- Mao Tse-Tung
If Mao was alive he would smile benignly at the wanton violence which has gripped rural India, where 80 per cent of the country's population lives. For him the reports of rural violence would have read not like a chronology of death and destruction but the sparking off of a rural revolution which is long overdue in India.
No less than 10 savage incidents have made front page headlines since last December involving 42 deaths in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alone. Fourteen Harijans were shot dead at Jauharpur in Uttar Pradesh on December 11. A month later a group of policemen indulged in a mass orgy of rape and plunder killing two Harijans at Narainpur in Uttar Pradesh.
In neighbouring Bihar, 12 members of the backward caste were shot dead at night at Parasbigha. Twenty one days later 14 Harijans were butchered by a 500-strong gang of armed men at Pipra, and on March 16 Harijan houses were set on fire at Katni.
The incidents so far reported reveal a clear pattern of class conflict which is silently simmering among the economically backward segment of India's 650 million people. The reason: The rising expectations of those who have been economically suppressed by India's much maligned and yet deeply entrenched social hierarchy the - caste system.
Rights: The Harijans are poor because they are Harijans - the lowest of the low in the Hindu hierarchy. Time, education and better communications have brought among them a new consciousness.
Like the Blacks in America, the Harijans in India are now on the warpath demanding a better life and equal economic opportunity. But the landlords are hacking them down to keep them in their place as the Whites did to the Blacks in the American South when they demanded more civic rights.
Almost three decades after Independence India's rural masses are rising for a greater share of the economic cake. A social revolution is slowly gathering momentum in India's 500,000 villages. The torch has been lit in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh so much so that names like Pipra, Narainpur and Parasbigha have become synonymous with the fight for basic human rights.
It is 30 years since the Telengana uprising and 13 since the "spring thunder" roared over Naxalbari in West Bengal when the countryside resounded with the crackle of gunfire and the thuds of home-made bombs in land wars under the leadership of the Leftist extremists.
But pious pledges of land reforms, implemented half-heartedly - if at all - and talks of rural development have only exacerbated the situation. Now the tension is spreading like a wild bush fire. The situation is serious in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Although such conflagration is not imminent in the other states, the danger exists in the long run if nothing is done to defuse the situation soon.
Deep Malaise: Of the 1.5 million crimes registered during 1978, 20 per cent or 300,000, involved land disputes. About half of these were committed in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
B.G. Verghese, journalist and commentator on social affairs attached to the Delhi's Gandhi Peace Foundation, warns: "To view it in terms of old fashioned caste factors is irrelevant. It is also misleading to look at it in terms of law and order. This is only a manifestation of the malaise." Liberal sociologists and economists also share this view.
As a hangover of the age old varnasdharm, social and economic power was concentrated in the hands of higher castes while low castes were relegated to the position of drawers of waters and hewers of wood. The social aspect of caste and the economics of class are, therefore inter-linked. Said a senior bureaucrat connected with land reforms: "Caste is a camouflage for class."
Poverty: The fact is that Harijans, for example, are mostly landless labourers and seldom, if ever, landlords. This reinforces the volunerability of the Harijans making them more Susceptible to landlord violence should they try to stand up for their rights.
Says K.C. Alexander, a sociologist at the National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad: "Agrarian tension rises chiefly in those areas where the Harijan poor constitute more than 40 per cent of the population."
According to estimates, every second person in the rural areas lives below the poverty line as against every fourteenth person in the urban areas. In terms of food consumption the villager gets less than 2,250 calories a day - roughly equal to half a kilogramme of grain. In term of minimum expenditure - Rs 40 a month - seven out often persons in the villages live below the poverty line. In fact, the percentage of the rural population living below the poverty line increased from 52 per cent in 1960-61 to over 70 per cent in 1978-79.
In Pipra, for example, the landless labourers are paid one kilogramme of food-grains for a day's work. Bhandu, 70, one of the survivors of the Pipra massacre, sitting amidst a heap of rubble which is all that remains of his hearthly possessions said: "We asked for two kilogrammes of grains and this is what they did to us. How can you expect us to feed our families on one kilo?" Like millions of others he leads a bleak existence always threatened by the uncertainty of getting his next meal.
Widening Gap: The other aspect of the rural picture which has aggravated the situation is the growing disparities. Says P.C. Joshi, professor at Delhi's Institute of Economic Growth and an expert on agrarian problems: "It is a new phenomenon that poverty is associated with growth."
