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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 June 2011
The view of critics like Myrdal that a solution to problems of mass poverty requires sweeping changes in established cultural attitudes and institutions which cannot be carried out through democratic methods remains influential in India among intellectuals and radical political parties. Yet, a frontal assault on the existing social order would delay or abort basic economic reforms by fragmenting large numbers of the poorer classes along more potent allegiances to religion, language, and caste. An alternative solution can be devised based on the distinction between direct and indirect obstacles to economic development which are part of the social setting. Direct constraints are found in patterns of land ownership and land tenure. By contrast, the cultural attitudes, caste structures, and power relations are indirect obstacles in the sense that they strengthen ideological and political patterns that stand in the way of agrarian reform. Under Indian conditions democratic rather than authoritarian institutions offer the best prospect over the long term for carrying out basic economic changes. They strengthen egalitarian values and provide an opportunity for direct organization of the more numerous lower castes to weaken both the legitimacy and power of the dominant landed castes—without risking the social disorder of a direct confrontation.
1 Hirschman, Albert O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven: Yale University Press 1958), 2Google Scholar.
2 Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama, An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, I (New York: Pantheon 1968), 40Google Scholar.
3 Ibid.,20.
4 Ibid., 47.
5 Myrdal uses this term to characterize the governments of South Asia where “policies decided on are often not enforced if they are enacted at all, and … the authorities, even when framing policies, are reluctant to place obligations on people.” Ibid., 66.
6 The 20-Point Program, announced by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on July 1, 1975, was designed to rally maximum public support for the Proclamation of National Emergency by pledging to meet the unfulfilled demands of diverse social groups. The government promised, among other things, to implement agricultural land ceilings, provide house sites for landless laborers, abolish bonded labor, liquidate rural debt, increase agricultural wages, bring prices down, step up agricultural and industrial production, socialize urban land, prevent tax evasion, confiscate the property of smug- glers, provide cheaper books for students, and increase overall employment. For a full description of the 20-Point Economic Program by one of the Prime Minister's strong supporters, see Bright, J. S., Emergency in India and 5 + 20 Point Programme (New Delhi: Pankaj Publications 1976)Google Scholar.
7 Times of India, February 27, 1977.
8 Narayan, Jayaprakash, “Why Total Revoluiton?” Everyman's Weekly, December 22, 1974Google Scholar.
9 New York Times Magazine, March 27, 1977, p. 88.
10 India, Registrar General and Census Commissioner, Census of India, 1971, Provisional Population Totals, Paper 1 of 1971—Supplement, 3–33, 49.
11 The annual growth rate in per capita net national product registered its highest levels in the first decade of planning. Increments during the First Plan (1951–56) and the Second Plan (1956–61) were 1.6% and 1.8% per annum respectively. By contrast, the annual rate of growth during the Third Plan (1961–66) declined to 0.3% at constant prices. Except for a brief spurt in 1967–68, and again in 1975–76, annual growth rates have tended to remain at levels of less than 1%. During the Fourth Plan (1969–74), per capita gains in net national product per annum averaged 0.5%. India, Economic Survey, 1974–75, 59; India, Economic Survey, 1969–70, 61.
12 In 1952, the Planning Commission estimated that “for the purposes of our calculations regarding possible rates of development in India in the next few decades,” population would continue to grow at the rate of about 11/4% per annum—the rate during the previous ten years. At the end of 25 years, the population was projected to reach 500 million. India, Planning Commission, The First Five Year Plan (New Delhi 1952), 20, 23Google Scholar.
13 India, Planning Commission, Draft Fifth Five Year Plan, 1974–79, Part I (New Delhi 1973), 3Google Scholar.
14 India, Planning Commission, Fourth Five Year Plan, A Draft Outline (Delhi, August 1966), 106–8Google Scholar.
15 These data were generated through the Pilot Intensive Rural Employment Project launched by the Department of Community Development in 1972–73, as part of the Government's Crash Scheme for Rural Employment. A survey of unemployment and underemployment was conducted in 15 selected blocks, each in a different state, to get data representative for the country as a whole. The results showed that there were approximately twice as many unemployed wage-seeking laborers as anticipated in statistical computations based on 1961 census data. The earlier estimates had projected levels of “surplus” manpower at about 17% of the agricultural work force. (India, Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Community Development, unpublished.)
16 Blyn, George, Agricultural Trends in India, 1891–1947: Output, Availability and Productivity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1966), 107–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Ibid., 96.
18 Ibid., 209–10. On the most favorable assumptions, Blyn estimates that after 1911–12, yields per acre for foodgrains in Greater Bengal declined by —0.10% per annum. The raw data indicate a higher rate of decline of —0.55% per annum. The actual rate probably lies between these two limits. Ibid., 219–24.
