The village

What socio-economic changes have taken place in the last two decades in a typical village in Punjab and what have been the major drivers of such changes? What are the policy implications of socio-economic change in the rural areas of the country?

This was what kept me preoccupied as I proceeded to my village this Eid. On the face of it, these are not difficult questions for anyone who is exposed to rural life. But I was interested in getting first-hand knowledge of the lives of rural people belonging to various socio-economic strata and occupations.

In this bid, the first person I came across was the barber of the village. He is a young man and is a third-generation barber in the village. His grandfather came to this village in 1947 with his family and permanently settled here. Reportedly, he had worked in the army as a barber during the Second World War. He was an important man at social gatherings like marriage ceremonies, where preparing the feast was his responsibility. Landlords, big and small, paid him in kind for his services at the time of the harvest season.

After his death, his sons continued with the profession of their father and almost led a satisfied life. They were never worried about their basic needs. At least food insecurity was an alien phenomenon in their lives. And today, they are old and leading miserable lives. Two of their sons are still in the village and continuing with the profession of their forefathers. Others have left the village as well as their ancestral profession and are working in the city as labourers.

Those living in the village hardly make both ends meet. Even food security has become a big challenge for them as farmers no more require their services and those who avail their services no longer like to pay them in kind.

They want to switch over to some other occupation or set up a barber shop in the nearby town. But they have neither technical support nor financial resources to undertake any new occupation. This is not the story of barbers only. It applies well to most of the traditional occupations of the villages. Blacksmiths, potters, cobblers, carpenters and even local entertainers are passing through the same ordeal.

So the first change that is very visible in the socio-economic landscape of the rural areas is the redundancy of the traditional rural occupations. This phenomenon has deepened rural poverty. There has never been any well-thought out policy for facilitating their transition to new occupations or for up-grading their skills. No technical support has ever been made available to them. No microfinance institutions have been established in villages to support such artisans. They hardly form part of any narrative whatsoever on the rural development.

According to some villagers that I interviewed, some informal lenders are there in the nearby villages and towns. These informal lenders are the landowners or the arthias (middleman or brokers). They, however, do not give loans to such artisans. Only small farmers can obtain loans from them on the condition that they would sell their produce to the lenders at lower rates at the time of harvesting. It is not forward contracting but an example of sheer exploitation as the contract is to purchase the produce at lower rates. The effective rate of interest charged by such lenders is very high — in some cases more than 100 percent.

The plight of the small farmers is no less miserable than those of blacksmiths, barbers, potters, cobblers, and local entertainers. Due to tremendous population pressure, medium- and small-sized farmers have either been obliterated from the landscape of farming or are continuing in the traditional ways which means very low earnings and output. The miseries of small farmers have multiplied with the passage of time.

Their small landholdings are hardly sufficient to support their families. In addition, the water level has gone down, prices of inputs are high, and farm-to-market roads are almost non-existent. It is only the larger farms that have thrived as a result of mechanised farming and economies of scale. Tenants and small farmers have hardly gained anything from agricultural technology and changes in production techniques.

Succinctly put, the economic landscape of villages has almost undergone a metamorphosis in the last few decades. The majority of the rural professions, except agriculture, have become outmoded due to socio-economic changes and the artisans associated with such professions since generations have become irrelevant in the economic life of the village. Only three options are available to them: (1) switching over to new occupations; (2) up-gradation of skills to align their traditional occupations with the changed socio-economic environment; (3) migration to the urban areas for new sources of livelihoods.

In all three cases, they face problems. They are unable to undertake new endeavours due to lack of technical and financial support as the rural non-farm economy has received a step-motherly treatment from the state. The up-gradation of skills is possible through training institutions but unfortunately no such institutions have been established in rural areas. As regards migration to urban land, that too seems to have slowed down over the last couple of years due to the overall economic slowdown.

This trend is likely to continue at least in the near future, given the slow growth of industry and fragile private sector. Moreover, such migration has its own economic, social and political costs. Unemployment among the youth of the village is a big challenge as well. Those who are educated somewhat from local institutions seem frustrated with their lot and want to leave the country.

Due to persistent population pressure, mechanisation of farming and lack of initiatives for enhancing productivity in smaller farms, farmers have been pushed into poverty. How can small farms become economically feasible? Do they need preferential treatment? How can the small farmers be incentivised to use innovative farming techniques instead of sowing traditional crops? These are some of the questions that a policy for small farmers should essentially address.

Then there are severe issues of governance relating to agriculture. Scarcity of water, high cost of inputs and poor quality pesticides and seeds etc are issues that every agriculturist complains about. All these factors are badly affecting small farmers and tenants who are already in trouble. The argument that low productivity of small farms is due to the economies of scale problem is perhaps not the whole truth since in Indian Punjab the productivity of the smaller farms is much higher when compared to ours.

The difference lies in policies and priorities. What is needed is realisation at the policy-making level that rural development is not synonymous with the growth and development of big farms. A comprehensive policy that takes care of the problems faced by small farmers, the non-farm economy and local artisans is the need of the hour.

The writer is a graduate of Columbia University. Email: jamilnasir1969@gmail.com