and FACBIO70 are as defined above. 2 4 0 08 Figure 7.2: The Green Revolution and Inequality in Distribution of Operational Land where: GINOPCH = the ratio of gini coefficient in operational distribution of land in 1981 to that in 1971 (the higher the ratio, the higher the increase in inequality over time) (the ratio is calculated from Nair et al. 1990); FACBIO70 = factor scores for the GR in 1970-71) (data from Sharma and Mahajan, 1992). How can we interpret these facts of an increased inequality in operational holdings, and an absence of changes in inequality in ownership holdings? It seems that smaller owners, while retaining the legal ownership of their land, are indeed leasing out to larger farmers (Swamy, 1988; Nadkami, 1976) — the case of reverse tenancy — for the reasons given earlier. One piece of evidence for this is that the availability of land-on-Iease to marginal farmers (cultivating up to 5 acres) decreased with the progress of the GR over time. At the all-India level, the net leased-in area (area leased-in minus area leased out) of small cultivators (up to 5 acres) as a percentage of their total operated area decreased from 19.38 to 10.69 between 1971-72 and 1982; and, the greatest absolute decrease has taken place in developed States. In contrast, the net leased-in area of large cultivators (more than 25 acres) as a percentage 2 4 1 of their total operated area increased by 44% in the same period (Swamy, 1988). This is consistent with the reverse tenancy hypothesis. And, since the smaller farmers are losing access to land through reverse tenancy, they are joining the class of agricultural/rural laborers. This is indirectly indicated by the fact that agricultural labor households as a percentage of all rural households have increased from 21.8 in 1964-65 to 25.3 in 1974-75, to 29.9 in 1977- 78 and then to 30.7 in 1987-88 (GOI, 1992). This suggests that although at the level of abstract theory, one expects the GR to lead to peasants losing their owned land, at the concrete level, it has not. This is because of certain contingent conditions such as state intervention which modify/counter the expected effects of the GR policy posited. First, the land-ceiling laws, at least theoretically, prevent persons/families owning more than a certain acreage (Suijeet, 1992), and thus discourage landowners from buying up more land, at least those who do not have the power to circumvent the laws. Rao says: "The real contribution of ceilings on land-holdings in India lies not so much in the redistribution of land to the landless as in arresting the unrestrained development of capitalism through the accumulation of land" (1994:54; Parthasarathy, 1991:A-70).10 Second, to the extent that land reforms policy has contributed to some redistribution of land (at least among the very top land owners) through (e.g.) the break-up of large feudal type holdings, the policy may have countered the increase in the concentration of land ownership (Parthasarathy, ibid.). 101 may note that here the assumption that capitalism requires owned land is not warranted. A tenant can very well be a capitalist as happened in England (Byres, 1992). 2 4 2 Third, since large owners can augment their operational land supply by leasing in land, they do not have to augment their owned land supply. They are able to do this for several reasons. In the first place many smaller owners cannot afford the higher cost of cultivation with GRT and hence rent out land to larger owners (Nadkarni, 1976). A second reason is that, the state, through its land-ceiling laws enables the landed to augment their operational land supply. This is in the sense that the bourgeois state, trying to discourage feudal-type landlordism and to encourage capitalist investment in farming, has exempted the operational land from ceiling laws. Fourth, for a variety of reasons, many small owners have been able to hang on to their own land. They can do so for many reasons. 1) Since the mid-1970s, the state, through its populist policies has made available cheap credit to smaller farmers (below 5 acres): for example: these farmers improved their share of the institutional credit for agricultural production from 39.2% in 1978-79 to 45.3% in 1982-83 (Desai, 1988:330; Webster, 1990:193)." This sort of state support has enabled some, if not all, of the smaller farmers (at least the ones whose holdings are not quite non-viable) to use the new technology (Rao, 1994:46). Since HYVs have increased yields, some smaller farmers may have increased their income. There may have been some spin-off effects of the GR (e.g. non-farm activities) (see Haniss, 1991: 84). In addition, as the state has implemented some employment-programs12, 11 Even before the advent of populist policies, the percentage of small fanners (less than 2 hectares) using the HYVs s was going up: it went up from 26 in 1968-69 to 37 in 1970-71 at the all-India level, whereas the corresponding change for larger fanners (cultivating more than 10 hectares) was from 34 to 40 (data from Singh, 1990). 12 These were possible, in part, because of the GR. This was because it unproved food grain production, and part of the wages in these programs was and still is paid in kind. 2 4 3 the landed poor have received some incomes which have also helped them hang on to their land (Harriss, 1992), for a little extra income can ease the pressure to sell off land. So some increase in income may have enabled them to hang on to their land. And, since smaller owners are able to hang on to their land, it makes it harder for larger landowners to buy the land of smaller owners. The foregoing discussion on why inequality in the distribution of owned land may not increase shows the futility of dogmatic assertions (in radical research) about the negative impacts of the GR on smaller farmers and on the distribution of land. It also supports my main point in the Chapter that the effects of the GR are mediated through a particular regime of property relations and the political relations including the state interventions that underpin these relations. V. CONCLUSION I have shown that the GR policy of the state has been responsible for higher productivity and increased food production. The policy does not seem to have caused increases in inequality in the distribution of owned land. But it seems to have been responsible for the fact that the distribution of the land farmed has become more unequal over time. Both larger and smaller farmers have benefited from it. But smaller farmers have gained less than the larger ones, in part, because of inequality in access to land. Both labor employing-farmers and laborers have benefited from the policy. But, once again, laborers seem to have benefited less than labor-employers. Further, the overall impact of the GR policy on welfare may be 2 4 4 seen in the fact that the incidence of the GR is positively associated with the rate of poverty reduction. 1 have made some attempt to show that both productivity and redistributive consequences of the GR are mediated by the property relations, including their political aspects (class struggle) and state interventions. And to the extent that promoting the GR is a capitalist development strategy -- although it did not have to be that way — the foregoing discussion seems to suggest that the GR policy is contradictory. I will briefly recapitulate this. The GR policy is characterized by at least three contradictions. First, it has resulted in an increase in productivity, and thus has created the possibility of wages rising. B ut in the GR States themselves, as I have shown, real wages are falling. This shows the lim it to how much the policy based on use of the new technology by labor-hiring farmers (or the real subordination of labor under agrarian capital), can benefit laborers in the specific conjuncture of India's political economic conditions. Second, the GR policy is a contradictory process geographically. This is in the sense that while it has contributed to the production of regionally uneven development as discussed in the last Chapter, it has adversely affected the possibility as well as the effectivity of the use of the structurally given state autonomy to promote regionally balanced development, although it is not necessary that the policy has this effect. On the one hand: farmers' economic power has increased with the GR, and they have become politically powerful. The GR farmers and other landowners have used their political power to pressure the state to give substantial subsidies, which benefit mainly the larger landowners (Parikh and Suryanarayana, 1990). On the other hand they prevent the exercise of state autonomy in imposing direct taxes in agriculture. Such "double pressure" has meant - in a context where non-agrarian groups including the urban bourgeoisie also put pressure on the state for subsidies -- that the state is left with a limited amount of resources for infrastructural development which can play an instrumental role in bringing about agricultural development (Bardhan, 1984b; 1989; Gandhi, 1990) specifically in backward States, and also create jobs in the non-agricultural sector. Third, since the GR is land-augmenting, it has reduced the size of a viable farm; this implies that a person can make do with a farm of smaller size to support himself/herself and his/her family than in the pre-GR period. This means in turn that there will be potentially more surplus land available for distribution to the landless and land-poor through the Land Reforms policy. And, to the extent that the GR has created more inequality in the possession, if not legal ownership, of land, there is a stronger reason for land-ceiling laws. Yet, capitalist landowners, who have prevented the state from "extracting surplus" from them in the form o f direct taxes, will not allow the implementation of the land-ceiling laws. Thus, as a general point, while the GR policy has created many problems, by enriching the rich landowners it has prevented the exercise of the autonomous power of the state to alleviate these contradictions. It is the GR's success as well as its failure that have resulted in a new set of policy initiatives. The GR has made possible a large amount of "surplus" food ("surplus", partly because of lack of effective demand, though ). The state had bought and accumulated more than 13 million tons offood-grainsin 1981; the stock increased up to 19 million tons in 1991 (Varshney, 1994; 167). This allowed the administration of many post-GR poverty-alleviation programs in some of which a part of the wages is paid in kind. On the other hand, given that; there is a limit to how much the benefits of the GR strategy will trickle down in a highly 2 4 6 inegalitarian agrarian structure and in a capitalist political economy, the state, if it is to maintain "peace', clearly cannot rely on growth through the GR policy to alleviate poverty. In fact, as I have said earlier, the highest trend rate in the reduction in the poverty-level was not in the Punjab or Haryana - indeed — but in Kerala State, which is much less known for the GREEN revolution and more for revolution of the RED variety. So since the onset of the second stage of the GR (the mid-1970s), the state has started what it calls a "direct attack" on poverty. In the next two Chapters, I will discuss one major poverty-alleviation program in India, which will be my last window on the class and spatial character of the Indian state. 2 4 7 C H A PT E R 8 THE INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM: A MACRO-VIEW In the last Chapter, I argued that given the agrarian political economy of India, there was a limit to how much the Green Revolution would benefit the poor. To tackle the problem of poverty, the state started what was known as the Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP). This Chapter and the next discuss the IRDP. The IRDP is the last window on the class and spatial character of the Indian state in the dissertation. The present Chapter has two broad aims. One is to introduce the IRDP as a redistributive policy -- why it was started and how it is supposed to work. Then it discusses how it has actually worked at the national and inter-State levels. In the next Chapter, I want to look at how the IRDP works at the local level. There are five sections to the present Chapter. In the first section, I identify the conditions that led to the state starting the IRDP(-type policy). In the next section I discuss the rules that are supposed to be followed by officials while implementing the policy. In the third section, I show that the policy has been more a failure than a success. In the next section I discuss the reasons for the gaps in implementation. The final section provides a summary 248 1. WHY THE IRDP(-TYPE) POLICY? The IRDP was started in a few districts in 1978-80, and all over the country in October, 1980. The program aims at helping rural poor families cross the poverty-line by providing subsidized credit to them so they can buy income-generating assets. Obviously, poverty can be tackled even without the IRDP and other redistributive programs like this.' Then why was this particular approach chosen? IRDP is a policy that is arguably within the timits of the capitalist economic structure. It does not pose any threat to the most important necessary condition for capitalism: i.e. the separation of the direct producers from the means of production. This is particularly so because of the scale of the program relative to the m agnitude of the poverty problem. The state is unable to provide subsidized credit to all poor people. According to a recent estimate by the Ministry of Rural Area and Employment, there are nearly 200 million rural poor families currently (Sawhney, 1996:6), but the IRDP has benefited only about 43 millions of them since 1980-81. How can it be otherwise? For, if we look at the proportion of the total allocation o f money for the policy in Five-year Plans, the scale o f the program appears very small: in the seventh Plan (1985-90), the IRDP along with two other employment programs received only 4% of total plan allocations (Brass, 1994: 297). The latest annual budget for which I have data (1993-94) has allocated a sum of Rs. 50,600 million (approx. $1688 million) for anti-poverty programs including the IRDP, and this is only 0.25% of the total outlay of the expenditure (Jain, 1994: 633). So not only is the number of IRDP beneficiaries 1 The IRDP is redistributive only to the extent that a limited amount of the credit given to the beneficiary is subsidy. I also want to point out that while credit is the main aspect of India’s IRDP, this may not be true about the IRDP in other countries. 249 a small proportion of all the poor people, but also the magnitude of the public investment as a proportion of total public spending in a given year is small. Thus the anti-poverty programs like the IRDP "remain a supplement in a broader economic development strategy, which continues to avoid radical institutional solutions to poverty and inequality and to rely upon the long-run hope that the benefits of growth and development will ultimately "trickle down" to the poor” (Brass, op. cit.). Indeed. It cannot be otherwise in a capitalist society. Further, the IRDP can potentially serve the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. This is because it can help expand the market for industrial goods in a country where, as Prabhat Pamaik (1989) shows, the limited domestic market is a major cause of industrial stagnation. The IRDP can contribute to this expansion in two ways. First, it involves the purchase of assets which include industrial goods (e.g. bicycles and weighing-scales for those who want to be traders). Second, it can potentially increasing the incomes of the rural people who will consume more industrial goods (Bandyopadhyay, 1988). It is not the interest of the industrial bourgeoisie alone that is in tune with the policy logic of the IRDP. It is the non-poor as a whole that can comer most of the benefits from the IRDP type intervention. In fact, this broadens its popular appeal. Sinha et. al. have suggested that the spill over effect of a net injection of one rupee to the rural bottom class would cause an overall income-increase of 0.64 rupees in urban areas, from which the industrial bourgeoisie will have a share of course, and of 1.916 rupees in rural areas (in Kurien, 1989: A-19). The latter (1.916 rupees) will be distributed in the following ways in rural areas: the bottom class (11.12%), the middle class (27.14); and the top class (61.74%). 250 The IRDP does not pose any threat to the capitalist system on another ground. Poverty plays important functional roles for capitalism. Besides inducing workers to perform alienating work, poverty also "serves as a warning to the non-poor that their fate could be much worse, thereby mitigating labor militancy by dividing labor along status lines. [Moreover] to the extent that the poor form a "reserve army of the unemployed", wages are depressed, some unions are weakened..." (Wachtel, 1972:52). The sort of functionalism described above means that "things work better for the dominant class when there is a substantial degree of inequality and poverty" (ibid. 53). However, exactly what percentage of people has to be poor for the capitalist system to work (better) is a contingent matter. In the Indian context, even if there is some reduction in the level of poverty because of the successful implementation of the IRDP and other programs, there will be enough poverty in India to enable capitalism to work, i.e. to perform the sorts of functions for Indian capitalism that it does now. I will even argue that India, like many other developing countries, is "over-poor", there are more poor relative to what is needed to make the system work. So, some quantitative reduction in poverty and therefore, any state intervention with that aim is perfectly within the limits set by the capitalist structure, other things constant. Given that the IRDP-type intervention is within the limits set by the capitalist economic structure, there are some proximate reasons for the state choosing this policy among a variety of possible ones. I will discuss three proximate and interrelated reasons. These are: the failure of pre-IRDP, growth-policies like the Green Revolution to tackle the 251 poverty problem to any significant degree, policy-makers’ perception of causes of poverty, and rural unrest. The Green Revolution was expected to make some dent in the poverty problem by causing higher productivity and growth rates in the agrarian economy. It was assumed that the benefits of growth would trickle down to poorer farmers and laborers.2 But in reality, given the unreformed agrarian structure in which it took place, it produced relatively limited benefit for resource-less and unskilled wage laborers. The percolation of the increased income was of quite minor magnitude (Rath, 1985:238: also Rao, 1992:2603) at least till the mid- 1970s. Even after 10 years of the Green Revolution, in 1977-78, when the IRDP was started experimentally in a few areas, as much as 53.1% of the rural population was below the line of absolute poverty (NIRD, 1995:45).3 In some States like Orissa and West Bengal, nearly 70% of the rural population was poor in that year. The state's experience of implementing growth policies to solve the poverty problem suggested a failure of trickle down through the normal market processes. The state had therefore to "help" the poor directly without relying on market processes. I will show, however, that this policy logic -- the logic of a policy the implementation of which will be independent of the market — is mistaken. This is because the 2 I have discussed in detail the arguments about the possible trickle down effects of the Green Revolution in the last Chapter. I will recapitulate these very briefly: 1. HYVs mature sooner than traditional varieties and thus allow multiple cropping. This leads to an increased demand for labor and to higher wages. 2. The development of non-agricultural activities will occur due to the increased expenditure of the minority of large farmers. And this will create job opportunities (e.g. agro-service workshops where tractors of large fanners will be repaired; non-agricultural consumption by the richer strata leading to the emergence of trading activities in these). 