N. G. RANGA

SINCE the Bengal Famine of 1943, the nation has been clamouring for self-sufficiency in foodgrain production. The Swaraj Government has been promising to achieve this goal but has failed so far.

In fact it has been pursuing policies which militate against this objective, such as the policy of ‘integrated production’, of demanding a simultaneous increase in the production not only of foodgrains, but also of cotton, jute, oil-seeds and sugarcane! At the same time, it has refused to accept the policy of guaranteeing the payment of remunerative prices for foodgrains on the plea that urban consumers, and especially industrial workers, would have to pay more for their food. It is argued that this would create discontent among industrial workers and complicate the business of industrialization.

In reality, however, wages and salaries in the towns are forever rising and allowances are being increased on the basis of the cost of living index. Compare this to the conditions in the village. High betterment taxes and surcharges on land revenue are always demanded in return for the construction or reconstruction of even irrigation or flood control works! Ironically, and this is significant, the Swaraj Government, while denying greater profit to our own peasants, is only too ready to pay higher prices for imported food, the sale of which is subsidized to the tune of Rs 25 crore per annum, in addition to the concessions obtained from America and Canada under various trade agreements.

It stands to the credit of our peasants that inspite of these suicidal policies, they have succeeded in stepping up food production from 41.7 million tons of availability as estimated in 1947-48 and 52.7 millions in 1951-52 to 70 million tons in 1958-59. This represents an annual increase of approximately five per cent.

Those who are too ready to complain about the so-called inefficiency of our peasants when compared to the much better looked after Japanese peasant and the rich American farmer with his abundance of land, machinery, finance and price supports, should take note of this achievement made possible despite government’s irresponsible cold-shouldering.

 

We have become self-sufficient in jute and, consequently, independent of Pakistan from which we imported 4.5 million bales in 1948-49. The production of groundnuts has gone up by 30 per cent and of all oil-seeds by 15.4 per cent. In cotton, too, there has been marked progress. Our dependence upon imports has been reduced from 1,080,000 bales to 400,000 bales. Sugarcane has also recorded an increase of 11.3 per cent. Even the All India Congress Committee, which is scheming to persuade our peasants to exchange their self-employment for a wage-earning partnership in cooperative farming, is obliged to admit that ‘there has been an all round increase in agricultural production in recent years.’

Our peasants are, therefore, capable of helping India to become self-sufficient in food, thereby saving her from an increasing dependence upon foreign credit, concessions and gifts. India’s liability to pay Rs 864 crore or even more by 1964-65 towards the debts incurred upto February 1958 is indicative of our dependence. This is in addition to what has to be paid towards the enormous debt government is piling up. Our main complaint is that government policies are leading to an increase in the import of foodgrains.

We agree with the Asoka Mehta Committee that, for some years to come, India will have to import one to two million tons per annum. Such dependence is no discredit to our peasants because India has been importing rice and other grains to the amount of a million tons per annum ever since 1925. To allow this figure to increase would be suicidal.

The All India Congress Committee has listed the following methods as the ‘only ones possible’ to achieve yields comparable with those in other countries: a more adequate supply of water, the use of manure, fertilizers and improved seed, land reclamation, soil conservation, dry farming and pest control. But it has not accepted the failure of government to give top priority to any combination of all of these in the present or proposed plans.

 

Taking irrigation as the very first need of our agriculture and our peasants, the government had to confess in July 1959 that more than 20 per cent of the available irrigation capacity is not being utilized. An official press note of 16 July 1959 said that short and long term loans, and adequate financial aid to ryots, a sliding scale of water rates in the initial stage of irrigation, the construction of roads and the fixing of produce prices before the sowing season, would provide ‘an inducement for the farmer to use irrigation to the fullest measure.’ How is it that the Planning Commission and the AICC have so far failed to adopt these minimum remedial measures to prevent the wastage of hundreds of crore of rupees allotted by the plans for developing irrigation from 50 to 88 million acres?

The AICC is also scrupulously silent about prices. Possibly this is out of consideration to Prime Minister Nehru, who is determined not to allow remunerative prices. Even more serious is the neglect of flood control and the control of inundation, with the result that lakhs of acres are being denied irrigation in most states.

Take the question of supplying adequate manure and fertilizers. It is notorious how the cow-dung gas plant, devised on a demonstration scale thirteen years ago, has not yet been introduced even through the village panchayat. This alone, if fully utilized, could have saved at least one-tenth of the cow-dung of our 300 million livestock

Amartya Sen of Cambridge has made a strong case for the construction of many more fertilizer factories and although I do not agree with him in contrasting their economics with the economics of irrigation projects, there is certainly a strong case for building more fertilizer plants, big and small. Our peasants have already exposed the failure of government to keep pace with their demand for fertilizers which far outstrips the supply.