The benefits of the Green Revolution which lifted the big and medium farmer to the orbit of urban affluence have sent the poor hurtling into an abyss of poverty. "I'm reminded of the biblical saying: To him that hath more will be given and from he that hath little all will be taken away'," says Joshi.
While 15 per cent in the top rungs of the rural economic ladder earn 42 per cent of the total income the remaining 85 per cent are left to scramble for the rest of the 48 per cent of the economic cake.
The Landless: Adding to this grave disparity is the increasing number of the landless who are growing faster than the population - dispossessed of their lands by poverty and indebtedness to the zamindars. More marginal farmers are joining the exploding population as grist to the exploitative mill.
Their number shot up by a phenomenal 83.20 per cent during the '60s. Competing with them for scarce jobs are the displaced tenant farmers whose lands have been taken over by the owners who, with the Green Revolution, find it more profitable now to cultivate themselves. They are also scared of the tenancy reform laws which are meant, ironically, to protect the tenants.
Said Jiwan Narain, 50, a shrunken grassroots Harijan leader of rural Patna district: "I don't know how to explain it. But gradually we know that we are not like cattle. We are human beings. The blood of a Thakur or a Koeri is no different from ours. The moment we assert this, see what happens."
Education has also made its contribution. A young man from Pipra who failed his matriculation and is now a peon in a government office in Patna said: "If none of us could go to school or get out of the village, we would not have known anything. But once we have, how can we be expected to put up with all this?" While others from Pipra want to move out of the village, he wants to stay and fight.
About 500,000 people move to the cities every year in search of jobs and return home bringing with them the saga of the cities. Films, television and language newspapers have opened up the new horizons for them. The people in the villages now think and ask the question: Why are they backward?
The communists have also made their contribution. In almost all the areas of tension, the Communist Party of India (CPI), the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the various factions of the Naxalites have established their cells. The new entrants to the field include organisations of tribals like Santhal leader Sibu Soren's Jharkand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and Harijan-Dalit bodies.
In Bihar, the flourishing arms industry provides the wick to the agrarian Moltov cocktail. In the Pipra area, officials estimate that every third house has a gun. While guns were once the monopoly of the rich, in Bihar the Harijans and the landless peasants are also acquiring them now.
Guns made by blacksmiths sell for about Rs 800. In Kalyan Chak, a village adjoining Pipra, a landowner said: "We have an efficient blacksmith around. The trouble is that he is not choosy about his customers any more." Beghusarai district is the hub of arms manufacture in the state. Said a police official cynically: "Who says the cottage industry is inefficient? You should see our blacksmiths."
Strength: Once the fire and muscle power was the monopoly of the landed interests. But not anymore. For the first time the rich are increasingly finding their authority questioned and it is too much for them to stomach.
Recently in Purnea, about 20 high caste landlords led by district Janata Yuva Morcha Secretary, Jaikant Mandal held a fast outside the district magistrate's office demanding "protection" from the Adivasis - the Santhals - armed with bow and arrows, who had captured over 550 acres of land.
Organisation: In Sirsilla and Jagital Talukas of Karimnagar district in the Telangana area of Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalites have set up a Ryothu Coolie Sangham (Farm Labourers' Union) over the last two years. The tensions rise and fall here and the landlords fear that the Sangham members will kill them and occupy the land.
In Thanjavur district, the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu, 42 Harijans were burnt to death in 1968 by local leaders following an agitation for higher wages, at Kilvanmani, about 60 km away. Recently, six Marxists, including Venkatachallam, the leader of its peasant organisation, Kisan Sabha, were killed.
The landlords have set up an Agriculturists Association to "safeguard" their interests. In Dharmapuri district, which has lately become the hotbed of Naxalite activity, similar associations have been set up to fight the landless labourers rallying around the Naxalites' red star.
Agrarian reforms designed to provide escape from the poverty and exploitation trap ensnaring the rural poor have four facets:
- land reforms, that is, the implementation of ceiling laws and the distribution of surplus land to the have-nots;
- tenancy reforms under which farmers are given security;
- payment of minimum wages to the farm labour;
- abolition of debts.
It is the non-implementation or the distortion of these well meaning laws which are the root of rural violence.
