Republic of India Livelihoods in intermediate towns

4.2: Agriculture and Its Social Framework in the two Settlements: As discussed above (2.1), the agrarian landscape of Madhubani district has been marked by a kind of “backwardness”, which is both economic and social. Even though the quality of land in the region is not very poor, frequent floods, droughts and a lack of reliable irrigation has made it difficult for the local cultivators to grow much more than their subsistence requirements. We also did not find any effective or visible sign of state investments in agricultural development. Even though rivers flow from and through the region, there are no canals bringing water to the farms of these villages. Some farmers have bore-wells but the supply of electricity is very erratic, which makes the pumping of water quite expensive while using pump sets run on diesel by individual farmers. Farmers in both the settlements complained for not having the benefit of state subsidies for agriculture.

The region has also been known for its absentee but landlords, who not only controlled most of the agricultural lands but also bonded labouring hands through traditional structures of patronage and dependence, often mediated through ties of debt and the normative frames of caste hierarchy, which included the local king of Darbhanga. In the absence of effective implementation of Land Reform legislations, holding structures remained very skewed even after independence. The Brahmins and other upper castes, including some members of the trading castes (currently listed as OBCs) owned most of the land. Satghara, for example, had 4 big landlords, who controlled most the local land. Bhagwatipur was also not very different. Those belonging to the so-called backward castes worked as tenant cultivators, almost completely dependent upon their patriarchs. The situation in our study sites would not have been very different from the duration for which Rogers and Rogers write for their study villages in Purnia district:

In the 1970s and early 1980s, these villages were backward and stagnant, and poverty was intense. Wages barely sufficed to cover basic subsistence, and real incomes were if anything declining. Mortality was high and production relations “semi- feudal”, in the sense that debt bondage, tenancy and attached labour were widespread, served as mechanisms of labour control and exploitation, and were resistant to change. Communications were poor, facilities limited, education levels low. The government action was extremely weak (Rogers and Rogers 2011:43).

However, given that the quality of land was not bad, a wide range of crops could be grown. They ranged from sugarcane, paddy, wheat and lentils to potatoes and a variety of vegetables. The region also has rivers and ponds, which provide useful avenues for fishing, a traditional source of employment for members of the Mallah community. Other caste communities located lower down in the traditional hierarchy similarly had specialized occupations functionally tied to the demands of the powerful patriarchs of the local village communities. Many of them would have also been a source of labour power in the fields and tied to their “patrons” within the normative frames of the caste system.

As in most rural settlements, keeping cattle for milk and ploughing has been a popular practice in these villages. However, over the past two decades, the villages have seen an increasing use of machines for cultivation of land. Given the small and marginal size of most holdings, it is hard for individual farmers to afford tractors, thrashers and other machines. However, both settlements have a number of entrepreneurs who keep such machines and lease them out to small cultivators, after they compete work on their own farms. Some could even be keeping these machines purely for the commercial purpose of renting them out. In Bhagwatipur, a Suri trader had two or three tractors and almost all other machines used for cultivation, which he commercially leased out to local cultivators and often to cultivators in neighboring villages. One or two cultivators in each of the settlements also owned small-size tractors for their exclusive use.
Some farmer did keep cattle for ploughing. However, many more kept cows and buffaloes for milk. Most of them seemed to be using milk for the consumption of their families. Some also sold it in the local market, to individual consumers and to shops. However, keeping cattle for milk as a source of additional income is not popular. There is no collection point of the state milk cooperative anywhere in the two settlements. Nor did find any private trader collecting milk from these villages.
The growing pressures of expanding national economy and fissures produced by the democratic political process of the first three decades of India’s independence created conditions for a gradual change in Bihar economy. According to Rogers and Rogers, the “trigger of change” came sometime in 1970s in the form of short-term migration to northwestern states of Punjab and Haryana where the Green Revolution created demand for additional labour, particularly during the peak seasons. This began to undermine,
…feudal relationships, creating new perspectives, generating additional income sources and pushing up local wages (ibid: 44).
Outmigration from the rural settlements of Bihar continued to grow over the years. Writing on four decades of change in Mahisham village of Madhubani district, on the basis of available data, Amrita Datta shows that by 1980-81, as many 24 percent of the households had at least one migrant member in their family. They went as far as Punjab and Calcutta in search of work. By 1999, this had gone up to 54 per cent and in 2011 the village had 78 percent of its households with a migrant member working outside. As she rightly argues:
Outmigration for work has become a village norm. A key characteristic of migration is the predominance of youth in migration streams; about half of all male migrants were in the 15-30 years age group (Datta 2014:4).
Patterns and destinations of migration have changed over the years. It is no longer short-term seasonal migration. The workers come and go through the year. However, most migrations for work remain circular. Those who go out for work leave their families behind in the village. They tend to come back, once or twice during their active work life and return back to the village when they find it hard to carry on with the life of a migrant worker outsider, generally when they are 45 or 50 years of age (We will return to the subject of migration in a following section).
In both the settlements, the significance and presence of agriculture had visibly declined. Currently, Satghara and its sister settlement have a total of nearly 1600 acres of land. With a growing non-farm economy, only around 25 percent of the total land is under cultivation. Bhagwatipur and its sister settlements however demonstrate a different pattern. Given that the non-farm economy has not grown in Bhagwatipur like it has in Satghara, nearly 70 percent of its land is still under cultivation. Even though some of the land is still owned by upper castes, very few of them work as cultivating farmers. In the case of Bhagwatipur more than half of all the agricultural land is owned by the OBC trading caste of Suris. However, most of them lease out their lands to small cultivators, mostly from EBC communities. Cropping patterns have remained mostly unchanged except for a significant decline in the cultivation of sugarcane, largely because of shutting down of local sugar mills.
4.3: Decline of the “Semi-Feudal” Patriarch: The growing number of men, from the erstwhile traditionally dependent communities, migrating out of the village for work has brought about many changes in the social and political life of the rural settlements. Along with out-migration from the rural areas, the region has simultaneously experienced political assertions from “below”, initially led by different shades of communist parties, and later, in the 1980s and 1990s, by different brands of “backward” caste party politics. Most critical among these, has been the leadership of Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was also the Chief Minister of Bihar from 1990 to 1997. He actively encouraged his constituency, the backward caste electorate, to challenge the authority of the rural feudal patriarch across the state.
Our experience of research in both Satghara and Bhagawatipur demonstrated to us the lingering effect of Mr. Yadav’s politics and political style. Several of our respondents, both from the “upper” and “backward” castes, underlined the historical significance of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s politics of empowering and giving dignity (izzat) to the backwards and Dalits. A significant number of our respondents from the “low” caste communities credited him with having given them bolne ka muh (literally, the ‘mouth to speak with’). According to an elderly male in the Paswan Dalit tola in Satghara, unlike the Naxalites, Lalu had used kanoon (law) in the interest of the underprivileged.
The traditional power of the feudal patriarch has declined from within as well. With a limited amount of land available and the fragmentation of land holding within the family as generations progressed, their economic strength declined. Given the changing economic and political environment, the aspirations of the younger generations, particularly since the introduction neo-liberal economic policies in 1990s, too began to change. They now wished to move out of the village, for education and from there to jobs in the urban economy, never to return to the village.
In such a fast changing political, social and economic scenario, many of the landlords simply sold their lands to the upwardly mobile from “forward-backward” caste groups. Others moved to towns, while leasing-out their lands to small farmers. Still others began to cultivate on their own. Studying the village of Changel in 1996 in Bihar, Das (1996) too observed and documented the emerging rural organization in relation to migration, according to which ‘many of the zamindars have disappeared and the holdings of the landlords have been severely fragmented, by and large, with the result that several former landlords have been forced to take part in cultivation as middle peasants’ whereas ‘some other upper and middle caste landowners have diversified into trade, selling cloth, kerosene, milk , groceries and the like . The successful ones among them have enhanced their economic position while others have treated their business as an excuse for not being forced into direct agriculture work’ (Das 1996: 14-15).
Even those who still have large holdings within the village do not command power and authority unlike their counterparts did a couple of decades ago. One such person, whose family reportedly still owns more than 100 acres of land in Satghara spoke quite defensively (though not apologetically) during his interview. Referring to the stark difference between the past and present of his family, he stated, with poetic melancholy:
Previously, if we called for one person, a hundred would come running to serve us. Now I have to ask a hundred to come and it is with great difficulty that one turns up…