3. The GR will result in higher wages because the benefits of higher productivity (that the GR makes possible) will be partly passed on to laborers in terms of higher wages. 4. Higher productivity will result in tower food prices which will in turn benefit the poor laborers and food-deficit farmers. 3 The line of absolute poverty is defined as the mid-point of the monthly per capita expenditure class having a daily per capita intake o f 2400 calories for rural areas. 252 ability of the policy to help the poor is severely constrained by the market. The state in a (capitalist) market-society cannot help the poor to any great extent without bypassing the rules of the (capitalist) market. Now I come to the second proximate reason why the policy was started. The policy makers' theory of poverty underlying this anti-poverty program is this: it is the small and marginal farmers, agricultural laborers and rural artisans who are poor, and they are poor because they lack productive assets. Underlying this claim is the experience with the Green Revolution, the benefits of which, given the unreformed agrarian structure, did not trickle down to the poor to any significant degree. These ideas led to the policy logic that if the poor, who lack productive assets, are to be lifted above the poverty line, they should be helped in obtaining these assets. The next step in this logic4 is that they should be provided subsidized credit with which they can purchase income-generating assets and so take up self-employment. Related to vety high levels of poverty, there was also the fact of growing rural unrest among the rural poor who were increasingly articulating their interests (see Rao V.M 1988: 2415). There is a saying in Orissa: "too much water results in flood; too little water results in drought". Poverty has functions for capitalism and its state, but too much of it can endanger both. So, the IRDP was chosen as a strategy to bring some people above the poverty line. 4This may not necessarily follow from the above theories of poverty, or the assets can be given to the poor in many different ways including redistribution of assets owned by the dominant class. 253 But, why couldn't the state choose some other strategy such as a land reforms policy (which is given only a lip service), mobilization of the masses for land improvement and construction of small irrigation schemes as in Mao's China, or the formation of cooperatives of the land-poor, etc.? The experience of implementing an anti-poverty strategy like land reforms, however, has taught policy-makers that this policy is not easy to implement without the political mobilization of the poor against the landed class. But the state cannot encourage such mobilization, although policy documents rhetorically stress the need for it (GOI, 1976). This is because, and as I have discussed in Chapter 2, such mobilization has the potential to fuse the economic struggle or struggle against exploitation on the one hand; and the political struggle or the struggle against the state -- the most important extra-economic pre-condition for exploitation — on the other. Such fusion can undermine the political condition for economic exploitation, when, as Simon Clarke has argued, the role of the state is precisely to separate these struggles (1991). Rao says, policy-makers do not want to be too close to the poor and they do not want to allow the poor "to become more vocal than what is good for the peace and stability of the system" (1988: 2415). So, I argue, anti-poverty policies have to be of a certain political type: they have to be ones that can be implemented without any sort of radical political mobilization. "[T]he policy-maker discovered IRDP when looking for options softer than the difficult organizations and implementation tasks involved" in attacking the poverty problem (ibid. 2413). And, in retrospect, the IRDP seems to have paid some political dividends, at least temporarily: "It has introduced a measure of stability and peace in our tension-ridden agrarian 254 society and has given the policy a sound base. It should not be whittled down" (Pandey, 1986; stress mine). This clearly shows what was expected of the IRDP. So the origin of the IRDP-type redistributive policy has to be seen in the context of the overall political logic of the Indian state. The state has a dual policy: suppression of the most democratic rights of the struggling poor such as the right to strike forminimum wages, etc., on the one hand, and economic appeasement on the other (Desai, 1989). Desai says that the IRDP is a distributing mechanism in which a few slices from the expanding cake can be thrown at the poor. This helps the state to appease selected fragments of the poor (see Bardhan, 1984b: last Chapter) and thus to divide them and to diffuse their rising upsurge among the rural poor (Desai op. cit.: 1201). The policy is designed to coopt the more vocal among the poor (Rahul, 1991: 2693). My discussion of the above proximate reasons is not meant to provide an unnecessarily state-centered approach to the IRDP. It is not to indicate that policy makers had a wide choice as to when to implement what type o f policy and that, more specifically, they made a mistake in not implementing redistributive programs like the IRDP earlier than they did. Policy-documents apologetically say that the state has failed to tackle poverty in the early years (1950s through 1970s), but this is rhetoric. I argue, given the state’s separation from the means of production and given its class character,5 generally, it has to first create conditions for private accumulation before it can show any commitment to distribution o f the 5 Even when it owns means of production (e.g. steel industries), it has to act as a "collective capitalist" able to provide means of production to juridically private factories at "reasonable" rates. 255 sort it attempts through the IRDP and other programs. Coincidentally, the interests of the exploiting property-owners have to be fulfilled first before those of the exploited can be. n. HOW IS THE IRDP SUPPOSED TO WORK? Let me now discuss briefly how the program is supposed to work. As I pointed out earlier, the IRDP aims at providing subsidized credit to the poor to acquire productive assets. These assets include sources of irrigation such as pumps, wells, bullocks and implements and other farm inputs. The poor are also encouraged to practice animal husbandry activities and petty business. The provision of assets is to be made partly through bank loans and partly through subsidies which are to be equally shared by the federal government and the State governments. The subsidy is one fourth of the price for small farmers (those who operate 1-2 hectares), one-third for marginal farmers (those who operate less than 1 hectare), and landless laborers; the subsidy is not to exceed Rs. 3000 (Rs. = Rupees) for any household in the normal areas and 4000 rupees in drought-prone areas except for the Scheduled Tribes for whom it is to be 30% of the value of the asset and is not to exceed Rs. 3000 (Bhatt, 1990:4). In this sense, the policy guidelines are socially and spatially progressive. India is divided into more than 3,000 Development Blocks. In each Block there are some 20,000 households, out of whom on average 10-12,000 were poor (Rath, 1983) in the early 1980s. Under the IRDP 600 of these poor households were to be helped in a block every year during 1980-85. This means, assuming a constant poverty-line which is not adjusted for inflation the state will take more than 3 decades to assist all the poor in all the 256 Blocks. And if the poverty line is adjusted for price-rises, which it should be, then the number of poor will be more, and it would be a very long time before all the poor are assisted. In the selection of beneficiaries, the poorest of the poor are to be given loans first; so once again, the policy appears to have a socially progressive character. The poor are split into four income strata (Table 8.1). During 1980-85, "destitutes" and "very poor" were to be treated as eligible for loans which meant that the maximum qualifying family income was Rs. 3500. During 1985-90, the next stratum was to be treated as eligible, the maximum qualifying family income being Rs. 4800, although the poverty line was at Rs. 6400 (all these prices are current prices). In addition, at least 30% of the total beneficiaries should belong to scheduled castes and tribes and 30% should be females. Table 8.1: Income Strata Within the Poor Strata Range of Income No. of Families IRDP (in Rupees) (millions) beneficiaries (%) (A) (B) (C) Destitutes 0-2265 0.99 (2.23) 24 09 Very Very poor 2266-3500 6.13 (13.83) 45 38 Very poor 3501-5000 16.93(38.21) 21 36 Poor 5001-6400 20.25(45.71) 05 10 Non-poor >6400 03 06 Notes/sources: (A) is in 1984-85 prices. (B) is as per 1984-85 prices and refers to 1984-85. Figures in bracketsunder (B) are percentages of all rural poor households. (C) refers to % of IRDP beneficiaries belonging to different income strata in 1987-88 and 1989 respectively. (A) and (B) are from Bandyopadhyay (1988); C is from Pulley (1989) and GOl (1990). The Block level staff are supposed to survey households, prepare a list of qualified beneficiaries and submit it to the gram sabha (village assembly/meeting) for approval. Block officials are supposed to assist the selected beneficiaries to choose viable investments, 257 complete loan applications and submit them to banks which would provide loans at the interest rate of 10% per annum (Pulley, 1989:3). m . PERFORMANCE OF THE IRDP The IRDP is a major anti-poverty state intervention (see Table 8.2). Between 1980-81 and 1993-94, nearly 43.416 million families were assisted under the policy (NIRD, 1995; Aggarwal, 1993. Between 1980-81 and 1990-91 only, a total amount (subsidy and bank credit) of nearly Rs. 155,000 million was invested of which 37% was simply a subsidy that 38 million beneficiaries obtained free. In 1993-94, the latest year for which data are available, 1.18 million beneficiaries were assisted with a total investment of Rs. 10,848 million ibid.) Table 8.2: Investment in the IRDP (all-India) 1980-85 1985-90 1990-91 1. Public expenditure 16610 33158 8095 2. Bank credit mobilized 31020 53725 11900 3. Investment (1+2) 47630 86883 19995 4. Families helped 16.56 18.18 2.89 5. SC & ST families (%) 39.01 45.1 49.9 6. Per cap. public expenditure (Rupees) 1003 1824 2793 7. Per cap. credit 1873 2956 4106 8. Per cap. investment 2876 4780 6900 Notes/sources: 1980-85 —1980-81 to 1984-85; 1985-90 — 1985-86 to 1989-90. All prices are in current prices. (1 )-(3 ) are in millions of Rupees. (4) is in millions, (6) - (8) are in Rupees. (1) = subsidy provided by the state to beneficiaries. SC, ST = scheduled castes and tribes (they are among the most socially disadvantaged groups and form the priority groups to be helped). Source: Aggarwal (1993). Has the IRDP investment helped the poor? I will argue that in this regard the policy has been more a failure than a success. 258 Let me mention its success. In 1987-88 and in 1989, more than 70% of beneficiaries had their assets intact after two years of purchase (Table 8.3). This means that some income was being generated from them, assuming, that is, that asset-owners are rational and hence will continue to possess them if they generate income. In 1989, more than 40% of beneficiaries increased their pre-IRDP income by more than 50%, and more than 60% increased their pre-IRDP income by more than Rs. 1,000 (GOI, 1990). This is perhaps no mean achievement. However, the IRDP has mainly failed. And it has failed in a variety of ways. Let’s examine the impact of the policy on the generation of sizeable incomes. In 1987, barely a quarter of beneficiaries earned more than 2,000 Rupees from the IRDP assets, which is much less than even the 1984-85 poverty line of Rs. 6400; the proportion has improved in 1989 though (Table 8.6). Only less than a third of the beneficiaries retained investments after two years and repaid credit on time. If we look at the role of the policy in raising households above the poverty line, its record is the most unsatisfactory. Not more than 15% (depending on which survey one depends on) of the beneficiaries have been able to cross the poverty line if the poverty line and income generated are adjusted for price rises over time. 259 Table 8.3: Performance of the IRDP (national level) (1987-88;1989) 1987-88 1989 1. % ofbeneficiaries keeping their IRDP assets intact"1 71.9 70.97 2. % increase in family income owing to IRDP 1-25 20.4 18.55 51-100 23.3 23.11 >100 13.5 20.09 3. Income (Rupees) received from assets (% ofbeneficiaries) 1-500 09.6 04.85 501-1000 17.5 08.64 1001-2000 24.4 17.90 >2000 26.4 42.49 4. % all beneficiaries who crossed the poverty line o f Rs. 6400 12.7 27.81 5. % of eligible beneficiaries*"' who crossed poverty line (Rs. 6400) 7.0 20.72 Notes/sources: All figures for 1987-88 are from NIRD( 1989), except for (7) which is from Pulley (1989); figures for 1989 are from GOI (1990). * = refers to assets intact two years after their purchase. ** = % of beneficiaries who had pre-IRDP income of Rs. 4800 (the cut-off point for the selection of beneficiaries). The 1989 nation-wide survey of the IRDP performance — assuming that we can trust macro-surveys like this — throws up an interesting puzzle (Table 8.4). Given that the majority ofbeneficiaries were satisfied with the "input" aspect of the program (e.g. quality of assets, amount of investment, etc.), one would expect that the "output" of the program will be better in a majority of cases: e.g., a significant number will be able to cross the poverty line, or, at least will increase their income by a greater margin, say Rs. 2000. That does not seem to be the case. Most of the beneficiaries are not able to augment their income by a very large margin and/or cross the poverty-line. This puzzle needs to be unpacked. 260 Table 8.4 : The Puzzle of the the IRDP performance in 1989 The Percentage of beneficiaries who: 1. Were satisfied with the quality of assets 80 2. Did not have to borrow money from private sources 94 3. Had their assets intact (two years after purchase) 71 4. Felt the cost of the asset as per the official record correctly reflected the actual cost 82 However: 5. Who did not receive any income from assets 26 6. Who received more than Rs. 2000 42 7. Who crossed the poverty line of Rs. 6400 27.81 8. Who were eligibte’*' and who crossed poverty line (Rs.6400) 20.72 Note/source: GOI (1990).* = % of beneficiaries who had pre-IRDP income of Rs. 4800 (the cut-off point for the selection of beneficiaries). Higher figures for 7 are partly because some beneficiaries were already non-poor. Interestingly, the question of the failure of the IRDP, like that of land reforms policy, becomes at the same time one of success, and vice versa, if we look at failure and success geographically. This is because, even if the policy may have failed, it may not have failed equally everywhere. This means that it may have succeeded in some States more than in others. The success/failure of the IRDP indeed exhibits a lot of geographical variation. Map 8.1 shows the spatial variation in the success of the policy in helping the poor cross the poverty-line.6 In the next section I will show why the IRDP has failed, and why that failure exhibits spatial variation. 6 The success rates shown in the map seem to be very high, and apparently contradict my claim that the policy has failed. The indicator of success rate used in the map is this: the percentage of beneficiaries crossing the poverty-line of Rs. 3500. This poverty-line is much lower than the actual poverty-line of Rs. 6400, so the percentage of beneficiaries crossing that lower poverty line is quite high in almost all States. The aim of this map is to show spatial variation, not the degree of success as such. 261 PERFORMANCE OF THE IRDP (% BENEFICIARIES CROSSING POVERTY-LINE) I |N/A run q-45.7 ffffl 45.7 - 60.4 60.4 & abv. Map 8.1 262 IV. ANALYSIS OF THE IRDP’S FAILURE My approach to the IRDP’s success/failure posits two structures that impinge on the implementation of the policy. These are: the structure of economy and the state. A. THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE7 The first reason for the poor performance of the IRDP that I want to discuss concerns the overall growth or the development of productive forces in the economy. Consider the major objective of helping the poor cross the poverty line. The fulfillment of this objective depends on the following: i) the level of the initial income that the beneficiary has at the time of selection: this is normally higher in areas where there has been a greater development of the productive forces, ii) the level of the IRDP investment made in the household which will be a function of the initial income, given (e.g.) bankers' interests in getting back the money loaned; iii) the incremental income realized by the household which is a function of the capital-output ratio (output over capital); and, iv) the sustained flow of income over a number of years which is a function of ii) above and the economic capabilities of the households, i.e. i) above. iii) and iv) above depend on the production of assets themselves, which is an important aspect of the development of the productive forces. For the IRDP is premised on the provision of assets. The following example from Rath (1985) illustrates the importance of the development of the productive forces. In the first five years since the program was 7 By “economic structure” I am here referring to the development of the productive forces only. More accurately, it should refer to both these and the social relations of production. 