Impact of Globalisation on Agricultural Workers

Hannan Mollah

DURING the developing economic and social crisis in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union and some other socialist countries, the fund-bank duo have been loudly proclaiming that their prescriptions of globalisation are a panacea for the world’s economic evils. But the fact is that the experience of globalisation in the last one decade and a half has been in sharp contrast to the rosy picture the fund-bank had painted. Instead of bringing the third world countries to a level where they are able to compete in the world market, the system has pushed up unemployment there, converting them into havens of excessively cheap labour, including child labour. Moreover, neo-liberalism has truly destroyed civil society in many countries. It is hardly surprising, then, that the gap between the rich and the poor has widened as time progressed. In the early 1970s the gap between the incomes earned by the richest 20 per cent and the poorest 20 per cent stood at a factor of approximately 30. By 2001, this factor had increased to 74. There has of course been a phenomenal economic growth, and this has increased the number of millionaires and billionaires. But the percentage of poor people has also risen.

 This is not what some leftist has said. Rather, this is the gist of what an editorial of a German magazine Deutschland recently pointed out.

IMPACT ON WORK & WAGES

 All these evils are visible in our own country as well, and are increasingly affecting our economy, industry, agriculture and social life. If one examines their impact on our agriculture and agricultural workers, one may well see where the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG), being pushed by the World Bank-IMF-WTO trio, are leading us to.

In fact, the ruling classes of India have been very eagerly implementing the fund-bank directives; that is why their emphasis in the field of agricultural production changed from for food sufficiency to exports. As a result, imports of thousands of items of agricultural produce have been liberalised. We are now importing even food grains from developed countries that have an excess of them, and such imports are capturing our food market. Our producers are, as a result, facing a serious challenge. At the same time, the government too has slowed down the procurement of food grains and producers are not getting remunerative prices. Those producing cash crops are also in great difficulty; in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and other states a large number of them have been driven to commit suicide. Our peasantry is facing great hardships also because of the decline in government expenditure on rural development projects, irrigation, state-sponsored credit schemes, subsidisation of fertilisers, etc.

The growing costs of agricultural inputs and a shrinkage of the market for agricultural produce are not only causing problems for farmers, but are also affecting rural employment severely. As the farmers cannot reduce the cost of other inputs, they are resorting to reducing the cost of labour-component in cultivation. They are pressurising the agricultural workers to work more. They are giving the latter lesser wages. They are employing women and children for lesser wages, and going in for more and more mechanisation. As a result, today, agricultural workers are not getting even 100 days work in a year and are facing starvation. In the tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and Rajasthan, a widespread starvation situation is prevailing; people there are forced to eat roots and even rats. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from different parts of these tribal dominated as well as some other regions. So are coming the reports of suicides as well as of the sale of women and children.

Due to massive rural unemployment that has been accentuated by serious drought conditions in about 16 states today, there is widespread migration of agricultural workers to other states and to cities. The situation in Karnataka is very serious, especially in the border districts in northern and western Karnataka. A large number of workers have migrated to Maharashtra and Goa in search of work. Those who are staying back are suffering on account of non-availability of work. Lower wages, shortage of drinking water and scarcity of cattle fodder have hit them hard. The low demand for labourers has led to a considerable decline in wage rates. It is as low as Rs 12 per day for women and Rs 20 for men. The wage rate in the coastal districts too has fallen drastically.

Other states too are facing a similar situation. A survey of Rajasthan is alarming. A large number of workers are pouring into capital Jaipur from surrounding districts. Of them, 58 per cent belong to the SC and ST communities and another 37 per cent to the OBCs. Their number is increasing every day. In their thousands they assemble in particular squares every morning and try to sell themselves for a pittance in the name of a daily wage. Due to the severe drought and the lack of work and income, some districts have also reported growing prostitution by young girls.