Invaluable: The importance of land in the rural areas is inestimable. Says economist Raj Krishna, a former member of the Planning Commission and also former chairman of the Committee on Land Reforms: "Land is everything in the village. Without it one becomes a non-person. There is no livelihood, social and political status, physical security and avenues for economic betterment like securing bank loans." Adds Verghese: "Land is a synonym for a job."
In traditional Indian society all land was owned by the community and individuals acquired only the hereditary rights to till it. To simplify tax collection procedures and to duplicate the English institution of the village squire in a perverted form, the British handed over large chunks of land to selected Indians under "permanent settlement" in the 18th century.
These persons became the zamindars and acquired proprietorial rights over the lands. In the first flush of Independence, which, incidentally, was also accompanied by peasant unrest, the Congress instituted the first phase of land reforms eliminating the zamindars.
Simultaneously it also announced its intention to eventually transfer lands to the tiller. But the rural elite, including those who had benefitted from the abolition of the zamindari system, now had a share of political power. They delayed the implementation of land reforms and in the meanwhile, transferred their surplus holdings to others or resorted to other means of beating the ceiling laws.
Little Implementation: The Sarvodaya leader, Vinoba Bhave, meanwhile started his bhoodan (landgift) movement to persuade the landlords to part voluntarily with their surplus lands for distribution to the poor. Travelling by foot around the countryside, he buttonholed the rich to donate their surplus lands. But they saddled him with uncultivable tracts.
The representation of "agriculturists" - quite often a euphemism for absentee landlords - rose from 22.4 per cent in the first Lok Sabha to 39.3 per cent in the present one. In the state legislatures, according to unofficial estimates, seven out of ten members are landowners. Of the 3,000-odd officials in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), who frame and implement agrarian laws, about 40 per cent belong to the landowning classes.
Joining hands with them are the urban elite who began purchasing lands in the villages because agricultural income is tax-free. Some of the worst instances of ceiling law evasion and violation of minimum wage regulations can be witnessed at Mehrauli, about 15 km from the heart of New Delhi, where the capital's political and bureaucratic elite own farms.
Said an enthusiastic young IAS officer in Bihar: "Several times I have had this funny experience. Politicians visiting my district would talk about land reforms and as soon as they climb down from the stage, they pull me up for having dared to implement precisely those laws."
One of the arguments of the anti-land reforms lobby is that large holdings are essential for increasing production. But the Indian experience has been just the opposite. Says Joshi: "To ask for large holdings is blindly applying the western models.
There the agricultural revolution was an engineering one, with mechanisation playing a crucial role in increasing yields. But here, the Green Revolution was a biological and scientific one. The yields increased because of better seeds and inputs like fertilisers and irrigation."
Studies show that productivity per acre increases as the land holding per person reduces in size till a limit of about 2.5 acres. According to Raj Krishna, the average size of land holding in Japan is one hectare (about 2.4 acres) and the yield is three to four tonnes per hectare. In India, the production per acre is 1.2 tonnes while the average size of land-holding is two hectares.
In 1972 the Congress Party ordered speedy implementation of land reforms. Those were the days of garibi hatao and the shots fired at Naxalbari had echoed around the countryside, stirring latent tensions. Another attempt at implementation of various agrarian reforms was made as a part of the 20-point Programme package of the Emergency.
"Broken Promises": Raj Krishna describes agrarian reforms as a "sad history of broken promises". Says he: "'All the governments bear the responsibility for the failure of land reforms. Only the records of Leftist-ruled West Bengal and Kerala and Karnataka under Devraj Urs is good. "He attributes the success of Karnataka and West Bengal to the implementation of tenancy reforms, an important pre-requisite of land reforms.
Under Urs 250,000 tenant farmers were identified and registered in Karnataka. In Kerala, about 69,000 acres of surplus land has been taken over and only about 1,000 acres is left to be acquired. The state has registered three million tenant farmers and enacted a pioneering Agricultural Workers Protection Act, recognising trade union rights of agricultural labour and providing for a machinery to settle disputes and enforce minimum wages.
Implementation of agrarian reforms is a state subject and the Centre has no direct powers. The ceilings imposed vary from state to state, though the maximum and minimum prescribed by the Centre are 10 and 54 acres, depending on the land's productivity. Kerala has the lowest ceiling with six acres. Another curious aspect of it is that a person can own land in more than one state upto the ceiling applicable in each of them.