With regard to improved seed, government discovered too late during the sowing seasons of 1958 and 1959 that the much-advertised rabi and kharif campaigns were doomed because village-level workers and the block development staff could not supply the improved seed, let alone cover wider areas. The Congress Party is now reduced to the plight of suggesting that the seed produced by progressive farmers should be shared by others.

I will close this dismal story of the failure of government to keep pace with the demand of peasants for progressive and scientific aids, which are, for example, being abundantly provided by the Japanese government to its peasantry, with a brief reference to what most of our peasants have been doing despite governmental ignorance, cussedness and failure.

 

It will be remembered how Shriman Narayan, a member of the Planning Commission, suggested that five million acres of land could be salvaged for ready cultivation if only the boundaries between fields were removed. This dubious advice was repeated by the prime minister even after C. Rajagopalachari’s warning that such bunds are for soil conservation what cups are for coffee. Peasants all over India have to be thanked by Parliament and our agronomists for having been far-sighted enough to devote much labour and expense, and also their land, for the maintenance of these bunds which conserve precious top soils.

 

Dry farming has been known to various sections of our peasants in different parts of the country. Unfortunately our agricultural experts have taken up the study of its utility, its prevailing practices and economics, only during the past few years and are not able as yet to plan and implement a nation-wide campaign for its development. This is a major failure of the Swaraj Government because as much as 250 million acres of dry land depending only on an undependable and meager annual rainfall of 30 inches can be helped to produce 25 to 50 per cent more over a period of five to ten years with careful and effective tending of the soil, the ‘conservation of the natural water precipitation and humid farming.’

America is helping her rich farmers, through subsidies, to invest their lands in soil banks – that is, to leave a certain percentage of land fallow so as to enable it to regain fertility, humidity etc. When more than three-quarters of our total peasant force is dependent upon dry lands, to develop ‘dry farming’ is to save our cultivators from the gnawing fear of crop failures and the loss of all their working capital. Such a policy would improve their standard of living and step up the tempo of agricultural operations.

What about the supply of cheap and adequate working capital for our agriculturists? Even the UN Economic Bulletin admitted in 1957 that our peasantry needs a minimum sum of Rs 1300 crore. I have estimated it to be not less than Rs 2000 crore. Anyhow, less than ten per cent of these needs are met by government and cooperative credit institutions. The rest of the credit is obtained at interest rates exceeding 12 per cent, a burden not borne even by rich industrial concerns. Yet government has been trying to dry up bank credit to agriculture for the anti-peasant purpose of keeping down food prices.

How can state or cooperative farms product more under such handicaps? Some newspapers in Madras have recently advised government that it could insure India against a food shortage and our peasants against usurious rates of interest, if it was prepared to advance Rs 2750 crore free of interest at the rate of Rs 100 per acre for all the 27.5 crore acres under food crops. Let it approach the United Nations for this assistance, and itself offer to bear whatever losses may accrue due to famine and floods.

 

The other demand presented by our peasants to government and the planners is for the payment of remunerative prices for foodgrains as almost all democratic countries are doing, and for the ending of present efforts to keep prices down even at the risk of thwarting incentive for increased production. It is only the totalitarian countries which are trying to exploit the peasants in the same manner as the Indian government by opposing a rise in foodgrain prices.

I agree with Prof. Shenoy that the so-called rise in food prices is only a reflection of the invisible inflation caused by government, the ‘money incomes of the people have risen faster than the available supply of foodgrains.’ S.Y. Krishnaswami has also exposed the myth, popularized by certain sections of government and the press, that peasants have been receiving more than their due. For instance, he has proved that ‘the overall trend in the prices of agricultural commodities in relation to those of manufacture has been downward.’ There is a constant struggle by the former to catch up with the latter.

 

The plan of the All India Agriculturists’ Federation and the Bharat Kisan Sammelan emphasizes what has been neglected so far. Peasants are the largest single block of consumers and unless the prices of what they have to purchase for their farms and families are kept in some just parity with the prices of agricultural commodities, either agricultural production will go down or the peasants will be reduced to penury. Their ultimate demand for industrial products and urban services will fail to expand and the increasing money supply will continue to push up prices, either openly or outside governmental controls. Of course, the present government dare not consider the possibility of pegging the salaries and wages of urban classes, as suggested by Mr. Krishnaswami.

It is indeed symptomatic of the Soviet-mindedness of our government that it thinks of inaugurating a campaign in favour of cooperative farming, of offering huge subsidies and interest free loans, and thus creating an atmosphere of uncertainty among the sixty and more millions of farming families with regard to their peasant proprietorship. The value of their lands, which they consider their soundest security and safest property, is falling. To borrow and invest in permanent improvements and also in heavy working capital is now considered a risk.

