Farm labour bears an unequal burden

The impact of the nation-wide lockdown on the agricultureand other food producing sectors is yet to be fully unravelled.  Stories have started coming in from some ofthe States, where farmers of perishable horticulture crops are faced withthreat of loss and indebtedness as they cannot reach market places.  As for other crops, many regions are gettingready for the rabi harvest. A few measures including exempting farming andallied activities from the lockdown have been announced by the States to ensurethat rabi harvesting continues uninterrupted.

There is no gainsaying that practicalsolutions are needed to address the immediate problems faced by farmers. Thequestion, however, is whether these measures can be leveraged strategically totransform the current institutional environment around farming and the precariousworkforce that depends on it for survival. Let’s take the peculiar case of sharecropping labour or the ‘bhagiyamazdoori’ system in North Gujarat.  Thisis a typical labour arrangement where adivasi workers, mostly from across theRajasthan border are engaged as workers by large farmers under crop-sharinginformal contracts with an inbuilt component of wage advance.  The share contract obligates them to bear allthe costs relating to labour, while they get one fifth or one fourth of the harvestas wages.  Most of the crops in thisregion are labour intensive (like cotton) and, hence, involve relatively highershare of human labour costs (about 30 percent of total cost in the case ofcotton). After accounting for the wage and the cost of labour, the workersoften end up returning home with almost nothing.  Thus, the ‘bhagiya mazdoori’ system has cometo be associated with perpetual poverty and indebtedness of adivasi labourhouseholds.

   

For thousands of ‘bhagiya’ men and women workers from thevillages of the Kotda block of Rajasthan, the current lockdown is the mostill-timed. The result of their labour is lying across the border, ready to berealised. And yet, they cannot cross the border to claim their share. Some areheld up in the farms on the other side, while their families are in Rajasthan.The daily wage workers who routinely commute between Kotda and the neighbouringGujarat villages are left with no choice, but not to work and wait for helpfrom the State.

An ongoing study among the adivasi workers on both theGujarat and Rajasthan sides of the border reveals that given a choice theyprefer daily wage employment to the share-cropping labour system as they expectthe former to fetch them larger cash income. This is not to say that finding daily wage work is hassle-free,especially for women wage workers, who work continuously for 15 hours a day ormore, balancing farm work and household chores. They travel long distances byjeep spending a good part of their earnings on transport.  Paradoxically, all this is happening at a timewhen studies claim that agricultural wages have gone up in the face of labourshortage.

What would be the prospects of the workers trapped in asharecropping relationship once the lockdown is over?  Will they be paid their wage dues? Thefarmers will have reasons to delay or deny payment to the workers. Who willensure that the farmers will pay them at least the minimum wages? Who will theyturn to in case they have any complaints?

Two labour rights organisations (Aajeevika Bureau and KotdaAdivasi Sansthan) working for migrant workers launched an initiative as much asa decade ago in Northern Gujarat to improve the terms of the ‘bhagiya mazdoori’system. Written contracts, transparent accounting and an increase in workershare to a third have been the key issues addressed by the initiative. Despitetheir radical intent, these initiatives have had only mixed success – farmershave a strong feudal hold on the adivasi sharecroppers because of the advancesthey offer.  The workers are difficult toorganise as they are highly dispersed over a vast area. State policy haslargely been indifferent to the conditions of farm workers.  These conditions have resulted in deepeningimpoverishment of sharecroppers, trapping them perpetually in a situationsimilar to bonded and indentured workers.

The current crisis is an opportune moment to revisit thesesolutions. For instance, the State could enforce formal work arrangementsbetween farmers and sharecroppers in order to reduce the repeated loss of fairshare or wages to the workers. The bailout packages for farmers must notoverlook wage assurances to farm labour priced at least at minimum wagelevels.  Legitimising farm workers collectivesto represent workers issues will ensure some parity with farmers who are sowell organised economically and politically. Expanding the coverage of MGNREGAwidely to include smaller and scattered villages in blocks like Kotda is alsovery important at this juncture.  It canboth create employment opportunities and regenerate the local productiveresources, which in turn could help households gainfully employ themselves infarming activities within the villages, and avoid desperate migration to someextent.  This may also encourage farmers tolook for innovative alternatives to manual labour.

Dr Tara Nair, a Professor at the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, works on issues of rural poverty, livelihoods and micro-finance

Syndicate: The Billion Press (editor@thebillionpress.org)

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