19 See Geertz, , Agricultural Involution: The Processes of Ecological Change in Indonesia (Berkeley: University of California Press 1963), 28–38Google Scholar; 77–82.
20 Blyn (fn. 16), 104–5.
21 Dey, S. K., Community Development: A Chronicle (New Delhi: Ministry of Community Development 1958), 91Google Scholar.
22 India, Planning Commission, The Second Five Year Plan (New Delhi 1956), 62Google Scholar.
23 India, Planning Commission, Fourth Five Year Plan, 1969–74 (New Delhi, July 1970), 117Google Scholar.
24 Ibid., 138.
25 Production of foodgrains reached a peak level of 108.4 million tons in 1970–71, but dropped back to 103.6 million tons in 1973–74. India, Economic Survey, 1974–75, 6.
26 Ibid.
27 India, Perspective Planning Division, Planning Commission, “Perspective of Development: 1961–1976, Implications of Planning for a Minimum Level of Living,” August 1962, 4–5 (mimeo).
28 India, Planning Commission, Towards Selj-Reliance, Approach to the Fifth Five Year Plan (New Delhi, June 1972), 4Google Scholar.
29 Economic Survey, 1974–75 (fn. 11), 59; Economic Survey, 1969–70 (fn. n), 61.
30 Economic Survey, 1974–75 (fn. 11), 10.
31 The above estimates are based on a projection for 1969–70 from National Sample Survey data collected in 1960–61, and have been computed by the Indian economist, B. S. Minhas. See Minhas, B. S., “Mass Poverty and Strategy of Rural Development in India” (Economic Development Institute, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, March 1971), 37Google Scholar (mimeo).
32 National Sample Survey, No. 140, “Tables with Notes on Some Aspects of Landholdings in Rural Areas” (State and all-India Estimates), “Seventeenth Round, September 1961-July 1962,” (Calcutta: Indian Statistical Institute, April 1966), Draft, 70Google Scholar.
33 It is difficult to make accurate estimates of the incidence of tenancy. Most leasing arrangements involve sharecropping agreements that are undocumented in village records. According to interview data collected by the Census Commission in 1961, about 23% of all cultivators were pure tenants, operating wholly leased-in land; in many states, 30 to 40% of all farmers took some land on oral lease. (The Statesman, June 1, 1968.) This situation has probably not changed significantly in recent years. Early in 1977, the Agriculture Ministry's Director of Land Reforms offered an “informed estimate” to the effect that approximately 20 to 25% of all agricultural holdings are cultivated by tenants; probably as much as 40% in the densely populated rice regions of eastern India. Interview, New Delhi, January 8, 1977. Reports of field research in diverse regions of the rice areas confirm that sharecropping is a pervasive feature of the tenurial pattern. See Ladejinsky, Wolf, A Study on Tenurial Conditions in Package Districts (New Delhi: Planning Commission 1965)Google Scholar; Frankel, , India's Green Revolution: Economic Gains and Political Costs (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1971), 61–64; 87–88; 127–31; 165Google Scholar.
34 Punjab and Haryana, the heartland of the green-revolution wheat area, are the only two states in which consolidation operations have been carried out over the entire sown area. In the majority of states, land consolidation is still in the early stages of implementation. (India, Planning Commission, Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations, New Delhi 1973, 97.Google Scholar) There were also fewer small operational holdings in these states than in India as a whole. According to data collected in i960, the average size of operational holdings in India (i.e., all lands that are part of the same economic unit, including leased-in land) was 6.6 acres; almost three-quarters of all holdings were less. By contrast, data for the undivided Punjab (before it was bifurcated into Punjab and Haryana in 1966), showed that 42% of all holdings were 10 acres or more. “Data collected in the 16th Round of NSS on Operational Holdings,” 1 (mimeo).
35 The existing canal irrigation systems are inadequate for the efficient cultivation of the high-yielding varieties on several counts. They were initially designed with traditional cultivation techniques in mind to spread water as widely and thinly as possible, and to provide protection in time of drought, rather than to supply the higher water levels per acre that are necessary for the introduction of scientific agriculture. In addition, the canals have no cross-regulators to allow for controlled rotation of watering. They also lack channel systems that reach directly into the farmer's field. The result is that cultivators cannot be certain of receiving supplies at the exact time and in the amounts required. None of the irrigation systems, moreover, have master drainages. Finally, irrigation water is usually sufficient for only one wet-rice crop during the main growing season. The growth cycle of the high-yielding varieties is basically unsuited to the monsoon patterns of much of the rice-growing area. The new varieties are best cultivated as a second crop during the sunny, dry season. In practice, therefore, the efficient adoption of modern techniques requires the installation of minor irrigation works to tap underground water as an assured source of supply all year round. See Sivaraman, B., “Scientific Agriculture is Neutral to Scale—The Fallacy and the Remedy,” Dr. Rajendra Prasad Memorial Lecture, December 27, 1972Google Scholar, Indian Society of Agricultural Statistics, 26th Annual Conference, Kalyani.