263 started throughout the countiy, 5 million cattle have been bought. Now it is unlikely that high yielding cows in such large numbers would be available (i.e. produced). Nevertheless, if the targets have to be fulfilled, anything available has to be bought; the seller benefits from selling nondescript cattle and beneficiaries from the subsidy and the unrepaid portion of the loan (Rath, ibid. 244). Besides, when the demand for cows increases, and the supply is not increasing at a fast enough pace, then the price will o f course be high (Pulley, 1989) and the subsidy plus loan will not stretch as far. Availability/production of assets such as cows, bullocks, carts, etc. is not enough. For, whether, the beneficiaries can generate money by using these assets and in a sustainable manner over time (iii and iv above) will depend on the infrastructural support such as chilling plants, transport network, veterinary facilities etc. for those who have been given milch animals, and demand conditions for final output. Both infrastructural support and demand conditions are a function of the overall level of development of the productive forces in an area. This is consistent with the finding of Pulley who has empirically shown for Uttar Pradesh that "beneficiaries in generally more prosperous rural areas tend to do better in self- employment" (1989: 60). Another aspect of development of the productive forces is the lack of adequate investment in the IRDP. Given the capitalist state's dependence on accumulation in the private economy, its ability to spend for redistribution is severely constrained. If there is a higher level of development of the productive forces, the ability of the state to provide public subsidies will be greater, other things constant. Pandey says that only 8% of those who crossed the poverty line belonged to the lowest fractile (destitutes) during 1980-85 (Pandey, 1986) 264 whereas 24% of beneficiaries belong to that category, and the reason for this poor performance is low investment per family (Pandey, ibid.). Even the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament agrees: the average investment of Rs. 4,500 during 1985-90 would generate an additional income ofRs. 1,665 which means the poorest two categories need a larger investment to cross the poverty line. The average investment had to be 7-9,000 during this period (Seetharam, 1989). Thus, inadequate funding seems to be a major cause of the failure of the IRDP. For, inadequate funding means that the poor cannot generate enough additional money to cross the poverty line or raise their pre-IRDP income by any substantial margin. There are two further aspects of the problem of inadequate funding that are worth mentioning. One is the class-bias in the investment and another is the spatial variability in it. It seems that there has been some bias in the IRDP investment towards different classes. The per capita subsidy, the per capita bank-credit (that the state has mobilized on behalf of the poor) and the per capita total investment (subsidy plus credit) is unequally distributed across social classes (Table 8.5). Small farmers who operate 1-2 hectares have received more per capita investment — partly because banks perceive them as being more credit-worthy — than marginal farmers who operate less than 1 hectare and agricultural laborers. There is also a bias in investment against those who are socially disadvantaged (Scheduled castes and tribes as well as women). The implication is that: the social groups that are more disadvantaged get lower investment when in fact they need higher investment to be able to generate enough income so that they can cross the poverty line. 265 Table 8.5: Biases in the IRDP Subsidy and Credit (1991-92) (in Rupees) Subsidy Bank Credit Investment Classes/groups per capita per capita per capita Small farmers 2794 5110 7904 Marginal farmers 2667 4726 7394 Farm tabor 2405 4276 6681 Scheduled Castes 2970 3923 6894 Scheduled Tribes 2870 3172 6042 Women 2394 3982 6376 Source: NIRD(1995). The geographical aspect of inadequate funding has got to do with the territorial organization of the state. As per the IRDP rules, 50% of the funding comes from the federal government and 50% from the State governments. Since the development of productive forces varies across States as I have shown in Chapter 6, the per capita investment across States varies, and with that the success of the policy, other things constant. B. STATE ACTORS' POWER Now I turn to the second structure of relations, i.e. relations of power between state actors and clients, which are responsible for leakages. There are two types of leakage, direct and indirect. Direct leakage takes place when those who are ineligible to get loans are selected. Dreze says that the relatively privileged among the poor plus some non-poor comer the benefits (Dreze, 1990: A96). It is often argued, especially in official documents that the selection of beneficiaries through popular participation in village meetings reduces the probability of the non-poor benefiting 266 (Swammathan, 1990) as in West Bengal and unlike in Kerala where beneficiaries are selected not in village meetings but by officials. However, there are limits to the possibility of democratic control by the masses over bureaucracy in a bourgeois society like India's. For example: Thimmaiah finds that in Kamatak, even in village meetings, the poor fear exposing the ineligible beneficiaries for fear of reprisals (1988:331; also, Ray, 1991:610-611); Bhatt says that village meetings cannot ensure a better selection in Pithoragarh district of Uttar Pradesh (1990: 212) where 75% of beneficiaries bribed officials for being considered for loans. In some selected villages in eastern Uttar Pradesh, those who grease the palms of the sarpanches (elected village headmen) are found to have been selected for loans (Shankar, 1991:2339). I argue that these examples seem to reveal the limitations of a sort of spatial fetishism in the suggestion by some, including state officials, that geographical decentralization in decision-making will improve implementation (see Hirway, 1988), for there is no reason why the local apparatuses o f the state will not be instrumentally used by the local ruling class. But, over all, direct leakage to non-poor, and pace Dreze (1990) and others, may not be a very big problem. Conceptually, it will be in the interest of the state actors to choose poorer beneficiaries. This is because the poorer they are, the less likely it is that they will be literate and know about the rules of the IRDP and their rights and hence, the more likely it is that state actors will find it easier to appropriate some o f the value o f the loan and subsidy once it has been granted to the beneficiary. Since it is widely believed by IRDP scholars that direct leakage is a most important problem, I will provide some empirical evidence which will be consistent with my claim that it may not be so. 267 First, the extent of leakage as measured by the selection of non-poor beneficiaries as a proportion of all beneficiaries has been well below 25%, at the national level. It was 16-20% in the early 1980s; in some States like Gujarat it was close to 50% (Subbarao, 1985: 1830). In 1989, the proportion decreased to 16% (GOI, 1990:ix). We may also note that "destitutes" and "very poor" (the poorest two categories among four categories of poor, as shown in Table 8.1) are over-represented among beneficiaries: they constituted 16% of the rural population below the poverty line (in 1985), but beneficiaries belonging to these two categories were nearly 70% of the total beneficiaries (in 1987-88). Second, considering the fact that as per the central government's guidelines, at least 30% of the total beneficiaries should belong to scheduled castes/tribes, who are among the most disadvantaged sections of the Indian population, and 30% should be females, these social groups have been over-represented among beneficiaries. Between 1991-92 and 1993- 94, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes together constituted more than 50% (i.e. 36.18% and 14.13% respectively) o f all beneficiaries; similarly, 32.54% of beneficiaries in the same period were women (NIRD, 1995). Thus direct leakages do not seem to be a great problem in the implementation of the policy. But indirect leakage is. Indirect leakages take place because of the social-political structure into which the poor are inserted. Hie role o f the intermediaries in the failure of the IRDP is quite crucial. The intermediaries are local influentials who are political leaders and their close associates. They mediate between illiterate and semi-literate beneficiaries who do not understand the paperwork involved in getting the loans and who are often scared of interacting with officials who they fear will cheat them. For their "service” to the beneficiaries, they demand some 268 money. Swaminathan (1990) reports how in Tamilnadu villages, the intermediaries eat up a significant part of the subsidy. Besides intermediaries, traders who supply assets also benefit by charging more money than the market price (Hirway, 1987; see also Shankar, 1991). Sometimes, the assets are bought on paper only (Hirway, 1987). This happens when the beneficiary is interested in merely the subsidy component of the loan: he/she shows to the officials an asset owned by another as something that has been bought by him/her, and claims disbursement for that asset, so that without having to buy any asset he/she can get some money. If the political intermediaries are involved in convincing the officials that the purchase of the assets has in fiict been made, they are given some money. If officials know that the purchase of the asset is a fake one, they can be kept quiet by being bribed. Sometimes, they may be involved in the "show" from the beginning, acquiesce in the paper-purchase of assets, and claim a part of the subsidy for their acquiescence. Quite often, the subsidy encourages traders to sell poor quality assets to the poor (1988.A-90). As Dogra (1986) explains: if the seller of an asset (e.g. a goat) is supposed to bribe officials and also keep a fit profit m argin for him/herself, and if he/she is being paid, say, Rs. 200 for a goat, the he/she cannot supply a goat which is actually worth that much but rather will supply a goat which is much less than the price (Rs. 200) received from the officials on paper; naturally the goat will be of poor quality. Thus the level of development of the productive forces (inadequate funding, lack of infrastructure, etc.) and state actors' power over clients impinge on the performance of the policy. Even if the productive forces are relatively developed, the IRDP can fail. This is 269 because of leakages. These leakages can be, to some extent, prevented if the poor beneficiaries are politically organized and put pressure on officials to implement the policy as per the rules. In the last section, I have said that there is a lot of spatial variation in the success/failure of the policy. In the light of the above discussion, it can be said that spatial unevenness in the IRDPs success is influenced by spatial variation in both a) the development of productive forces, which affects, among other things, state’s ability to make investment in the program, and b) the political strength of the poor. The regression equations in Table 8.6 seem to support this. Table 8.6: Regression Equations: Correlates of the IRDPs Success (Indian States) Eq.l. IRDPOV84 = 0.93 + 0.028 (NDP1980)* + 0.293 (ORGN81)**; N = 15; R =.76 *, ** = levels of signf. .004; . 104 where: IRDPOV84 = the percentage of beneficiaries who were helped in 1980-81 and who crossed the poverty line after two years (Subbarao, 1985); NDP1980 = per capita net State domestic product in 1980-81 at current prices (NIRD, 1995); ORGN81 = the proxy for the organization of the poor = no. of members of All India Kisan Sabha (affiliated with the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a major left-of-the-center party, in 1981 per 1000 of rural population in 1981) (AIKS, 1986). Eq. 2: LGPVCR1 = -1.52 +.004 (FAMEXP)* +.007 (ORGN85)**; R=.703; N = 17; P = .008 *, ** = levels o f significance = .002; .111 where: LGPVCR1 = % of beneficiaries crossing the poverty line of Rs. 3500 in 1987(NIRD, 1988);FAMEXP = per family public subsidy in 1980-85 in rupees Bhatt (1990); ORGN85 =the proxy for the organization of the poor = no. of members of All India Kisan Sabha (affiliated with the Communist Parly of India (Marxist) in 1985 per 1000 of rural population in 1981. In these equations, I have taken two indicators for the development of productive forces — NDP per capita and public investment per capita in the IRDP. As Equation 1 shows, there is a positive association between the IRDP success on the one hand and the amount of 270 per capita N D P8 and the level of organization of the poor. Equation 2 shows that per capita public investment in IRDP and the level of organization of the poor seem to cause spatial variation in the success of IRDP in helping beneficiaries cross the poverty line. IV. CONCLUSION The IRDP is both a success and a failure. Very few beneficiaries have been able to cross the poverty line, although quite a few have been able to augment their income. Combined with other policies such as those aimed at providing wage-work, the IRDP can make a difference to the socio-economic condition of the poor, at least in the short run, if not necessarily in the long run. It seems the level of economic development in a State, which affects the level of funding, and indirect leakage of benefits (i.e. leakage to the officials, intermediaries and businesspersons) are most important reasons for the failure of the policy. But in those areas where the poor are organized, the policy seems to have been better implemented. In the next Chapter, I will show how these factors — inadequate funding, indirect leakage and lower class organization — affect the implementation o f IRDP at a local level. 8 1 must also note that that one of the reasons that the success rate of the IRDP in the sense of the percentage of beneficiaries raised above the poverty level is associated with State NDP per capita is simply that in those States the average beneficiary starts out much closer to the poverty line and so does not need much more income to cross it. 271 CHAPTER 9 THE INTEGRATED RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM: A MICRO-VIEW Having considered the IRDP at the national level in the last chapter, I now want to look at it at a micro-level. While macro-studies based on large scale survey data have shown that IRDP has worked quite well, local level studies have pointed out its dismal failure (Dreze, 1990). In the last chapter, based on survey data, I have shown that the policy has M ed and that it has M ed in a variety of ways. However, as I have also shown, the policy has not failed equally everywhere. This also means that to the extent that the policy has succeeded, it has succeeded more in some areas than in others. The success/failure of the policy seems to be associated with the development of productive forces and hence the ability of the States to make investments and with the organization of the beneficiaries who can prevent leakages. In this Chapter, I want to look at how these factors — inadequate funding and leakages — impinge on the process of implementation of the policy at a local level within a State, Orissa, which is one of the poorest States in India. Macro-level studies including mine as presented in the last Chapter as well as many micro-level studies of the IRDP cannot adequately capture the qualitative aspects of the 272 implementation of the policy, especially, political processes impinging on the implementation process. Based on my local-level study, I want to focus on these aspects here. I will be concerned relatively less with the detail of the statistics of implementation (except, to some extent, for two of the villages where I have conducted interviews o f beneficiaries) and more with the process of conflicts, now open and now latent, embedded within the process of implementation. In more general terms, this study will speak to a body of literature on the state which, to paraphrase Fred Block and Paul Cammack, suggests that the state and society mutually interpenetrate. The Chapter is divided into three sections. In the first section, I discuss poverty and the IRDP in Orissa as a whole. In the second section, I discuss IRDP implementation in some of its villages, based on my field-work. Here I focus on a variety of issues including the politics of selection of beneficiaries, the structural and political reasons for their failure to use the assets productively; and the political consequences of the method of the policy- implementation. The final section provides a summary of this and the last Chapters. It also discusses how the analysis of the IRDP sheds light on state-society interaction. I. POVERTY AND THE IRDP IN ORISSA Orissa is one of the poorest States of India. In 1987-88, 57.6% o f the rural population was below the poverty line of Rs 6400; this is 18.5% more than the national average. In fact, according to the Orissa State Government's Department of Local Self-government, in 1992, with the Central government's new (i.e. inflation-adjusted) poverty-line of Rs. 11000 (Rs. = 273 Rupees), the rural poverty ratio in the State has increased to 79% (Table 9.1). And this is inspite of the existence of a program like IRDP since the early 1980s. Table 9.1: Rural Poverty in Orissa (1992) Poor Annual Income Poor families % to all rural % to all Strata (Rs.) per family (millions) poor families rural families Destitutes < 4000 1.352 32.92 26.01 Very poor 4000-6000 1.568 38.18 30.18 Very poor 6000-8500 0.812 19.77 15.63 Poor 8500-11000 0.375 09.13 07.22 4.107 100 79.04 As in other States, the provincial state in Orissa has attempted to implement the IRDP to attack the poverty problem in all of its 314 Development Blocks. Nearly a million families were assisted during 1980-85 (at the cost of more than Rs. 2000 million), giving a ratio of 0.20 million families per year. At this rate the State will take more than 20 years to assist all the 4.107 million poor families that existed in 1992, assuming, that is, a constant poverty line over time. Between 1991 and 1994, nearly 130,000 individuals were assisted. One may ask: has the policy succeeded in Orissa? According to the evaluation of the program carried out in the late 1980s (Table 9.2), the picture is mixed. As Table 9.2 (Row 1) shows, the percentage of beneficiaries with pre-IRDP income of less than Rs. 4800 (the cut-off point) is very high in both 1987-88 and 1989. In other words, the extent of misidentification of beneficiaries, and therefore of direct leakages, is quite low, and is lower than it is nationally. This is partly, however, because the percentage of the population below the poverty line in Orissa is greater than the national average so even if beneficiaries were chosen at random the percent of the selected below the poverty line would be very high. 274 In 1989, nearly 48% of beneficiaries increased their income by more than 50% which is much more than the national figure of 43% (see Row 3 in Table 9.2). In the same year, more than 44% of Orissa's beneficiaries increased their income by more than Rs. 2000 which is comparable to the all-India figure. This is perhaps no small achievement. However, as nationally, in Orissa also, an extremely small percentage (10.5%) of eligible beneficiaries crossed the poverty line (Rs. 6400) in 1989; nationally, 21% did so. There is also a big gap between the percentage of beneficiaries keeping assets intact and that crossing the poverty line. From this we can infer that beneficiaries are not able to generate enough income to be able to cross the poverty line. Table 9.2: Success of the IRDP in Orissa 1987-88 1989 1. % of benef with income of < Rs. 4800 at the time of selection 95.4 (91.0) 97.31 (83.62) 2. % of beneficiaries keeping their IRDP assets intact* 67.6 (71.9) 72.48 (70.97) 3. % increase in family income owing to IRDP: 1-25 17.5 (20.4) 21.15(18.55) 51-100 27.2 (23.3) 26.54 (23.11) >100 19.1 (13-5) 21.15(20.09) 4. Income (Rupees) received from assets (% of beneficiaries) 1-500 9.3 (09.6) 03.85 (04.85) >2000 34.5 (26.4) 44.23 (42.49) 5. % all beneficiaries crossing the poverty line of Rs. 6400 10.1 (12,7) 11.54(27.81) 6. % of eligible beneficiaries** who crossed poverty tine (Rs.6400) 7.0 (7.0) 10.51 (20.72) Notes/sources: All figures for 1987-88 are from NIRD (1989), except for (6) which is from Pulley (1989); Figures in parentheses are those for India. Figures for 1989 are from GOI (1990). * = refers to assets intact two years after their purchase. ** = % of beneficiaries who had pre-IRDP income of Rs. 4800 (the cut-off point for the selection of beneficiaries). 