FOOD SECURITY IN JEOPARDY

 Globalisation has also had an adverse effect on our food security. Export oriented agriculture is gradually reducing the area of food cultivation, as more and more land is being used for cash crop production. This is helping the rich farmers who get all help from the government and increase their income by exporting their products. A continuation of this policy will only make us more and more dependent on food imports, and this thing may prove fatal for our country, as it has proved for many African countries.

Moreover, even though our godowns have a stock of about 6 crore metric tonnes of food grains; people are starving all over the country. The government has failed to use the food grains it has for various food-for-work programmes; it is also refusing to sell these grains to the poor at cheaper rates through the public distribution system. Nor are there vigorous steps to effectively fight the drought and flood situations in different parts of the country.

At the same time, the union government is also guilty of discriminating against the states ruled by non-NDA parties while favouring the NDA-ruled states for political reasons. Rice worth Rs 3,500 crore was given to Chandrababu Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh, but a large quantity of this rice has been sold in black market instead of being given to the poor. On the other hand, because of the paucity of food grains and other resources, some of the states are unable to do whatever they want to do in order to rush relief to the rural poor and mitigate their sufferings.

DECLINE IN EMPLOYMENT

 Some in-depth studies have shown various short-term and long-term adverse effects of globalisation on our economy. According to an estimate, imports from foreign countries have killed as many as 4 lakh small and medium size industries in India. A large number of industrial units have downed their shutters in Mumbai, Thane, Belapur, Bhiwandi, Aurangabad, Kanpur, Aligarh, Indore and several other towns. As many as 60 per cent of powerlooms are silent in Bhiwandi. In Aligarh, small firms engaged in making locks and other hardware for generations together, are closing down in droves. In Maharashtra, you will find every second factory closed if you pass through the Thane-Belapur complex. The NSS survey data for 1999-2000 show that thousands, if not lakhs, of people have lost their jobs.

As for the number of people employed in agriculture at the all-India level, the report of the Planning Commission’s task force on employment opportunities shows an absolute decline between 1993-94 and 1999-2000. The situation in the recent past is such that the specific activities or sectors, in which rural workers in general and rural female workers in particular are employed, have already begun to suffer setbacks. During the post-1993 years, the overall employment growth rate for rural people has declined in 13 states, compared to the preceding decade. “The picture looks fairly depressing,” says an article written by G K Chaddah and P P Sahu in the Economic and Political Weekly. It further says, “A worrisome development is that agriculture has consistently been losing its ground in terms of investors’ priorities. And this has been happening in the pre- as well as post-reform years. This trend is obviously at odds with the employment stakes in agriculture.”

Thus the impact of globalisation on our agrarian sector has worsened the plight of agricultural workers to an alarming degree. The share of agriculture in our gross domestic product (GDP) has declined from 54.56 per cent in 1951-52 to 27.87 per cent in 1999-2000 --- almost a 50 per cent reduction.  But the shift of labour force from agriculture to other sectors, as projected by the followers of the World Bank-IMF model, has not taken place. For, as much as 65 per cent of our workforce is still engaged in agriculture. These limitations are severely affecting the capacity of Indian agriculture to compete in the global market. Characterised by low and stagnating yields, a very large proportion of marginal, small and semi-medium holdings, a high proportion of landless labour households, and highly concentrated and food-oriented cropping system, Indian agriculture would therefore be facing serious challenges, both internal and external, in the process of fulfilling WTO commitments.

The All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) has decided to explain this situation to the millions of our agricultural workers. Most of them are illiterate, backward and poor, and have no idea of the mechanism of exploitation and miseries which the rich countries are heaping on them through their philosophy of globalisation and its insidious methods. If these suffering masses fail to identify their real enemies, they will only continue to blame their fate and stars or their immediate neighbours. There is also the risk that vested interests may misuse the situation to pit the agricultural workers against, say, poor or middle peasants or against industrial workers. Our country has no lack of such politicians who project as if all the urban masses are engaged in exploiting all the rural people including landlords. It is thus clear that if the AIAWU fails to organise these agricultural workers and raise their consciousness, they cannot unite and fight against the evils of globalisation, much less defeat its pernicious policies on our soil.