Litigation: The main problem in agrarian reforms implementation is the poor stale of land records. Though land reform legislations constitutional validity cannot be challenged following constitutional amendments, their implementation can be challenged and litigations breed like rabbits around it. Says P.T. George, an economist at the National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad: "When I was in the land reforms division, we evolved many plans to plug the loopholes in the Acts. But they only led to more litigations."
Lakshman Rishi, 50, of Kushkibagh who has a 10-member family has been fighting a tenancy case in this court for the last 15 years. "All these land reforms seem to be bogus. I have sold everything I had to fight this case and I am nowhere close to getting the case decided."
There are several others like him clutching faded legal documents, trudging to distant courts for justice. Said a young lawyer: "If these people still trust any institution, it is the courts. Now we want to destroy even this, leaving them no hope in constitutional procedures."
Benami Transactions: There are several ways to beat the ceiling laws. The most simple is the transfer to other benami names. Said a land record officer in Bihar: "Yes, it is true. I have come across a case or two of people transferring their surplus lands to their pets. But the most common methods are of transferring the lands to a god and appointing oneself as a trustee, or to fictitious persons living in far-away cities. You can also transfer it to your share-croppers and make a loan agreement to cover the costs and keep taking away their produce like you always did. Only now you will call it interest."
The most telling indictment of the implementation of land reforms came from a Task Force appointed by the Planning Commission: "In no sphere of public activity in our country since Independence has the hiatus between the precept and practice, between policy pronouncements and actual execution, been as great as in the domain of land reforms.''
The same report also speaks of the lack of political will to implement land reforms, and points out that "pressure from below" is a pre-requisite to the implementation of land reform laws. This can come only through the organisation of the scattered, fear-struck landless labourers along constructive lines to fight for their rights.
Officials trying to detect benami land holdings, breach of the Minimum Wages Act and unregistered tenancies report that one of the reasons why workers are not willing to come forward and cooperate with them is that they fear reprisals. Nor can they do anything to bring pressure on the authorities for the implementation of land reforms.
Unionisation: Says Raj Krishna, a sedate intellectual and hardly a rabble rouser: "You have to have universal unionisation of the poor. Only they can protect themselves and nobody else can. And they have to struggle against not only their oppressors but also the bureaucracy."
He suggests the setting up of a Rs 5-crore fund to finance such unions. The fund would be administered by an impartial body of jurists and academics. If would provide subsidy to all organisations and persons working for unionisation in proportion to the membership, without any discrimination.
Rural violence is not a matter of only law and order or politics. Thus the dismissal of a "weak and inefficient" Ram Sunder Das Ministry in Bihar and the imposition of President's Rule could not stop the Pipra atrocities from taking place. The fundamental malaise is too serious to respond to mere changes in administration.
But the ultimate solution has to be economic. The land reforms have their limitations because of the pressure on the land and this has to be reduced. More people have to be moved from agriculture to non-agricultural occupations.
If land reforms are initiated, the purchasing power of the beneficiaries will go up, opening a new market which can be exploited by village artisans. This would lead to employment opportunities for more people in non-agricultural areas. In turn this would help raise the wages of agricultural labour.
Agricultural Investment: Says Narendra Singh, general secretary of the Kisan Sammelan: "This is what Choudhury Charan Singh has always said. Invest in cottage industry to take more people away from agriculture. This is essential for defusing the tension spawned by poverty and rising expectations. In all countries the proportion of people in agriculture declined progressively and their prosperity went up."
Charan Singh has a point but he has been overstating it. Land reforms would create a market for the rural industries without requiring the urban factories to shut down or export their produce.
But there are other areas requiring attention too. Agriculture needs more investment, particularly in irrigation, to raise the productivity of the land. The expenditure on agriculture during the First Five Year Plan declined from 31 per cent of the total spending to 21 per cent in the Fifth Plan. Pradhan H. Prasad, an economist of the A.N. Sinha Institute of Patna, says: "The only way we can defuse the rural time bomb is by a massive and rapid investment in the rural areas. If it comes in driblets, the population increase will neutralise it."
India's lethagic bureaucracy and self-serving politicians would do well to listen to the ticking of the rural time bomb, and take measures quickly enough to stop the clock before the bomb explodes in their complacent faces.
Arul B. Louis with Prabhu Chawla in New Delhi, Amarnath K. Menon in Hyderabad, Farzand Ahmed in Patna and Arthur Pais in Madras