275 Secondaiy information of the type reproduced above on the performance o f the IRDP, based as it is on large scale-surveys, however, gives little clue as to the political character of the process of its implementation. Many of the previous micro-studies which have been rightly critical of the implementation of the policy have also ignored the political processes which impinge on that process. In the following discussion, based on a micro-study, I will show the politics of the IRDPs failure. n. THE IRDP IN SOME VILLAGES IN ORISSA I conducted a questionnaire survey and informal interviews in two villages in Nimapara Block (Puri District) and informal interviews in Rangas village in Dasarathpur Block (Jajpur District), in Khandadeuli Village in Ganjam Block (Ganjam District) (Map 1.1). I also spoke with some officials connected with the implementation o f the IRDP in Remuna Block (Balasore District). Informal interviews with some officials at the State level were also carried out. In Nimapara Block, there are 24 gram panchayats (a gram panchayat comprises many villages). I collected a list of all IRDP beneficiaries in two villages from the Block official in charge of the IRDP (henceforward, IRDP Officer). These villages were Ansala and Vishnupur, and these belong to two separate gram panchayats. Vishnupur of the Villigram Gram Panchayat has a population of 3089. Ansala of the Bhogsalda Gram Panchayat has a population of 1032. In the two villages together, 25 had received loans between 1986-87 and 1991-92.1 did not want to interview people who had received loans earlier, as they would not remember in detail how they got the loans. I also want to stress that I do not intend to extend 276 any empirical generalization based on such a small sample for Nimapara to other areas; however, based on my empirical study, I will make some conceptual comments which may have some validity outside Nimapara. Nimapara Block is located on the east coast of Orissa, just 40 miles off the coast as well as from the District headquarters at Puri. It is 25 miles from the State Capital at Bhubaneswar. Table 9.3 shows that in the Block, the level of social development, as for example in the literacy rate, is quite high relative to that in Orissa at large. Perhaps this higher level of social development is partly responsible for the support given to the local communist organization. Electorally the communist organization is stronger in Nimapara than in Orissa or at the national level. And, as I will show, the strong communist organization has some bearing on the implementation of the policy, and this is the reason why the Block was selected for study. Table 9.3: Nimapara in Context Nimapara Orissa India t.Population Density 450 169 216 2.Literacy Rate 48.5 34.2 36.2 3. Sex Ratio 975 981 933 4. SC as % total population 20 14.7 15.8 5. % vote of Left parties* 25.82 7.8 8.05 Notes/sources: SC = Scheduled castes. * Figures are the sum of valid votes polled by Left parties over the sum of valid votes polled in State elections in 1967 through mid-1980s. All figures are for 1981, except for those for (5). Sources: (1-4) for Nimapara are from Block Development Office Records; (1-4) for Orissa and India are from Aggarwal (1993); (5) is from Bose and Singh (1988). Some scholars of the IRDP say that the policy has succeeded in agriculturally advanced areas, and the last Chapter also provides some evidence for this. If this were true, one would expect the policy to succeed in Nimapara for, the area is quite developed 277 agriculturally.1 Based on the information provided by beneficiary and non-beneficiary cultivators, I found out that the output of paddy crop per acre is quite high (920 kilograms, which favorably compares to 579 in Orissa and 712 in India as a whole). One reason for higher productivity is Nimapara's irrigation facility: 80% of the net sown area in the Block is irrigated. Having given the contextual information about Nimapara, I will now discuss the implementation of the IRDP. In my discussion, I will use qualitative and quantitative information about Nimapara and qualitative information about other villages. A. SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITION OF NIMAPARA BENEFICIARIES More than half of the Nimapara beneficiaries were illiterate. They are all males, and their illiteracy level was twice as high as the male illiteracy level for the Nimapara Block as a whole. Only one of them had gone to High School. Nearly three-fifths o f them belonged to the Scheduled Castes who occupy the lowest level of social-economic development in Indian society. The corresponding figures for the total populations of Vishnupur and Ansala villages were 31% and 21% respectively and the figure for the Block was 21%.Considering that, as per the guidelines of federal government, 30% of beneficiaries are to be from the scheduled castes/tribes, Nimapara has done exceedingly well. 1 The latter is seen in the fact that (e.g.) during the three months of my stay there I had absolutely no problem getting fresh vegetables. The local periodic markets were full of locally produced vegetables and fruits; vegetables were very cheap relative to other markets in rural Orissa. One of my beneficiary-informants earned as much as Rs. 5000 by growing vegetables on the land he had rented in. 278 Beneficiaries were under a heavy loan burden, private and public. 73% did not own any land or were near landless owning 0.2 of an acre or less, and 41% did not operate any land or operate more than 0.12 of an acre. At the time of the selection of beneficiaries for the loans, the main source of income, for 76% of them, was wage-work. Less than 10% of beneficiaries were poor peasants (marginal or small farmers), and the rest were petty traders, tailors or masons. All of them had Kutcha (mud) houses whereas in rural India 34% of households have Kutcha houses (NIRD 1995). They had a higher family size, fewer earners, lower average cultivated land and land-poverty or near-landlessness than the agricultural laborer population in Orissa or in India as a whole (Table 9.4). They also had a higher rate of landlessness (both operational and ownership) than the total rural populations in those benchmark areas. Nimapara beneficiaries were indeed relatively disadvantaged. Table 9.4 : Relative Socio-economic condition of Nimapara IRDP Beneficiaries Nimapara Orissa India benef./total pop). agr. labor/total pop] agr labor/total pop). 1. Average size of land cultivated 0.55 (2.26) 0.64(3.63) 00.77 (3.95) 2. % operating less than 1 acre 69 36.4(21.68) 29.5(32.3) 3. % operating no land 23 — (27.78) — (26.06) 4. % owning no land 46 — (07.66) — (11.33) 5. Average earners per family 1.7 01.9 02.0 6. Average size of household 4.7 04.4(4.8) 04.6(5.0) Note/sources: Figures outside the parentheses for Orissa and India refer to those for agricultural laborers in 1987- 88 (GOI, 1988) (since most of Nimapara's IRDP beneficiaries are agricultural laborers, their economic condition should be compared to that of agricultural laborers in Orissa and India). Figures outside the parentheses refer to those for IRDP beneficiaries. Figures within parentheses for Nimapara, Orissa and India are those for the population as a whole: these figures for Orissa and India refer to 1982 (Sharma, 1992), except for (1) which refers to 1985-86 (Bansil 1990). Family size for the whole population in Orissa and India refers to 1990-91 (NIRD, 1995), “benef.” = beneficiaries; “popl.” - population; “agr.” - agricultural. 279 Further, considering that according to the state' guidelines for the IRDP, the poorest of the poor must be given loans first, selection of Nimapara beneficiaries seemed to have been adequate. According to Table 9.5, the poorest three groups constituted 69.23% (11.54% + 38.46% + 19.23% in Column C) whereas 88% (46% + 25% + 17% in Column B) of the IRDP loans went to them Only 8% of the IRDP loans (Column B) went to the 7.7% (Column C) of beneficiary families which were non-poor. Table 9.5: Correct Identification of Beneficiaries (Nimapara) Pre-IRDP Income IRDP Loan % to all beneficiary families /IRDP loan Frequency (%) with Pre-IRDP income A B C Destitutes 0-3078 46 11,54 Very poor 3079-4756 25 38.46 Very poor 4757-6795 17 19.23 Poor 6796-8697 4 23.08 Non-poor >8697 8 07,70 100% 100% Note: (A) corresponds to old cut-off points: 0-2265, 2266-3500, 3501-5000, and 5001-6400 respectively. 1 have calculated (A) by deflating these old cut-off points (which were according to 1984-85 prices) by the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index for agricultural laborers between 1984-85 and 1989-90; 1989-90 is the median year in which loans were sanctioned to Nimapara informants in my case-study. Before I started the field-work, I had hypothesized, based on the literature on the IRDP, especially the micro-studies, that a large number of non-poor beneficiaries would be selected. This would be because the local dominant class would try to get themselves and their non-poor friends selected for the IRDP loans by influencing the officials. This was proven wrong. In fact, based on what I have seen in Nimapara, I argue that it will be in the interest of the officials to choose poorer beneficiaries for the reasons discussed in the last Chapter: i.e. they can more easily be exploited by the officials. 280 The selected beneficiaries applied for loans for cows, bullocks and carts and for petty business. Loans for cows were quite popular: 38% had been given loans for cows, and a third, loans for business (Table 9. 6). Nearly 40% were granted, on paper at least, less than Rs. 3000 and almost as many had been granted between 3000 and Rs. 4000 (Table 9.6). Of course, how much they actually received was a different matter, as I will discuss later. Table 9.6: IRDP Loan in Nimapara (Asset Types and Loan Amount) (1987-1991) Types of Assets Frequency (%) | IRDP Loan Frequency (%) | (Rupees/beneficiary) !1 Cows 38 | <1000 4.2 Cart and bullock 21 | 1000-3000 41.7 Business 29 | 3000-6000 37.5 Bullock only 04 | 6000-9000 8.3 Cowshed 08 | 9000-12000 8.3 100 1 100 Note: IRDP Loan = loan including subsidy excluding bribe and other costs of getting the loan. B. METHOD OF SELECTION According to the central government's guidelines, the Block staff should conduct a survey of household socio-economic conditions, and from that survey, the poorest of the poor (income less than Rs. 4800) are supposed to be selected in a village meeting (gramsabha) as beneficiaries. In Nimapara, the survey was done; it was from this survey that I myself got the list of beneficiaries in the two villages. The gramsabha was convened, and it was there where the selection process was supposed to have been democratically discussed. But only a few (24%) were selected in the gramsabha. This is typical and means that within the limits set by the state -- the eligibility criterion mentioned above - whether or not a particular person 281 satisfying that necessary criterion will be selected for a loan will depend on several other factors. These factors, as I observed not only in Nimapara villages but also in the other villages, to a large extent reflected power relations in the society. These included (see also Table 9.7): i) the assessment by state officials, bank officials and political leaders of the political vulnerability of a person — i.e. whether or not by threatening to withhold the person's rightful share or by other means, these actors could extract some money from the potential beneficiary; ii) the bank officials' perception of a person's credit-worthiness; iii) the assessment on the part of state officials' of the potential beneficiary's ability to generate some income from the assets: to the extent, that is, that their promotion and other rewards are dependent on the satisfactory performance of the policies like IRDP; iv) the local leaders' perception of the electoral value of the person -- i.e. whether or not the person would vote for the party they supported or were a part of; v) finally, the willingness and the ability of a poor person to take the risk of taking the loan to be returned with interest, and to devote the time (i.e. to travel frequently to the Block office and to the leaders) and the money (bribe) needed to get the loan. 282 Table 9.7: Method of Selection of Beneficiaries in Nimapara How were Beneficiaries selected Beneficiaries (%) Village Meetings 24 Political Intermediaries2 S3 State officials on their own 24 Bribing Officials & personal connections 18 119 3 On the other hand, the intense party competition locally contributed to the correct identification of beneficiaries under certain conditions. As I was told by the record keeper in the office of the secretary to the gram panchayat (local level government) in one of the two villages: if Communists made mistakes, members/supporters of the local branches of the two national bourgeois parties were ready to point these out and vice versa. Apparently, the two bourgeois patties were wary of local communists. The leaders and supporters of these parties call communists names. In contrast to Nimapara, in Rangas, where communist strength is very weak, and where the main electoral competition is between the two bourgeois parties, both parties were involved in malpractices and if (e.g.) the Janata party bends the IRDP rules, Congress remains silent, for if Congress complains, Janata will complain when Congress is involved in malpractice. Therefore, the electoral competition as such may not contribute to the correct identification of beneficiaries. Rather the competition must involve a party/group 2 Political intermediaries included the ward member (who is the elected member at the neighborhood level), the Sarpanch (elected representative for several villages), people campaigning for the MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly at the provincial level) and local influentials. 3 In several cases, more than one of these factors contributed to the selection, so the sum of the above percentages is more than 100. Obviously, given the uncertainty involved in the bureaucratic mode of operation of the state, as in the market, actors have to be at least ''ambidextrous”, i.e. they have to follow more than one strategy. 283 which has a pro-poor ideology and organization (see Kohli, 1987); the pro-poor ideology will not allow it to take money from the poor and a pro-poor organization will prevent the non poor from appropriating what is due to the poor.4 The following two examples from two different places illustrate this. Normally, if a poor person belongs to the same party as the Sarpanch or some such leaders, the chances are higher that the person will get the loan. But in Khandadeuli, south eastern Orissa, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM for short, made it a point to give loans to Congress supporters on a priority basis. I asked why? The reason given to me by the communist Sarpanch was "we want to let them know the true character of the communists"; he meant that the communists were for the poor irrespective of which party they supported. The Chairman of Remuna Block, who is also a CPM activist, explained to me how his party’s interference in the process of identification of beneficiaries was necessary. While as per the central state's guidelines, IRDP beneficiaries are to be selected through a survey of people's conditions, this survey is not always accurate. The Sarpanch consequently volunteered some non-poor names which had to be later screened off at the Block level where there was a strong organization with a pro-poor ideology. The rule that a person has to be poor to get a loan is not always respected. This is in part because bank officials have an eye on the credit-worthiness of a person. This was clear in my Rangas study. 4 But, as I will show, the electoral competition itself in a bourgeois society, ironically, can contribute to a relatively weak communist organization. 284 Deena (a fictitious name for a male) applied for an IRDP loan and got it. He has a job which fetches him about Rs. 18000 a year. His is a barber family. His parents earn by providing services to their clients; his brother also works as a casual laborer. So, Deena's family is not a poor family at all according to the government's definition: his family's income including his own is nearly four times the cut-off level for the selection of beneficiaries. Hence, as per the guidelines, he cannot get a loan. When he applied for a loan, some locals did complain about his non-eligibility. A local bank official came to do the enquiry. Deena honestly told him about his job and also the fact that he wanted the loan not for buying any income-generating asset but for building a pucca house, and I saw the house being built. The official agreed to give the loan for he thought that Deena could pay it back with interest, since he had a job. This official had sanctioned many loans in a neighboring village where the rate of non-payment had been quite high, so bank records did not look good. The official was making an attempt to show — evidently for reasons that have got to do with his promotion - that he was making the right decision (although, actually in a wrong way as far as the government rule is concerned. (Source: my field-diary) Just because one's name is on the list of potential beneficiaries, it does not necessarily mean one is surely going to get the loan, for there can be many a slip between the cup and the lip! Ihe factors that affect one’s chance of being identified as a potential beneficiary also affect one's chance of actually getting the loan with only limited delay. Bribing is quite crucial at this stage rather than at the earlier stage of being identified on the beneficiary-list: more people bribed in order to get the loan than to be identified as a potential beneficiary in Nimapara. Officials ask for bribes in a quite "folksy” style so rural people will understand it well. In Nimapara, the IRDP officer told some beneficiaries who wanted to enquire about when they would get the loan: "the kettle is on the stove but there is no fuel”. The 'kettle' is the paper work on the IRDP loan and the 'fuel' is the bribe! 285 C. PERFORMANCE OF THE 1RDP Table 9.8 shows the net annual income generated through the IRDP in Nimapara and arranged according to income groups that are used to define the four categories of the poor. For as many as two-thirds of the beneficiaries, there was no net increase in the income generated through the IRDP, and less than 10% generated an income that itself will not raise them from "destitutes" to even the next stratum. This is understandable given that 58% of the beneficiaries had liquidated their assets.3 Table 9. 8: Income Generated From IRDP Assets in Nimapara Strata Slabs of Income Beneficiaries (%) (1989-90 prices) receiving income-increase through IRDP B Destitutes 0-3078 75 Very poor 3079-4756 13 Very poor 4757-6795 08 Poor 6796-8697 04 100% Notes/sources: IRDP income = gross income from assets minus expenditures in maintaining assets (e.g. fodder for cows); it does not include loan repayment. (A) is from Table 8.1 (last Chapter). (B) includes those with zero income-increase. Further, as Table 9.9 shows, before the IRDP, 95.85% o f the beneficiaries were poor (all four categories). With IRDP income this percentage came down to 83.3%. If we consider the three poorest categories only — according to IRDP guidelines, they are the eligibles — their combined percentage has come down from 70.83% to 54.2%. But in case this sounds a bit optimistic, it may be stressed that a mere 4.2% of those who belonged to the two 5 The corresponding figure for Orissa is 27.52% though this was in 1989 (GOI, 1989). 286 poorest categories ("destitutes" and "veiy poor") in the pre-IRDP period crossed the 1989-90 poverty line o f Rs. 8697 and that a mere 13% of those who belonged to the poorest three groups -- the so-called eligibles ("destitutes", "very poor" and "very poor") -- crossed the 1989-90 poverty line. Table 9.9: IRDP’s Success in Nimapara Strata Pre- and post- % to all Beneficiaries IRDP income Benef. with | Benef. with pre-IRDP Income | post-IRDP Income Destitutes 0-3078 12.50 | 08.3 Very poor 3079-4756 45.83 | 29.2 Very poor 4757-6795 12.50 | 16.7 Poor 6796-8697 25.00 | 29.2 1 I All four groups 0-8697 95.85 | 83.3 Non-poor >8697 04.15 | 16.7 100% 1 100% It seems to me that poor people, instead of crossing the poverty "line", are circulating within a poverty-"circle": 95.8% of all the poor (four categories) have remained poor after receiving IRDP loans. More specifically, nearly 40% of those belonging to the poorest two categories and a third of less poor categories (i.e. "very poor" and "poor") remained where they were before getting IRDP loans, and less than 20% of the poorest two categories moved to less poor categories. In my Rangas study, of the four people who got IRDP loans, none of them used it for the purpose for which they had originally applied. One built a house, another used it to give a loan on credit, and the other two simply used it for consumption. 287 P. CAUSES OF FAILURE OF THE IRDP One wonders as to why the IRDP did not succeed in the villages under study to the extent h should have. I will discuss three factors, each of which reflects, to varying degrees, the power relations exercised over the poor clients by state-actors. These are: faulty practices in granting the loans; leakages; and, economic-structural problems. 