(Pahale eek ko bulate thhee to sao dodde aate thhe.

Aab sao ko bulate hain to eek mushkil se aata hai).

Another respondent, a Suri shopkeeper in Bhagwatipur, who has several business interests including sale of aluminum trunks, repair and recharge of mobile phones also told us about the decline of old powers emanating from land ownership:

My grandfather had nearly 300 bighas of land. My father had two other brothers, and spread over his siblings and my cousins, I now only have 5 bighas of land to my name. I now give my land to sharecroppers, and it is turning out to be so unprofitable that we find no point in cultivating our land.
Previously, when the labour would come to till the land, they would leave their footwear at a distance, they couldn’t even speak up. Since Lalu’s time, the lower castes have had an opportunity to speak. Now all of them migrate and earn money from outside, hum zamindaar log kudaali kaise uthayega? (We are landlords; how can we plough the land with our hands?) The status of the zamindaar is only deteriorating. Those in the new generation, who are going out to study, are making it better for themselves. People like us are only bothered with somehow saving our dignity and pride and in the process not able to do much (hum log izzyat bachane ke liye na kuch kar rahe hain, na ji rahe hain, na mar rahein hain).
Even though agriculture continues to be an important economic activity in these settlements, it is no longer the primary source of livelihood for a large majority or rural residents of the district. With the exception of a very small proportion (not more than 5 to 10 percent), most land holdings have become very small with an average size of around one to two acres, which can invariably be self-owned and/or leased-in from an absentee landowner. Even in Bhagwatipur, which only has around one third of its male workers primarily employed in non-farm activity; most families manage their economies through a combination of income generated from small plots of land and the remittances received from the migrant members of the family. A part of the remittances was typically used for investing in land, which, in turn enabled the families to produce grains for their own consumption. Some of this was also sold to the local shopkeeper, often in exchange for the groceries required for family consumption.
Sharecropping has become quite common in both the settlements. Most of those who still own large holdings, generally from the traditional upper and trading castes, rarely cultivate land on their own. They prefer leasing it out to the laboring households, who are mostly from EBCs and SCs. These laboring households either do not own any land or own very small plots of land. While younger members of their families tend to go out to work, their women and older men find sharecropping a useful source of additional income. Those who are not employed in the local non-farm economy cannot find a steady source of employment within the village.
Cultivating land, even if it is a small plot, requires some initial investment. Agricultural inputs have to be increasingly procured from the market: seeds, fertilizers or hiring of tractors and other machines. Only rarely do they get the landowners to give them money for such investments. Even if they do, it is on high interest rates. Some of them also borrow from local moneylenders for such investments. Many of the respondents told us about the value of remittances received from members of their family who work outside in carrying out agriculture. However, sharecrop farming is not only a useful source of employment for the left-behind members of the poor households, but it also provides critical supplement to the family income, required for its reproduction.
In this wider context of social and economic changes, we ought to see the rise of non-farm economic enterprises in the two settlements, with outmigration working as the critical trigger.