The Hindu Business Line : In pursuit of work

Traditional agricultural practices as compared to cost-intensive, market-oriented cultivation are more sustainable for small farmers in the long run, and small farmers must be encouraged to pursue these traditional methods.

ON THE RUN... Migrant workers flock to cities, fleeing from poverty back home - A. Roy Chowdhury

Pakirappa, Yellappa, Lingappa, and Durgavva are waiting on platform 8 of the Bangalore City railway station for the train heading towards north Karnataka. They are all returning home after a long, tedious search for employment they did not find. The platform is choked to capacity with men and women squatting around, tiredly clutching bundles containing their meagre possessions.

The train chugs in late and after a brief, almost violent struggle, most of the waiting passengers force themselves into the unreserved compartment and fill it to double its capacity.

Says Pakirappa (43), a landless farmer from Shikaripura in Shimoga district, "Back in my village, I earn daily wages working on other farms. This year, I got no work at all, so I decided to come to Bangalore and earn some money. My family and I had to borrow money for this trip."

At the end of the month, which has gone by merely looking for employment, the money has run out and he has not found any work; so he has to return home. His overriding concern is how he will repay the debt he has incurred.

Yellappa and Lingappa from Haveri district too have migrated to Bangalore, though for slightly different reasons. They are landowners with small landholdings of 1-2 acres back home. "Even during years of good rains, our livelihood is difficult, as what we grow is not enough for our large, joint families. We came here in search of work and extra income, but are returning home without anything," rues Lingappa.

Many of them carry ornately decorated stands that house their deity, and a dholak. When questioned, one of the men reluctantly reveals that the children are sent to beg in the name of the goddess at traffic lights and other places, while the adults search for work. "We are not sure of getting employment, but our children almost always bring in some money at the end of the day," he says.

Problems of the small farmer

Pakirappa and Lingappa symbolise what is essentially a much larger malaise among Indian farmers. Seventy per cent of India's population (90 per cent of this being small farmers) depends on agriculture for its livelihood. Small farmers have a 1-2 acre landholding, which makes cash crop cultivation economically non-viable.

As a result, small farmers live challenged lives even under ideal conditions such as years of good monsoons and yields. Their existence is already economically fragile as they are often deeply in debt, owing to continued borrowings for purchasing seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. In years of scanty or overly bounteous rains, when their crops fail, the consequences are disastrous.

Thereafter they are left `holding the tiger by the tail'. In an effort to repay past debts, they incur fresh ones and continue to cultivate their land. Frequently, even after a good harvest, small farmers fail to benefit, as unstable market conditions or a glut in the market result in inadequate returns for their produce.

After settling debts they have incurred for seed and other inputs, what they have left is insufficient for the long year before them. They have other expenses, such as those on health, that have to be met in the absence of efficient public healthcare facilities. When these exceed all limits, migration, or even suicide, are the only options.

Migration and after

Farmers who opt to migrate to cities in search of alternative livelihoods do not have skills that would make them `employable' in cities. If lucky, they land jobs on construction sites or as casual labourers. The women are worse off, as they are vulnerable to exploitation at several levels and sometimes end up as sex workers. Migrants do not enjoy any security on housing or food. They end up living in slums, and have no option but to stick on, despite the meagre wages they earn. A lose-lose situation because this influx into cities adds to the existing pressures on housing, water, electricity and myriad other human needs. More alarming is the fact that migration is a significant contributing factor to the growing numbers of HIV-infected people.

Are there solutions?

In recent times, we have heard industry leaders opine that surplus agriculture labour must be brought into manufacture, information technology, etc. Comparisons are made with China where 150 million people have been shifted in the last decade from land into manufacturing.

The Chinese example notwithstanding, it would be naïve to attempt the same in India despite rural India having a mammoth surplus population that can be spared to professions other than agriculture.

This population is unskilled and given rural India's decrepit education system, it seems a far-fetched dream that they will be able to contribute productively to other industries. Even if that were possible, it would take at least a decade for the results to show up.

There is, in the meantime, an urgent need to motivate farmers to stay back in their villages, even while attempting to build skills for other professions into the younger generations in rural areas.

Can it be done?

What does a farmer, or for that matter any human, need to live a decent life? Food security, shelter, education, and healthcare. Can a small farmer even aspire for these by relying on agriculture alone?

As Dr Vanaja Ramaprasad, Director, GREEN Foundation (a Bangalore-based NGO working to revive traditional agriculture practices), observes: "Farmers with small landholdings have traditionally followed practices of multi-cropping with the use of traditional varieties of seeds to ensure annual food security. They must be encouraged in the shift from mono to multi-cropping."

Multi-cropping involves simultaneous cultivation of varied crops such as pulses, vegetables, finger millets etc in a small area. This ensures that if one crop fails for some reason, the others are still available to the farmer. Traditional seeds can be stored and multiplied, eliminating additional investment on seeds. Many of these seed varieties are hardy and resistant to pests, thus reducing the farmers' dependence on pesticides.

There are other challenges that farmers face. As Dr R.S. Deshpande, Professor and Head, Agricultural Development and Rural Transformation Centre, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, observes, "Farmers today are suffering as their net income has remained almost constant, whereas the Consumer Price Index is changing fast. They face increasing levels of distress and many of them are rapidly slipping below the poverty line. This is a very strong motivator for them to quit farming. Agricultural policies need to create opportunities for farmers to increase their net income to respectable levels, and get them remunerative price for their products."

An enabling environment

This, however, is not enough. To dissuade farmers from migrating, it is important to create an enabling environment to keep them back in their villages. This entails providing basic healthcare, education facilities, sanitation, safe drinking water and adequate housing in rural areas. A workable solution is the concept of PURA (providing urban facilities in rural areas), envisaged by former Madras IIT Director P.V.Indiresan and endorsed by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam in several public addresses. As he said, "Knowledge of technology would bridge the rural-urban divide and could be the means for realising sustainable rural prosperity and employment generation."

Not a difficult task if one were to consider that a vast infrastructure to provide healthcare and primary-level education in rural areas has already been created. From a mere 725 sub-centres, primary health centres and community health centres in 1951, the number has gone up to 1,68,986 in 2004, and the population covered per facility has fallen from 4.98 lakh to 6,087 in 2001. But the quality of care needs to be improved. In terms of education, by end-2000, 94 per cent of India's rural population had primary schools within one km and 84 per cent had upper primary schools within 3 km. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has the potential, and must be used to mitigate rural distress and reverse migration to cities.

Migration per se is not a bad word. It can and does very often result in a better quality of life for the migrant, especially when he/she possesses the skills required. But forced migration needs to be avoided and discouraged.

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