1. Faulty practices in granting the loans The very process of getting the loan was quite difficult and complex. It did not help the clients to get the lull benefit of the policy. The following major problems were cited by beneficiaries. First, beneficiaries were often given only a limited choice in the employment-creating activities they wanted to be involved in. For example, if someone applied for a loan for a shop, officials would make him/her buy a bicycle which might not be needed by the beneficiary. Second, officials procrastinated in sanctioning the loan. Beneficiaries had to visit the Block office/bank many times. One reason was that by procrastinating officials could extract some money from their clients. The following example from Khandadeuli shows the extent to which state officials procrastinated and why. Dasa Jena (a fictitious name for a male) applied for a loan of Rs. 3000 for digging a well. A few months passed by; no money came. He went to the DRDA (District Rural development Agency), the district level bureaucracy responsible for the implementation of rural development policies. Officials there said the money had been already sent to the Block. The person came back and asked the Block Development Officer (BDO). He denied knowledge, although he knew that the DRDA had sanctioned the money. He 288 even scolded the person for going to the DRDA. The poor man was told to apply again. He got Rs. 1500 and was told to come again for the balance. He went. But he was asked to pay a bribe if he wanted the balance, (source: my field-diary) Third, for certain items like cows and bullocks, beneficiaries had to travel miles away from their village to reach a dealer. This person might be a government depot-owner selling cows, a private bullock trader, or a cart-dealer, etc. They had to travel often at their own cost which meant that the loan incurred a high transaction cost. Fourth, even if certain items were allowed to be bought locally, beneficiaries were told to buy from certain stores. These were ones that had been given a license. This meant that the freedom to bargain with different retailers and to choose among different types of the same item was curtailed. Fifth, and normally, the better part of the loan was given in kind, and beneficiaries said that this further reduced the degree of their freedom to buy the items they wanted and at the price they wanted to buy them. I checked with the IRDP officer as to why this was being done. He said: if money was given, people would not buy assets; they would simply spend the money, and on enquiry, they would produce somebody else's asset (e.g. a bullock) as something that they had bought and would give the actual asset-owner some money for the purpose. There is some truth in this. I heard of beneficiaries from other areas doing this. On the other hand, officials and politicians did have a personal interest in normally not giving money directly to beneficiaries since they might be interested in giving money to sellers of assets with whom they could share some money, as I will discuss later. 289 The faulty process of implementation reflects power relations between officials and clients. Additionally it shows how the state actors' powers vis a vis the beneficiaries are being contingently realized through the manipulation of space-time relations. Procrastination meant that beneficiaries had to travel to officials many times; many beneficiaries complained that officials would cancel appointments without prior notice and, as a result, beneficiaries would travel to the office only to find that they were not there. Besides, by taking the beneficiaries to non-local markets, officials attempted to neutralize the power that the former had because they were locals and especially because, as in the case of Nimapara and Khandadeuli, there was some communist organization that performed a counter-surveillance function vis a vis the state officials locally. More generally, officials were using the geographical differentiation in the political power of the poor to their advantage: they were forcing the poor out of the locality where they had power to places where they were powerless; they could do so partly because the poor were not organized to an equal degree everywhere. 2. Leakages The second reason for the failure of the policy has got to do with leakages. Leakages occur when a part of the rightful benefit of the poor goes to those, including officials, who are not supposed to benefit. This can happen in two ways. One is direct leakage — granting loans to the non-poor. This was however not a problem in the villages studied. Another is indirect leakage: the duly selected poor beneficiaries lose a part of their due share of benefits. Table 9.10 gives some examples of indirect leakages in Nimapara. 290 Table 9.10: Leakages in IRDP in Nimapara as Beneficiaries In Their Own Words Case 1: As per records, the cow cost me Rs. 1900, but its actual cost to the seller would not be more than 1/5 of this. Case 2: Out of a total loan of Rs. 5000 officials took Rs. 900 and gave RS. 4100 to me to buy bullocks and cart (here there is no need to artificially inflate the price). Case 3 :1 was entitled to get Rs. 2200 for bullocks, but only got Rs. 1800. Case 4: Out of a total loan of Rs. 3000, officials kept Rs. 1100. Case 5. On the record the cow cost me Rs. 2800; the actual cost to the seller was Rs. 2000-2100. Case 6: The bank kept the entire subsidy. Case 7: The actual cost of the cycle was Rs. 600, but the dealer charged Rs. 745. Case 8: On the record the cow cost me Rs. 2300, but the actual cost to the seller was Rs. 1000-1200 Case 9:1 should have received Rs. 3600, but they gave me Rs.3200 Now the question is: to whom does the rightful benefit of people leak and how? It leaks to what I will call the officials-intermediary-businessmen combine (OIBC). Let me illustrate how this happens. In Nimapara, the bicycle retailer in collusion with the officials artificially inflated the price of the bicycle. The positive difference between the price recorded by officials on the official records and the actual price was pocketed by the OIBC. The example of the bicycle retailer can be extended to other dealers, such as those in cows, carts, bullocks, etc. Take the example of bullocks. For Nimapara beneficiaries most bullocks were bought from distant markets, not locally. In these markets officials had connections with bullock-traders or with their brokers. These traders/brokers inflated the price in the same way as did more local dealers for bicycles. In my Khandadeuli study I found that there was an association of cart-makers which had to give a bribe to the officers. If they didn't, their license, by virtue of which beneficiaries wanting to buy carts were forced to buy from them, would be canceled. As a result, even if the money was directly given to the beneficiary -- and thus did not directly go to officials — 291 the cait-makers charged a higher price than the usual price, and so could share a part of the surplus profit with officials in the form of the bribe. It was not just that the cost of assets was being inflated. They were given low quality assets. Several Nimapara beneficiaries complained that they were provided with cows that did not yield much milk, or that sometimes yielded milk for 6 months or so, instead of one full year. Carts were also broken after a few months o f use and bullocks were old and weak so they would not work as well as expected. Consequently they were disposed of. Though the problem of low-quality assetsappears to be a merely technical problem, it is technical only partly; for example, given the emphasis on milch animals, there may not be enough good milch animals on the market. This is because the problem is also a structural one involving a set of power relations which results in a part of the rightful benefit being taken away by the OIBC, which in turn means that there will be relatively less money to buy a better cow. Further, even if traders provided low-quality assets, officials were not going to complain. Consider the problem of low-quality cows, for example. Several beneficiaries complained that the cow-dealer gave injections to the cows which then yielded 5-6 liters when they were milked at the time of their purchase. When such a cow was milked at home by the beneficiary, it yielded much less, sometimes one-fifth of what it did on the day of purchase. Obviously, given the sort o f mutual understanding within the OIBC, such malpractice by the dealer was not complained about by officials. Fake purchases were still another issue. In Khandadeuli, fake purchases were entered into the register, and the money was shared among the political party leader, the fake seller of the cart (the one who has a cart and who poses as somebody who has sold the cart), the 292 official, and the beneficiary. The fake seller of the asset had a role for which he/she would take money. The official, especially the Village Level Worker — an extension worker at the village level — would know about a fake sale and would threaten to report it to higher officials. He/sbe had to be kept quiet by being given some money. Above all, to manage all this, local political leaders were involved and they also had a share. The balance was taken by the beneficiary, and may sometimes have had hardly any subsidy-component in it.6 3. Economic Structural Problems: In the foregoing discussion (1 & 2) of the failure of the IRDP, I have focussed on the time and costs involved in getting the loans and also on the leakages of benefits to non-beneficiaries. These problems refer to those that the beneficiaries face until the time they start putting the assets into the process of income generation: e.g. until the cow starts yielding milk, the shop starts running. Beneficiaries also face problems even after this process starts. For, given the economic character of the society in which the policy is sought to be implemented, even if there are no leakages of the sort I have discussed above, the policy can fail. Now I will discuss why this may be the case. The IRDP assets generated insufficient income. In Nimapara, if all was well and the cow is not diseased, etc., two cows yielded 8 liters of milk a day which fetched only Rs. 40. They would earn more, if prices for their products such as milk were more, but, of course, the poor beneficiaries were not like the capitalist farmers of north-west India who could militantly demand and get higher prices for their product. Expenditures on maintaining the 6 Later on, I will discuss why would the beneficiary agree to such a fake sale and dilution of his/her proceeds. 293 two cows turned out to be Rs. 30. So the net income was Rs. 10 which could fetch not more than one and a half kilogram of rice in the local market, whereas given that the average family size of Nimapara beneficiaries was 4.68, each family would need nearly four kilograms of rice daily. Although, this income from the sale of milk was certainly a supplement to the income, it was clearly unlikely to be enough to raise a family above the poverty line. In addition, sometimes the cows were diseased and would yield milk for a few months only. And, if the cows did not generate enough net income, the owners would sell them. They would be assetless. Given that the aim of the IRDP was to lift the poor above the poverty line by raising their income in an enduring manner, the sale of the assets frustrated that aim. One important reason why assets generated insufficient income was that loans themselves were insufficient. For those who got money for petty business like shops and dealerships in paddy, the IRDP loan was insufficient for reinvestment. Similarly, with insufficient money, low-quality cows were bought. Further, the loan was insufficient to buy adequate fodder for cows. Partly as a result of this, as Nimapara's IRDP officer explained to me, cows yielded less milk, and this in turn undermined cow owners’ ability to buy fodder. These problems such as insufficient loans and inadequate income generation should not be viewed as technical ones. For, underlying them -- and, which both officials as well as beneficiaries are often aware of and which exist independent of their will or awareness - are questions of a broader social-structural nature. What I am suggesting is that money was given with insufficient recognition of the constraints of the mode of production (market relations). Perhaps, it would be more sensible to encourage the formation of recipients' cooperatives 294 which, as Baviskar and Attwood (1994) suggest, could be non-bourgeois, non-bureaucratic, economic organizations. Let me explain this. Like the policy of distributing pieces of land or making tenants owners of land, the policy of giving subsidized credit to beneficiaries is one of lumpen- embourgeoisment. "Lumpen" refers to their very weak position in the commodity-market, to the fact, that is, that they have very limited ability to reproduce the means of production and subsistence in a market economy. The beneficiaries are (mostly) direct producers having to work mainly as laborers or tenants. As direct producers, they have necessary causal powers. They have the power to struggle for higher wages and for lower rents. The class-state will not try to activate this causal power. Instead, it tries to make them small business-owners, lumpen bourgeois. By doing so the state forgets that although these small business owners, as any business-persons anywhere else, have the causal power to make "profit", they have the liability to go out of business too in a market economy. The state in the process o f making the beneficiaries lumpen-bourgeois forgets that it is exposing the "poor beneficiaries" to the impersonal forces of the (capitalist) market, and, underlying such action o f the state is the fact that the state seems to ignore "the peculiarity of the capitalist market as a compulsion rather than an opportunity" (Wood, 1994: 15).7 The implications of the state "misreading" the character of the economic structure into which beneficiaries are inserted are clear. Consider the example of cow-loans. On the one hand, cows were bought on credit (which had to be returned with interest); on the other hand, 7 Epistemologically, such ignorance is perhaps structurally generated given that the state is much less able to do anything for the poor in a non-market way. 295 the reproduction of means of production (e.g. fodder for cows) had to be constantly provided for through beneficiary involvement in market-transaetions. To be able to do this beneficiaries had to generate enough money. But in some cases, the difference between what was needed to feed the cows and the money generated out of selling the milk was negative, for, the total amount of milk that cows yielded was very small and prices paid to the milk-sellers were not very high. As a result, the cows were sold off Similarly, those who were given money to own a shop were unable to invest enough to keep the petty-trading business going. In short, and to make a general point: the poor beneficiaries were losing out in the market; they were not able to invest at a rate that was socially necessary to be in business. Since they lacked means of production and hence of subsistence,8 a targe part of the profit went to the consumption fund; as a result the socially necessary rate of productive investment was not possible. The IRDP officer in Nimapara told me that the program did not work because "beneficiaries are eating up the money". But this is certainly a typical "blame-the-poor- approach". The reality is: one significant part of the rightful benefit was eaten up through the operation of the OIBC as I have explained under (1 & 2) above; another part was "gobbled" by the invisible market. The balance was quite insufficient for the poor to make any productive investment for long.9 8 And this makes them liable to be dependent on the market for these means much more than they would otherwise. 9 One would ask what would happen if the state did not treat beneficiaries in a taxonomic sense and instead took into account their causal powers. My answer is: if the state recognized the beneficiaries' class character in practice, rather than in rhetoric, and if it sought to help them to activate their causal powers (e.g.) to strike work for higher wages, for lower rents and to fight against usury, their economic conditions would improve to a much greater extent and their political conditions would be much more democratized. 296 In fact, the attempts at bourgeoisification of the most lumpen - that is, the poorest of the poor -- elements in the society, often were called into question by some of the officials themselves. For example, a very senior official at the State level told me that when he was an officer responsible for implementation of pro-poor policies at more local levels, his superior instructed him to give loans to those "who can see the moon through his/her roof'. This means, loans should be given to the poorest of the poor. This well-meaning instruction quite graphically captured the IRDPs guidelines. However, the officer very rightly said to himself, if a person did not have a shelter to live in, how would he support one or two animals? Having argued about the state's attempt through the IRDP at lumpen- bourgeoisification, I want to make the following qualification. The practice of giving small loans to very poor people does not necessarily have to be a failure as the Grameen Bank Scheme in Bangladesh shows. Loans are very small (no outright grants), and usually no more than $100. They seem to have been quite successful in making some money. The pressure of the market on the poor owners may not always be expressed through their failure to run their business and make some money. In fact, in the Indian context, not all of the poor clients of the IRDP have failed. The expression of the pressure of market- competition on the ability of the poor to make use of the assets productively is contingent on whether or not they have other source of income, whether or not infrastructure in the area where they live is good, and so on. Yet, the existence of the pressure of market-competition on them and their weak market power cannot be denied. 297 E. THE IRDP. THE STATE AND RESISTANCE: THE DIALECTICS OF THE STATE POLICY AND POLITICAL RESISTANCE While IRDP money is being misused, such misuse is also subject, at least in some localities, to some radical opposition. This in turn is being influenced — in an adverse way — by the IRDP too. I will show how this happens. This will indirectly shed more light on why the IRDP fails. 1. Political Resistance affects IRDP Implementation The specific action of an official, more generally, the way the state rules are implemented by officials locally, can be politically influenced. Consider the following incident. In Nimapara, a beneficiary was forced by the Block Development Officer (BDO) to buy a cow that did not give much milk. The person, although he was not a Communist, complained about it before the Communist Sarpanch of Vishnupur. The Sarpanch evidently got angry, went to the BDO and tied the cow to the table that the BDO used in his office. The BDO was forced to take the cow back and give a better one to the beneficiary. (My field dairy) Quite often, Communists in Nimapara and Khandadeuli organized gherao (surrounding the officials in their offices/residences and not allowing them to leave) and this did, to a limited extent though, expedite the paper work and helped people got loans which they were denied earlier. For example, the Chairman (the highest elected official at the Block level) of the Nimapara Block is a non-Communist. In his own gram panchayat (Ucchupur), only after a Communist gherao, were Communist supporters given loans. In Satauli gram Panchayat of Ganjam Block, nearly 300 kilometers from Nimapara Block, government officials took money from IRDP beneficiaries. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) protested; the officials were forced to return the money. 298 Consider another instance. The guidelines of the central state (i.e. central state policy) say nothing about whether assets will be bought locally or outside the locality. The local officials have discretion in this matter. In the case of Nimapara, the collector decided that cows would be bought from Bhubaneswar, not locally. This rule served the material interests of the cow-depot as well as of the district officials. However, the local communist organization forced the local officials to but assets locally, apparently against the wishes of the collector of the district. Nimapara's officials had to yield, for, they must have feared a gherao. The policy of buying cows from Bhubaneswar was changed.10 2. The IRDP influences political resistance These examples suggest that officials’ power does not go unchallenged, and they resonate quite well with the idea that the local state is an arena of conflict and resistance (Duncan and Goodwin, 1982; Fincher, 1981:26; see also Clark and Dear, 1984: 131), or more generally, that "The structure of relations defining the state is a contested structure" (Cox, 1990: 252). The clients of the state policies are not passive dupes. But these examples also raise the question of why protest in Nimapara was successful, given that there are many protests that aren’t. In other words, if radical political organization is so crucial to the proper implementation of the IRDP, why don't people who have been identified as potential beneficiaries and others who can receive loans in the future get politically organized for that purpose? I will pursue that question only to the extent that the answer has got to do with the 11 Of course it is another matter that local purchases also involve malpractices, for not all instances of these are being brought by beneficiaries to the notice of the Communist party. 