36 Tenurial arrangements have been directly blamed for the slow progress of agricultural modernization in the Kosi area of North Bihar, where major new irrigation projects carried out during the 1960's and early 1970's were expected to irrigate about 1.8 million (gross) acres annually. In 1973, however, figures showed that utilization had reached only about 25% of the potential. A field investigation by the Land Reforms Commissioner concluded that, while technical difficulties explained part of the problem during the main growing season, “the reasons for the gross under-utilization of water during the [autumn] and summer seasons are rooted in the agrarian structure of the Kosi area. The concentration of ownership of land and widespread sharecropping on terms grossly unfair to the sharecroppers are the main reasons for the under-utilization of water during the [autumn] and summer seasons.” In particular, landlords with large holdings found it difficult to prepare the land for a second crop within two to three weeks after the main harvest, especially since most of the farms were fragmented and operated by bullock power. At the same time, sharecroppers, who were expected to provide all production inputs and pay one-half the produce to the landowner, could not afford the higher costs of the new techniques, the more so since they usually borrowed money on usurious terms. Landowners, for their part, were not interested in sharing in the costs of modern inputs, because they “look upon their land essentially as a form of wealth, the value of which is appreciating year after year. They are not overly concerned about annual returns.” Appu, P. S., “Kosi Area Development, The Pivotal Role of Institutional Reform” (New Delhi, April 1973, mimeo)Google Scholar.
37 The data on the Punjab economy presented in this paragraph are drawn from the analysis prepared by Bhalla, G. S., Punjab Economy: Growth and Prospects, Occasional Papers, No. 2 (New Delhi: Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University 1976)Google Scholar.
38 Ibid., 15.
39 A household is defined for survey purposes as a group of persons who normally live together and take their meals from a common kitchen. The household ownership holding includes all plots of land, whether cultivable or not, owned by the household.
40 Minhas (fn. 31), 6, 7. There are normally four to five persons per household in the size class of holdings of less than five acres.
41 Ibid., 6, 36.
42 Approximately 2.3 million acres of surplus land were vested in the government under land ceiling legislation enacted by the states during the 1960's. Report of the Task Force of Agrarian Relations (fn. 34), 96. Another 1.8 million acres were taken over by the government under amendments to existing legislation enacted after 1972 (as of December 31, 1976), with the possibility that effective implementation of the amended Acts might yield an additional 2.6 million acres. Estimate provided by the Director of Land Reforms, Interview, New Delhi, January 8, 1977.
43 Stalin, Joseph, Marxism and the National Question (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House 1950), 16Google Scholar.
44 Whereas Great Russian accounts for the language of over 58% of the population and Great Russian speakers are dispersed throughout the Soviet Union, Hindi users total about one-third of the national population in India and are concentrated in the northern Ganges plains. See Harrison, Selig, India: The Most Dangerous Decades, (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1960), 304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 See Frankel, , “Democracy and Political Development: Perspectives from the Indian Experience,” World Politics, XXI (April 1969) 448–68, esp. 450–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 The most comprehensive empirical study of the grass-roots political organization of the Congress Party is Weiner, Myron, Party Building in a New Nation: The Indian National Congress (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1967), 467–68Google Scholar. Data collected in five districts in widely separated parts of India showed that “district party organizations are usually run by peasant proprietors. At the village and district levels, the prominent Congress leaders are property owners and typically, although not always, members of the dominant caste within the local community.” The major qualifications to this generalization are that conflict within village elites made it impossible for the Congress Party to recruit all local leaders; and lower-status, but more numerous, peasant-proprietor castes were challenging traditional elites for positions of local leadership.
47 Stalin (fn. 43), 28–29.
48 See All India Congress Committee, People's Victory—An Analysis of 1971 Elections (New Delhi, April 1971)Google Scholar; All India Congress Committee, People's Victory—Second Phase (An Analysis of the 1972 General Election to State Assemblies) (New Delhi, June 1972)Google Scholar.
49 A detailed analysis of the reasons for this organizational failure is presented in Frankel, India's Political Economy 1947–1977, chap. XI (Princeton: Princeton University Press, forthcoming).