299 IRDP itself and the internal, i.e. bureaucratic, structure of the state implementing the policy. Very briefly: the way the IRDP is implemented by the state inhibits the organization of beneficiaries. And this resonates with Poulantzas' idea, which I have discussed in some detail in Chapter 2, that the state disorganizes the lower classes through apparently pro-lower-class policies (1968: 188; 1978:127). a) The self-interests of beneficiaries One might argue that it is not in the rational interest of the beneficiaries to get organzied. A quarter to a half of the IRDP loan is the subsidy which does not have to be returned. So, many beneficiaries, especially those who did not want to use the loan for asset- generation, did not seem to care about corruption. Even if officials and political intermediaries ate up a certain proportion of the subsidy, beneficiaries would still get something for free. And even in the extreme case, when the entire subsidy was eaten up, the beneficiaries got a loan with a very low-interest rate (10% per year); if they had to get a loan from private creditors, the rate of interest in Nimapara and Rangas would be from 30 to 120% as in most parts of rural India (Prasad, 1990). Thus the opportunity cost of losing something through corruption was not as high as might be imagined and, hence, the incentive for getting organized was not quite so strong as might be expected. This means that the nature of the policy itself depoliticizes the poor who seem to be cooperating in their own subordination. In some cases — where the intent was not to use the loan in the way it is supposed to be used - the beneficiary would not want the pro-poor political leaders to be involved in the process of getting the loans. Hie Communist Sarpanch in Khandadeuli told me that while their 300 party wanted the poor to invest the money in generating productive assets, the beneficiary often wanted the money, not the asset, so he/she could use the low-interest loan for consumption as opposed to investment. Therefore, he/she tried to avoid the presence of the party cadres who would not allow this to happen. b) Costs of organization to the poor The second possible reason why beneficiaries are not everywhere organized against the officials has got to do with the cost of organization. While the opportunity cost of losing a part of one's rightful share through corruption is not quite high, the opportunity cost of getting organized in an attempt not to lose that could be apparently quite high. There are two aspects to this which I will consider: Many beneficiaries believed that getting organized would result in a delay in getting loans. Sometimes, (in Nimapara) officials told the persons who were waiting to get loans, to come without any political intermediary; in particular officials didn't like Communist intermediaries to come with beneficiaries. There could be, on occasions, a conflict of interest between officials and political intermediaries including elected representatives. The interest was in the subsidy and the conflict was over the division of it: the representative (mainly non- Communist party leaders) could demand a share or if they were Communists they could prevent the officials from getting anything at all and allow the entire rightful share to go to the beneficiary. In both cases, but especially, in the latter case, officials had an interest in discouraging people from seeking the help of political intermediaries. 301 Furthermore, given that IRDP beneficiaries tend to be wage-Iaborers -- in Nimapara two-thirds were laborers — they are busy with wage-work and had little time for getting organized. Indeed 60% of beneficiaries who replied to my question about problems involved in political organization said this. The opportunity cost of the time spent in (e.g.) attending organizational meetings to discuss issues of corruption could be very high. From the beneficiary standpoint then, bribing can be a substitute for organization, for bribing can get the work done. If there is a choice between getting organized to put pressure on officials in order to get the rightful share and sacrificing some o f that share (which comes from the state for free in the form of subsidy) so they can get something, they would choose the latter. To repeat: if the cost of getting organized is more than what is forgone without organization (bribe to officials, etc.), getting organized does not seem to be a "rational choice" for beneficiaries. The foregoing discussion indicates the participation and connivance of the beneficiaries in the bribery process and why they don't invest in productive assets. But why do the poor cooperate in their own subordination? I seem to have suggested that the poor have self-interests in not getting organized to get their rightful share and further in conniving with implementors in the bribery process. I want now to self-critically unpack the assumptions underlying the sort of explanation and its event-ontological character. Certainly beneficiaries make choices as to whether or not to get the work done by bribing or by getting organized. Certainly they think about the pros and cons of bribing and of taking a counter-surveillant activist along to the Block office. But it is under certain structural conditions that these choices are made; these conditions affect what they think. One 302 may ask: Although it is true that since a part of the loan is subsidy, and hence individuals may not care about losing some money, what is it that makes them think that they can get the loan and not use it in a way that is not prescribed by the rules? If it wasn't for the uneven development and underdevelopment of democracy, where what officials do and don't do are not under any real public scrutiny, would there be the sort of threat to the local interests of the poor as I have discussed that force them to pay bribes?, and could they, upon getting the loans, have thought of misusing the money? Further, what makes beneficiaries believe that getting organized will result in delay in getting loans (2a above)? Isn't it true that because of the inadequately democratic internal state structure, beneficiaries are scared of officials and yield in to their pressure for a bribe? What makes beneficiaries believe that the cost involved in getting organized is higher than what is forgone without it (having to pay bribe, etc.), when, in fact, wage workers are precisely the sorts of people who have tended to get organized? If there was a strong Communist organization locally that would not allow any leakage, would the beneficiaries still choose to part with a portion of their rightful benefit to the state actors, would they choose not to take the help of, and extend support to, that organization? Perhaps not. It is under certain highly specific conditions ~ an immensely unequal power relation between local state actors on the one hand and a largely unorganized poor population - that people think and choose what they do and that the poor beneficiaries, as in the present instance, appear to be acquiescing in their own subordination. I cannot discuss the nature of the state structure in general here. What I want to address in (c and d) below is the following question: given the state as a structure of relations (the state-form), 303 what is it in the IRDP (a state action) that creates barriers to the radical organization of poor beneficiaries of the IRDP? c). Structural disadvantages of radical organization The success of an organization, to a large extent, depends on its ability to provide some help to its members/supporters, and more so if an organization is a political party and if the context is one of electoral competition. Since the Communist/leftist supporters will not (normally) bribe, given their ideology, and do not have also the ability to bribe11, the paperwork for their loans is delayed and as a result people lose interest in them. There is moreover a limit as to how much communists can achieve in terms of, e.g., the granting of an IRDP loan by resorting to extra-parliamentary methods locally such as gheraos. This is because these methods might not always work due to the pressure exercised by the leaders/bureaucrats at regional and state level on local officials to work in ways the former want, as an organizer told me in Nimapara. In contrast, other parties bribed officials, got the work done for their clients, and hence tended to get greater support. Further, since at a provincial and national level, bourgeois parties have been in power, any implementation of a pro-poor policy is perceived by people as gifts from these parties. Since Communists have not come to power at the Orissa State level or central level, they don't have the advantage of being perceived as gift-givers or patrons. Rather, commonsensical thinking and conscious bourgeois propaganda have been successful in making some beneficiaries perceive them as trouble-makers because of the delay it creates in people getting loans, etc. 12 In Ranges, a leftist party — Socialist Unity Center of India — is called a beggar party. 304 d) The state disorganizes the poor through policies such as IRDP Policies such as the IRDP not only undermine in several ways the conditions necessary for radical organizations to fight for the rightful benefits of beneficiaries, as discussed above. These policies also create divisions within the poor, and these divisions, superimposed on divisions among beneficiaries that already exist along (e.g.) caste, political party, etc. lines, hinder their radical political organization further. This happens in many ways. First, given a certain amount of dissociation between class power and electoral power, who votes for which party is much less determined by patron-client relations of the old type, the relations between landowner-patron and his/her tenant/worker clients. It is more determined by different sorts of political patron-client relations, the relations between the political leader as patron who helps his/her client to benefit from a policy like the IRDP in exchange for a vote. Each of these political leaders belonging to separate parties wants a certain number of voters. To get the necessary votes, some, if not all, of his clients need to benefit. Accordingly 75% of the beneficiaries in Ansala village (Nimapara) where the sarpanch (the elected head of several villages) had fought elections as an Independent but was pro- Janata party were either Independent or Janata; only 16% were Communists. This leads to the reinforcement of the division among the beneficiaries along political party lines: a local political cleavage within the class of beneficiaries who therefore find it difficult to get organized as a group able to fight for their rightfid benefits. Second, not all poor people in a village and not all villages are given loans simultaneously. In a particular year, some poor people in a village and some villages in a Block are given loans. This creates further geographical division within the poor, and 305 interestingly, the poor beneficiaries realize this, as was clear in the course of my interviews in Ansala village. Third, the strength of the local Communist organization varies over space: e.g. the Vishnupur area of the Nimapara Block had 150% more party members than the area under the Block from where the non-Communist Chairman of the Block came. This allowed local state officials to spatially divide the poor. For example, if Communists opposed Block officials' malpractices, beyond a certain limit, that is, the officials would not sanction many loans to villages who supported Communists; as a result beneficiaries would be divided between those in villages getting loans and those in villages not getting loans. The latter might well learn that it is not a good idea to protest against officials. If Communists were organized everywhere throughout the Block, Block officials would not be able to spatially divide the poor and discriminate against Communist villages. Thus the geographical variation of Communist organization, even at a very local level, is a practical hindrance to mobilizing Communist support across localities. in. CONCLUSION In this section I will sum up the discussion in the present and the last Chapters. The IRDP is a failure in that very few beneficiaries have been able to cross the poverty line. This is not to deny hoever that some have been able to augment their income. The politics of implementing the IRDP reveals important insights into state-society relations. Although India is the empirical context of my study, I believe that the arguments 306 developed in these two Chapters will have some applicability to the understanding of state- society relations and their spatiality in other (Third World) contexts. Given that the state has to work under the constraints of a capitalist economy, its ability to invest in redistributive policies like the IRDP is severely constrained. This is especially so given competing demands on scarce state resources from other societal actors including the landed and the urban bourgeoisie. So, an adequate level of investment needed to help the poor cross the poverty line cannot be mobilized. One important reason for the failure of the policy is then inadequate investment. I had shown in the last Chapter that the IRDP is not only within the limits of reproducibility of capitalism — it does not pose a threat to capitalist interests -- it can even potentially serve capitalist interests since (e.g.) when poor people become less poor the market for goods and services expands. Yet, the state fails to implement the IRDP successfiilly. In general terms, this resonates with the idea that state action cannot be reduced to capitalist interests. If the inadequate funding caused by capitalist constraints on the state's redistributive capacity is one reason for the IRDPs failure, the fact that the entire portion of the already meager investment does not reach the beneficiary is another reason. Here the role of the state actors is important. For, state officials and political leaders have found in the provisions for the implementation of the IRDP an important source of what Giddens (1985) calls authoritative resources (i.e. control over information) and make attempts to use these to satisfy their own interests. The empirical analysis in this and the last Chapter speaks to and resonates with the idea of state actors' autonomy and especially their rent-seeking behavior 307 as highlighted in state theory which I have discussed in Chapters 2-3 (see Kruger, 1974; Dominguez, 1989; Jab, 1993; Bardhan, 1989). Actual expressions of rent-seekbg are diverse. Corruption/bribery is just one of these. My analysis shows that opportunities for bribery and corruption are created as a consequence of forms of state btervention that rely on (e.g.) licences and permits which are relatively scarce and whose possession affects market chances. However, officials' attemepts to appropriate, m connivance with other dominant actors b the society, a part of what is due to the poor are challenged, b the last Chapter, I have shown that other thmgs constant, where the poor are better organized, the policy seems to have worked better. In this Chapter, I have shown that communists locally have, to some extent, been able to put pressure on the officials to implement the policy accordbg to the rules. That the policy still does not succeed is a different matter. However, the IRDP as a form of state btervention has a disorganizing effect on the poor. The poor are divided along Ibes of beneficiary/non-beneficiary, localities, and so on. Officials discourage the beneficiaries to take the help of local radical organizers of the poor. The way the structure of social relations works suggests very clearly that the poor beneficiaries are inserted fato an over-arching structure of power relations, and that especially b the absence of their organization, they can be quite weak vis-a-vis the officials as well as the elected elites, b consequence, they often cannot cotnplab before elected representatives even if they are forced to give a bribe or are cheated b some other way. Further, even if they complain, given that elected representatives connive with officials at the bribery process, the poor benefit little. 308 Underlying the exercise of power relations between the officials and the poor is the spatial organization of the state. The poor are inserted into the spatial matrix of the state: a poor person is only eligible in the development block where he/she resides and cannot appeal to officials in other development blocks. In other words, officials in a block have a spatial monopoly over power resources. They know that no matter what they do, the poor cannot go to a different block for IRDP benefits. One o f the reasons why the officials extort bribes from the poor is that they themselves have to pay bribes or connive in the paying of bribes by beneficiaries in order to prevent transfers to areas where they cannot make money or for transfers to areas where they can. Officials and elected leaders at higher territorial levels thus have power over block level officials. But this sort of power relation presuppose, among other things, and has to be understood in the context of, the spatial division of labor within the state, the fact that there are blocks, districts, etc. 309 CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSION This Chapter has three sections. In the first section I summarize the findings. In the second section, I relate these to broader literatures on the state theory. In the final section, I conclude by posing some questions that emerge from the dissertation. I. SUMMARY OF FINDINGS The Indian state has been a developmental-redistributive state. The nature of its intervention has however changed over time. Why has it been so? I have shown that on the whole its policies have Med. But, as I have also shown: a) they have not failed in all respects, for, the developmental goals of these policies may have been achieved more than the redistributive ones; b) they have not failed equally for all classes/groups, for, some classes have benefited more than others; and c) they have not failed equally in all areas. Once again, why? These questions constitute the first set of questions that I address in the dissertation. The second set of questions concerns uneven development. What is it that causes uneven development in a Third World society? Usually uneven development is explained in 310 terms of economic geography. The role of the state is ignored or is under emphasized/incorporated in an ad hoc manner. This reflects the traditional division of labor between the economic and the political and hence between economic and political geography. In this dissertation I make an attempt to use a Marxist approach to establish the links between the economic and the political explanations of uneven development. Ontologically, the two sets of empirical questions are questions concerning the "events" in a multi-layered reality. They belong to the realm of "the more concrete". What is it then that is causing these events? To answer this, I have examined certain structures, and some of the mechanisms that they entaiL The most important structures are the state and capital, including its structure of antagonistic classes. They are mutually interrelated. In Chapter 2, I have examined the nature of the relation between the state and capitalism in some detail and at a very high level of abstraction. The state is a contradictory unity of mutually opposing tendencies. Chapter 2 provides materials which shed light on a more concrete state, the state in India. Capitalist constraints are always there as long as there is a capitalist state, which is difficult to replace, yet whose existence is always contingent as I have said in Chapter 2. But (concrete) states such as the one in India interact not only with (abstract) capitalist societies but with capitalist societies with highly concrete features. At a high level of abstraction, the Indian state is a capitalist state. Its capitalist character has given it some powers and some responsibilities. The state exercises/carries out these however not just as a capitalist state but as a democratic, developmental-redistributive, 311 federal state. But being a democratic, developmental-redistributive and federal state also gives it some further powers and responsibilities. How these are exercised depends on its social base and the nature of the class opposition to it, within an overall capitalist context. While the state presupposes classes, what the class configuration is in a particular instance and how these class interests are represented cannot be specified at an abstract level. Further, the nature of its class base and of the lower class opposition to it changes over time, in part because o f what it does at a previous point in time. As a result, the nature o f its intervention changes. Land reforms resulted in a class of capitalist farmers and this resulted in some change in the nature of the state's class base. But once capitalist fanners assumed importance they called for different sorts of intervention — subsidies etc -- than those aimed at institutional changes in the agrarian structure. The nature of the lower class opposition also changes over time. The Indian lower classes have become more vocal. The state has tried to intervene on their behalf too, especially given its democratic form. The degree of lower class organization also changes over space. And, given the federal and democratic form of the state, the lower classes seek to exploit any opportunity thrown up by these structures. Inter alia they try to institutionalize their power in some States. And, where they do, they benefit more from state policies than in other States, because state power can be more effectively exercised on their behalf there. More generally, and whether or not their power is institutionalized, the geography of their organization becomes the geography of the effectivity of the exercise of state autonomy on their behalf. 312 The politics of implementation of different policies in the substantive Chapters reveals important insights into state-society relations. The discussion resonates with the idea of Echeverri-Gent, who did his study of poverty alleviation programs in India and the USA, that policy implementation is "the ate of tangible exchanges between state and society" (1993: 4). Although India is the empirical context of my study, I believe that the arguments developed here will have some applicability to the understanding of state-society relations in other (Third World) contexts. In the six substantive Chapters (four through nine), 1 have explained the conditions and implications of the exercise of the powers and liabilities of the capitalist, democratic, developmental-redistributive, federal state over the last five decades. More generally, I have demonstrate the conditions and consequences of the exercise of state autonomy which, within capitalist constraints, is contingently expressed through its attempt to implement certain policies. I have discussed three policies: Land Reforms (LR), Green Revolution (GR) and Integrated Rural Development Policies (IRDP). These provide three separate, albeit complementary, windows on the Indian state. In Chapter Four, I have shown how the post-colonial capitalist state sought to remove the agrarian-structural barrier to the development of the productive forces in order to create the conditions for capitalist accumulation. I have discussed how the interests of the urban bourgeoisie converged with those of the lower classes and state (actors) in the LR policy. I have then dealt with the nature of the legal provisions under the LR policy, the limited extent of implementation of these, and the implications of that for uneven agrarian development. The LR policy has played some role in encouraging the development of the productive forces and 313 the emergence of capitalist fanners from the ranks of erstwhile landlords and bigger tenants. Yet, as far as the redistribution of land to land-poor and landless people is concerned, the impacts of the reforms have been quite limited. In the next Chapter, I have tried to relate the nature of the state to LR. I have done this by examining the more concrete materials on LR presented in the last Chapter in the light of the conceptual discussons in Chapters 2 and 3.11 have discussed how the state was under pressure to create conditions for capitalist development and how it had to perform this role within a bourgeois-democratic context. This context in turn defined the very form of the LR. That is, it became bureaucratic and entailed compensation to erstwhile landlords. I have discussed why the state could impose such a form of LR when the lower classes had opposed this. However, with different class alignments from what existed in most States and nationally, both the form and outcome of LR could have been, and indeed were, different as a comparative study of two communist States, Kerala and West Bengal, and regression analyses for all States show. The comparative study of the two States has demonstrated that within the constraints imposed by the capitalist state, and given its federal form, some space is opened up within its geographical space for the lower classes to struggle for and benefit from the state policies. Chapters 5-6 discussed the GR policy. Chapter 5 has presented what the GR was all about and the political-economic reasons why the state promoted it. It has also discussed why 1 In particular, I have made use of an important conceptual dualism in state theory discussed in Chapter 2: state as form vs content (Hirsch, 1978; Holloway, 1991)."Content" refers to what the state does: (e.g.) policy concessions to the lower classes. "Form" refers to the method in which the state does this: the method reflects the fact that the state is a social relation, separate from the economic, and tries to reinforce that separation (Clarke, 1991) through its actions/policies. I have also exploited the idea that the state is an arena of, and is reproduced through, class struggle (Poulantzas, 1978; Clarke, 1991). 314 it occurred in a spatially uneven way and how it has contributed to uneven development (1 will return to uneven development later). In the next Chapter, I have examined the distributive consequences of the GR policy. One underlying theme in this discussion is the idea that the distributive outcomes of the technical change promoted by the state in the form of the GR are a function of property relations and the class struggle and the state interventions underlying these. I have shown that the GR policy does not seem to have caused any increases in inequality in the distribution of owned land. But it does seem to have been responsible for the fact that the distribution of the land formed — as opposed to land owned — has become more unequal over time. Both larger and smaller farmers have benefited from it. But smaller farmers have gained less than larger ones. This is, in part, because of inequalities in access to land which the state failed to remove. Both labor employing-farmers and laborers have benefited from the GR. But, once again, laborers seem to have benefited less than their employers. Further, the overall impact of the GR policy on welfare may be seen in the fact that the incidence of the GR is positively associated with the rate of poverty reduction.2 Class struggle has played a role in enabling the lower classes to benefit from the policy and state interventions have moderated some of the negative impacts o f the policy on smaller formers. Chapters 8 and 9 have examined the 1RDP. The IRDP is a strategy of helping the poor generate income by providing them with income-generating assets so they can feed themselves better and cross the line of absolute poverty. Chapter 8 has discussed the political- economic conditions under which the state started the IRDP, and how it was supposed to 2 This conclusion should be viewed with caution, given the many qualifications I have made in the Chapter. 315 work. It then turned to the question of how it has actually worked at the national and inter state levels. In the next Chapter, I have looked at how the IRDP works at the village level in a particular State, that of Orissa. I have shown in Chapter 8 that the IRDP is within the lim its of the reproducibility of capitalism in that it does not pose a threat to capitalist interests. Not only that. The IRDP can also potentially serve capitalist interests. This results from the fact that when poor people become less poor, the market for goods and services can expand. Yet, it seems that the policy is more a failure than a success. Very few beneficiaries have been able to cross the poverty- line. Some have been able to augment their income. But, we do not know for how long they can do so, given their insertion into a market economy. Given that the state has a disposition towards working under the constraints of a capitalist economy, its ability to invest in redistributive policies like the IRDP is severely constrained. This is especially so given competing demands on scarce state resources from other societal actors including the landed and the urban bourgeoisie. So, a level of investment adequate to helping the poor cross the poverty line cannot be mobilized. One important reason for the failure of the policy is then inadequate investment. Not only is funding inadequate, but also the entire portion of the already meager investment does not reach the beneficiary. This is another reason for the IRDFs failure. Here the role of state actors is important. For, state officials and political leaders have found in the provisions for the implementation of the IRDP a source of control over the poor and attempt to use these to satisfy their own interests. 316 However, the attempts of officials to appropriate, in connivance with other dominant actors in the society, a part of what is legally due to the poor do not go unchallenged. In Chapter 8 ,1 have said that other things constant, if the poor are better organized, the policy seems to have worked better. Moreover, in Chapter 9 ,1 have shown that the communist-led local organization of the poor had, to some extent, been able to put pressure on the officials to implement the policy according to the rules. However, the IRDP as a form of state intervention has a disorganizing effect on the poor. The poor are divided along lines of beneficiary/non-beneficiary, localities, and so on. Although the IRDP has mainly failed, it has not failed equally everywhere. This means that, like other policies, it has succeeded more in some places than in others. I have shown that the development of the productive forces in a State was a crucial condition for the success of the IRDP. Yet, this development, as 1 have shown in Chapter 6 varied over space. Besides, the political strength of the lower classes also varies geographically. So, the uneven development of the productive forces and uneven success in lower class organization seem to explain the spatially uneven success of the policy. The empirical discussion, especially in Chapters 4 and 6, while focussing on the nature and outcome of state policies, also addressed the second set of questions that I posed earlier. I have tried to show how uneven development in a Third World social formation results because of the interplay between the economic and political geographies. Uneven development has to be understood in part as a result of a) the spatially uneven existence of 317 pre-capitalist relations and other barriers to development emanating from the agrarian structure and b) the spatially uneven outcome o f state policies in undermining these barriers. That pre-capitalist relations such as feudalism act as a barrier to the development of the productive forces is a well-known theme in the Marxist structuralist theory of development (Brenner, 1986; Richards, 1986). Very briefly, and to paraphrase Brenner: if (e.g.) the landed can earn a lot of money by using extra-economic coercion against peasants, it will not have the incentive to invest in increasing productivity. The more interesting aspect of barriers to development that emerges from my study is the fact that even if there are formally capitalist property relations, the development of the productive forces may not occur. Let me explain why. There is always a pressure on the owners of money capital to accumulate on an expanding scale. Otherwise, they may incur debts and may have to sell their means of production to clear them up. But how that is done - through purchasing land and leasing it out, through money-lending activity, through using share croppers, through developing the productivity of the land purchased, etc. is a contingent matter. If there are more lucrative opportunities for income from sources other than making productivity-raising investments, the above-noted pressure will not be realized. This will be the case when (e.g.) land is unequally distributed and there is little non-agricultural employment: under these conditions, there will be a mass of land-hungry people bidding up rents and/or willing to work for very low wages. There will also be a heavy demand by the poor people for loans at usurious interests rates. Given these conditions: the landowners will invest money in buying land and getting it cultivated by the immediate producers as tenants or as laborers, and/or in usury, and so on. However, the opportunities for making money through non-productive investments vary in space. This is in part because the inequality in land distribution varies in space. I want to emphasize, at the risk of repetition, that under capitalist relations of production owners of money capital are under pressure to accumulate on an expanding scale. But how they do this is a contingent matter, and it may not be through the development of the productive forces. This means that, and pace the Marx of Communist Manifesto (1975:44-45), even if property relations are formally capitalist, there may remain barriers to the development of productive forces. Let me now explain what the Indian state has done to undermine these. First, through the LR policy, the state has taken away the extra-economic powers of landlords. Thus it has undermined feudal barriers to development. It has also allowed the tenants of former landlords to buy land from those landlords who had land beyond the legal limit, for, it was believed that after being owners of land, tenants would have incentive as well as ability to make productivity-raising investments. Ability to purchase was a constraint, however. For, given the class character of the state, expropriation of landlords without compensation was beyond its power. Tenants had to pay compensation to landlords. Consequently it was only in those areas which were already productive and/or where landlord-ten ant relations were less unequal that tenants had the money to buy the land. So the landlord-tenant relation could be undermined more in some areas than in others. In those areas, tenants could be owners, they could then become capitalist fanners and make productivity-raising investments. I must stress that the class character of the state clearly had spatial implications: if the state did not have to act under the constraints of private property and under the instrumentalist control of the landlord class, and if therefore the ability to pay was not a condition for getting ownership rights over the land leased in, tenants in many more areas would have been owners. The second aspect of state intervention concerns its role in the GR. The state has provided subsidized GR inputs to landowners. This form of investment in the development of the productive forces has made productivity-raising investments by landowners more profitable than investments in land, usury and so forth. So, the landed class has switched their capital to the sphere of productivity-increasing investments. But state investment has a geography. It has invested in the GR only in some areas. Given that the landed class forms an important part of the class base of the state, the ability of the latter to appropriate resources from it through direct taxation has been reduced over time. So the state lacks the resources to invest in lagging areas. Once again, the class character o f the state — especially, the class constraints on its ability to invest -- has had spatial implications. This discussion suggests that uneven development in an agrarian society comes about for two reasons. First: the opportunities for owners of money capital for making money through non-productive investments vaiy in space in part because the spatial variation in the degree of inequality in land distribution. Second: the outcome of state policies aimed at creating conditions where owners of money capital will be interested in making productive investments exhibits spatial variation. II. IMPLICATIONS OF THE DISSERTATION FOR WIDER LITERATURES The dissertation speaks to and is immersed in a wider literature on state-society interaction. 1 want to illuminate the threads linking the dissertation and these literatures. 320 1) Trying to explain the timing of the introduction of social insurance in the UK, the US and Canada, Orloff and Skocpol (1985) say that the historical legacies o f prior policies with which political forces had to contend were a crucial variable. My discussion of the conditions which led to the GR policy to some extent echoes this idea. Consider the way the LR policy set the context for the next policy which was that of the GR. First, and for a variety of reasons, including the instrumentalist control of the landed over the state, the policy did not succeed in completely undermining the structural harriers to an increase in productivity. So the state sought to implement the GR policy. This was a technocratic approach to the problem of the low level of development of the productive forces in agriculture which in turn was a fetter on the overall capitalist development of the country. Second, to some extent the former policy — i.e. the LR policy -- was successful in creating a class of landowners. The latter would make investments in the GR inputs subsidized by the state. These farmers provided a large part of the social base for the policy. In fact, having benefited from it, they put have pressure on the state for its continuation. Thus, there may be some truth in the neo-Weberian idea that the context and the pressure for state action can be the state itself at least in part. 2) The empirical analysis in the dissertation speaks to and resonates with the idea of state actors' autonomy and especially their rent-seeking behavior as highlighted in state theory (see Kruger, 1974; Dominguez, 1989; Jain, 1993; Bardhan, 1989). Actual expressions of rent- seeking are diverse. Corruption/bribery is just one of these. What my analysis shows is that opportunities for bribery and corruption are created as a consequence of forms of state 321 intervention relying on (e.g.) licenses and permits which are relatively scarce and whose possession affects market chances. More generally, the discussion of the politics of implementation shows how the attempts of actors involved in it to satisfy their own interests tend to constrain the exercise of the autonomy of the state on behalf of the lower classes. My approach echoes Klak's regarding the policies of Latin American states concerned with the provision of housing, policies that tend to serve the interests of state elites themselves (Klak, 1993: 655, 659, 671). Giving due recognition to these interests and powers of state actors can complement the more society-centered approach in which it is primarily the forces in civil society such as the propertied classes or, more broadly, Migdal's "strongmen" (MigdaL, 1988) that constrain the exercise of the relative autonomy of the state and frustrate its pro-poor policies. 3) The discussion of policies shows how the interests of state and societal actors, mainly the ruling classes in the latter instance, converge. In the case of LR, the interests of the urban bourgeoisie, of state actors as buyers of commodities in "economic markets" and of votes in "political markets" coincided. This created a condition where relatively autonomous state power could be potentially used against landlordism, and through these measures, create favorable conditions for the accumulation of capital. The story of the GR is similar. This gives credence to Miliband's ( 1983b:73) concept of "partnership" and Offe's (1987:120) concept of "institutional self-interest". The partnership between state-actors and capital — or the institutional self-interest of state-actors — contributed to the promulgation of LR and GR policies. 322 4) The state is a material condensation of a relation of power between classes and between class fractions (Poulantzas, 1978:18-129). But this relation of power is one of contradiction. Poulantzas argues that that is why state actions themselves are contradictory. Consider the LR policy. It was quite contradictory. On the one hand, the abolition of intermediaries (statutory landlords) was attempted because they were unproductive. The interests of the intermediaries were against the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie. On the other hand, compensation money was given to this unproductive class when the state was facing a scarcity of resources. Landlords could not be expropriated without compensation in part because of the instrumentalist influence of the landed over the state. Consider the GR policy. First, the policy has made an increase in productivity possible, and thus has created the possibility of an increase in wages. But in the States where the GR has been most successful, real wages are falling. This shows the lim it to how much the policy can benefit laborers in the specific conjunctive of India's class structure, dominated by the landed, which the state preserves. Second, the class character of the GR policy has also meant that the policy is a contradictory process geographically. This is in the sense that while it has contributed to the production of regionally uneven development, it has adversely affected the possibility as well as the effectivity of the use of the state's structurally given autonomy to promote regionally balanced development. On the one hand farmers' economic power has increased with the GR, and as a result they have become politically powerful. The commercial farmers have used their political power to pressure the state to give substantial subsidies, which benefit mainly the larger landowners (Parikh and Suryanarayana, 1990). On the other hand they prevent the 323 exercise of state autonomy in the imposition of direct taxes in agriculture. Such "double pressure" has meant -- in a context where non-agrarian groups including the urban bourgeoisie also put pressure on the state for subsidies — that the state is left with a limited amount of resources for that infrastructural development which could play an instrumental role in bringing about agricultural development (Bardhan, 1984b; Gandhi, 1990) specifically in backward States. Third, since the GR is land-augmenting, as a result of the possibilities of multiple cropping, it has reduced the size of a viable farm; this implies that a person can make do with a farm of smaller size to support himself/herself and his/her family than in the pre-GR period. This means in turn that there will be potentially more surplus land available for distribution to the landless and land-poor through the LR. Yet, capitalist landlords, with their increased political power, do not allow implementation of the land-ceiling laws. At the risk of over-generalization, I may say that the state cannot solve problems rooted in class relations (see Hirsch, 1978). This is because the state itself is the problem. For it protects class relations. It failed to undermine agrarian-structural barriers to productivity completely through the LR policy. So it promoted the GR. But the GR policy benefited a minority of landowners much more than others, including laborers. So the state tried to moderate the adverse effects of exploitation and the unequal distribution of land by playing a redistributive role (the IRDP). But it ran up against capitalist constraints because of which its ability to provide monetary help to the poor were limited. 5) The state is above all an institution of class domination (Lenin, 1977; Clarke, 1991), and the state affects, and is affected by, class struggle (see Wright, 1978: Chapter 1). 324 The LR policy shows this most clearly. It shows the interrelation between the state and class struggle: a) The origin of LR partly reflects the success of the class struggle that imposes it on the state. Also, the policy presupposes and reflects the fact of the separation of the political from the economic (the bourgeois state form ): if the state was not separate from property-units, concessions in the form of LR would not be possible. b) These concessions themselves become a particular form of state-society interaction in that these are used as a method of reinforcing/reproducing the separation of the political from the economic, as discussed above. Points a) and b) mean that the cause and effect of state power are the same. As Simon Clarke says, and to reinforce the above points, whenever class struggles have threatened to challenge the separation noted above by challenging the very political basis of exploitation*, the state seeks to give economic concessions "in the attempt to re-establish the rule of money and the law and to restore the separation" of the political from the economic (1991:33). This is how the capitalist state-form is reproduced. c) Further, the form and content of LR reflect not only the extent of state repression which is the condensed power of the ruling classes (Lenin, 1977) but also the struggle of the dominated agrarian classes over both the form and the content. These struggles take place within the state and outside it, and within the limits imposed by the economic structure. But, again, struggles take place also, to paraphrase Clarke (1991), precisely over these limits such that the limits are constantly redefined and the 3 Property rights form this political basis. The state enforces these rights. 325 permanency of structures threatened. Given the relatively low level of development of the productive forces, which is partly a result of the unreformed agrarian structure (P. Patnaik, 1992, Patnaik, 1976), the scope for economic concessions is limited, however, and hence the need for coercion is that much more increased, unlike (perhaps) in the core-countries. This m ay be a specificity of post-colonial States. A most interesting aspect of LR is that while class struggle for/over LR is quite enduring, the concrete nature of this struggle (e.g. which class participates in these struggles) has changed over time because of the way the state has responded to class struggles. First, in the early stage o f LR the bigger tenants along with others were struggling against erstwhile landlords for tenurial security and lower rent. The abolition of statutory landlordism has to be considered, in part, as a result of this struggle. Second, following the abolition of this type of landlordism, smaller tenants and the landless have been fighting for a more egalitarian land- distribution, and also for their own security of tenure and the alleviation of high rents. The erstwhile tenants, who were a part of the struggle earlier, went through the process of enibourgeoisment. They opposed such aspects of LR policy as redistribution of the ceiling- surphis land because these would hurt their interests. This has led to the relative attenuation of lower-class support for LR There is a remarkable degree of similarity between the ways-of-acting of capitalism and the state as far as the immediate producers are concerned. How can it be otherwise? For the economic and the political (the state) are two arms of capital, as Holloway and Piciotto 1977) say, so that the so-called autonomy of the state is in part illusory. As Harvey (1985) 326 says: as long as we live under capitalism, it is the rule of capital that we are subjected to. Indeed, labor is capital. It is variable capital. This means that even if it becomes successful in struggling for and in obtaining some concessions from capital such as higher wages, these concessions can be made use of by capital. Ibis is in the sense that economic concessions can help capital resolve the under-consumption crisis, the problem of selling what is produced. So, the economic concessions from capital cause labofs continued reproduction as variable capital, and so the reproduction of the exploitative structure of the capital-labor relation. Similarly, a variety of policy concessions from the state -- welfare policies and social policies (removal of extra-economic coercion etc.) — that the immediate producers fight for, in turn cause the reproduction of the structure of political domination and thus the legitimation of the state. (This is not to say that state-administered welfare policies do not also expand the market and thus help capital). So, as long as the structures of exploitation and political domination, that is, capital and the state, exist, even the concessions fought for by the immediate producers reproduce these structures. This is not at all to suggest functionalism, to suggest that the conversion of concessions into means of reproduction of structures of exploitation and domination is itself not fought against. As I have discussed, the immediate producers fight not for some policy concessions -- the content of what the state does — but also for particular forms of these concessions, for non-bureaucratic and non-market mediated concessions, for example. But such struggle over the form of concessions is thwarted by the state through its coercive apparatuses. 327 6) The spatiality of the state is crucial to the understanding of its relations with societal actors. By the spatiality of the state I refer to the spatial organization of the state: States and levels below the State. It has been argued that the state is a social relation (Harvey, 1981:175; Oilman, 1982; Poulantzas, 1978), and as a social relation "it necessarily has a spatial expression" (Cox, 1990: 251). My analysis speaks to the literature on the spatiality of the state (Cox, ibid.; Clark and Dear, 1984; Duncan and Goodwin, 1987; Fincher, 1981). The spatial organization of the state is not merely a reflection of the uneven development of society (Duncan and Goodwin, 1987), For, once the state is spatially organized, it in turn affects how the state and society interact. The feet that India is a federal and democratic State provides some opportunities for the institutionalization of lower class power in the state at least at the more decentralized level This was evident in my discussion of LR in two States — Kerala and West Bengal. Even if the lower class power is not institutionalized, the lower classes, pace Kohli (1987), can put a considerable amount of pressure on the lower levels of the territorial structure of the state. This indicates that "The structure of relations defining the state is a contested structure" (Cox, 1990: 252; see also: Fincher, 1981: 26; Clark and Dear, 1984:131) The institutionalization of lower-class power does not happen in all States. And in the States where it does happen, the eflectivity of the exercise o f state autonomy on behalf of the lower classes varies. As my comparative study of Kerala and West Bengal shows, this sort of variation between States is because of the specificity of each of them in terms of agrarian structure and the nature of lower class organization, etc. 328 If we look at the sub-State level, we find another sort of dynamic at work. I have demonstrated that officials implementing the IRDP exercise power relations, and that underlying this is the spatial organization of the state. The poor are inserted into the spatial matrix of the state: a poor person is only eligible in the development block where he/she resides and cannot appeal to officials in other development blocks. In other words, officials in a block have a spatial monopoly with respect to their clients. They know that no matter what they do, the poor cannot go to a different block for the IRDP benefits. The local-level officials themselves are victims of the territorial structure of the state. One of the reasons why the officials extort bribes from the poor is that they themselves have to pay bribes in order to prevent transfers to areas where they do not want to go or they pay bribes for transfers to areas where they want to (see Wade, 1985). Officials and elected leaders at higher territorial levels have power over block level officials. This power can be used to transfer officials. But this sort of power relation presupposes, among other things, and has to be understood in the context of, two aspects. One is the spatial division of labor within the state, the fact that there are blocks, districts, etc. Another is that there are spatially uneven material conditions: the officials do not want to be transferred to areas where infrastructural facilities such as schools for children and health facilities are not adequate. HI. QUESTIONS UNANSWERED I started out the dissertation with certain questions. I have tried to provide answers to these. But in the course of writing the dissertation, new questions have emerged. In this section I will discuss these. 329 The state is an arena of class struggle. But it is a political-geographic arena. This is in part in the sense that the geography of the efifectivity o f the exercise o f state autonomy on behalf of the lower classes is the geography of lower-class struggle. This is seen in the fact that the state is successful in implementing its redistributive policies more in those areas where the lower classes are better organized. The question then is, why is it that the lower classes are better organized in some areas than in others? In Chapters 5 and 7, I have shown that spatial difference in agrarian structure makes a difference. For example, the facts that the lower classes also belong to lower castes, that laborers out-number landowners and also the presence of the propertied laborers enable lower class organization. I have, however, dealt with these issues cursorily, because these were outside the scope of the dissertation. Much more work needs to be done here. Besides, there will be many more factors than I have indicated here that influence whether or not they are organized. I have said that the opportunities for renting out at high rents, for usury, and so on, block the transition to a regime of productivity-raising investments by capitalist landowners. I have discussed mainly economic opportunities (money-lending, etc.). But are there some non-economic areas of unproductive investment too that also cause lower levels of development? For example, one can invest in politics, for, getting elected to local state apparatuses can be a source of “rents”, as the IRDP implementation process shows. One can invest in the education of one's children in cities so that they can get government jobs which can be quite lucrative. One can invest money in building a reputation through marital links by giving sisters/daughters in marriage to rich families in exchange for dowry ("gifts”) (Harriss, 330 1980) and in the hope of using such reputation in politics or even in business. And, what does the geography of these non-economic channels of investment look like? Is it that in some areas landowners invest more in (e.g.). politics than in (e.g.) education? If so why? Much of this investment flows to small towns -- gifts for dowry, education, and so on can be bought in towns; political leaders to whom rural money flows live in towns. What is the impact of these non-economic investments on the process of development of small towns? In addition, to what extent does tertiarization of the rural economy, the fact that more and more landowners themselves are finding employment in non-agricultural sectors, affect their incentive to make productive investments? The state plays a very important role in the tertiarization of the economy. It provides jobs in schools, small hospitals, post-offices, police station, and so on in the rural areas. If agriculture is the only source of income for a person, and if production is not efficient, one may not be able to pay the bills and thus stands to lose one's land. 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Zagoria, D. 1971. “The Ecology of Peasant Communism in India”, American Political Science Review, 45( 1). 357 APPENDIX A THE USE OF THE GREEN REVOLUTION TECHNOLOGY AND OTHER INDICATORS OF THE AGRARIAN CONDITION IN INDIA STATES HYV IRRIG FERTL PRDFODRLWAGE 1983-85 1988-89 1991-92 1990-93 1990-91 Andhra 66 35.8 119.35 1590 2.44 Assam 46 15.1 9.45 1251 2.55 Bihar 60 36.3 57.95 1200 2.21 Gujurat 61 28.9 74.95 1062 2.52 Haryana 81 65.7 112.77 2489 3.45 Himachal 69 17.4 34.72 1617 Jam. & K 62 41.1 45.23 1538 Kamatak 48 18.1 74.77 1067 2.03 Kerala 40 13.9 74.36 1902 3.17 Madhya PR 38 13.4 36.07 0976 1.72 Maharastra 51 12.0 58. 22 0836 2.27 Orissa 39 23.3 21.11 1042 1.85 Punjab 95 91.0 168.37 3460 3.50 Rajasthan 31 21.3 24.63 0824 2.02 Tamilnadu 80 47.5 123.01 1959 1.73 Uttar PR 60 48.6 88.71 1766 1.94 West Bengal 41 23.9 90.48 1903 2.21 All-India 54 30.4 70.27 1402 Notes/sources: HYV = area under high yielding varieties of five food-crops (rice, wheat, jowar, bajra and maize) to total area under these crops in 1983-85 in percentage; IRRIG = % of net sown area irrigated; FERTL = fertilizer consumption (kilogram) per hectare; RLWAGE = real wages for male agricultural laborers; PRDFOD= productivity of food-crops (kilogram/ hectare). CMIE (1987) for HYV; Chadha(1994) for IRRIG; Pandey and Kumar (1993) for RLWAGE; NIRD (1995) for FERTL; PRDFOD for Chadha (1995). 358 APPENDIX B QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE STUDY OF THE IRDP-IMPLEMENTATION I. TO IRDP BENEFICIARIES A GENERAL INFORMATION: Age, sex, education, occupation Land owned and land cultivated Family Income Extent of Indebtedness Favored political party B. IRDP 1. Could you tell me how you were selected for the IRDP loan. — village meeting -- personal contacts with officials — recommendation of political leaders of the party you supported — officials themselves came and persuaded you — any other 2. What did you want to invest the loan in? — animal husbandry — business — farm-improvement — any other 3. What problems did you have to face to get the loan? —officials’ procrastination in giving the loan —lack of freedom to choose the type of asset you wanted to buy --had to travel to distant markets --any other 4. How much money did you apply for? How much did you get as per records? How much in cash and/or kind did you actually get? Where do you think a part of your rightful share go, and how? 359 5. Do you still have the asset? Discuss how you are using it. How much are you earning from it? Has your economic situation improved because o f the asset? 6. What problems do you face in using the assets? — lack of marketing facilities — you don’t get a good price for what you sell — you don’t have money to reinvest — discuss any other problem 7. If your rightful share is going to others, why don’t you all get organized against the officials in order to put pressure on them to implement the policy as per the rules? 8. What do you think is the role of local communist organizers in the administration of the program? Did you get any help from them? If so, how? Did the other parties also help you get the loan? If yes, how? II. TO COMMUNIST ORGANIZERS 1. Do you think the IRDP helps the poor? If it does not, why not? 2. What can you do to prevent leakages of benefits? 3. What has your party done in this regard? Narrate some incidents of corruption by officials and how your party has intervened. 4. What are the problems in organizing the beneficiaries? III. TO OFFICIALS 1. Discuss the logic of the program. — why was it necessary to have such a program? — how do you think this will help the poor? 2. What problems do you face in implementing the policy? 3. What sorts of pressures you have to face from the politicians in implementing the policy? 4. Has the policy succeeded? If not, why not? 360