Even Union Minister Gulzarilal Nanda could not assure us, after his recent visit to Yugoslavia, that cooperative farming is more productive than peasant farming. Indeed, it has to be seen how far totalitarian governmental activities are responsible for the so-called results of cooperative farms. Nanda had to admit that cooperative farming had failed originally ‘when it was introduced by compulsion and production had gone down very much.’

The strangest thing is that while he was impressed with the methods of workers’ participation in Yugoslavia’s nationalized and socialized industries and found that such participation ‘could relieve tension in industrial relations, make better use of the talents available and lead to greater production’, he could not realize how reactionary and opposed to the conception of active toilers’ participation it would be to launch cooperative farming. Congressmen are blinded by their ideological fancies, like the disciples to Tito who introduced cooperative farming under compulsion.

No wonder even the veteran economist, Kesava Iyengar, is constrained to observe that the downgrading of the present owner-cultivator- manager to a labourer must inevitably result in a general ‘go-slow’. He adds that such programmes and plans have ‘brought about an atmosphere of doubt, discontent and desperation among the village community.’

 

It is not necessary to cite Yugoslavia and China? Nanda should study the working of military farms into which government sinks many crores and also assists with land and machinery. Military discipline is enforced and technical knowledge is utilized. Yet are these farms efficiently run? Do their costs of cultivation of foodgrain, cattle feed and dairy produce compare favourably with those of the peasants in their neighbourhood? What about the economics of the production-side of the many farms managed by the different state agricultural departments? Is it not a fact that thousands of workers employed by these farms enjoy no better standards of living than small-holders while those above them are provided with all the privileges of government servants? What about the average production of cereals in most of the so-called cooperative farms in different states? Is their production higher?

It will be disastrous for our country to begin to make such costly experiments as trying to induce millions of our peasantry to give up their self-employment, to place themselves at the disposal of cooperative farms and to work when ordered in the manner detailed by managers. They will have to be content with the wages prescribed, to be paid in kind or cash by the management board, and then to have to await the harvest, watch its distribution between various reserves and special community funds and then finally to receive the pitiful dividend doled out to each member.

 

Anyone concerned with the protection of the farm and an increase in crop production, anyone who has some knowledge of the limitless sacrifice of time, labour, personal and family attention and thought now being bestowed by our peasants upon the cultivation and management of their small farms will shudder at the consequences of an adventure such as cooperative farming. Any day, a self-employed family unit of labour is more efficient and productive than cooperatively employed wage-labour. It has succeeded where plantation labour and Soviet farm labour has failed. It is the only guarantee of economic democracy, of constructive and creative labour and of the protection of soil, cattle and crops.

If a greater production of foodgrains is the real and immediate objective of the nation, then certainly cooperative farming is the worst solution. The restoration of minor irrigation works, improvement of their catchment areas, the provision of tube-wells and the deepening of existing wells wherever feasible will give more sure and additional production at a capital cost of Rs 200 per acre and a peasant investment of Rs 200 to 300. The development of major irrigation works will certainly increase production at a capital cost of Rs 400 per acre and a peasant investment of Rs 1000 per acre. Government has been pursuing these sound paths toward higher production but has failed to come to the rescue of peasants with regard to the capital needed to prepare the land for irrigation.

 

We have often been told how much is being spent by government on all these irrigation and flood control works, but we should also remember that the contribution made by our peasants has been even more substantial during the past ten years. Their investment has been estimated at Rs 900 crore. Surely the nation should be grateful to our self-employed peasants and not allow government to degrade them into wage earning cooperators?

It is said by some that small-holders are not as efficient producers as cooperative farms or big land-holders. But the results of studies made in our country by foreign experts and Indian economists have proved to the contrary. In Indian agriculture, the economies of scale have not been such as to exceed the advantages of intensive labour investment and the personal attention and initiative offered by our small peasants. Japanese peasant economy, as an example, has led to a high level of production.

Moreover, if service cooperatives come to be organized in the villages, all the economies of scale and other advantages can accrue to our small peasants, thereby increasing their productive capacity. But government should abstain from exploiting them for its political, group or factious purposes and the administration should make a Herculean effort not to interfere in their working. Adequate funds, manure, improved seed and implements should be placed at their disposal and these societies should not be mismanaged, as at present.

Essentially, what is lacking today is an efficient and honest administration. Peasants have come to be taxed more than a 100 per cent extra since independence, but the administration has only become more costly, inefficient and corrupt and nothing can be done without someone in the government being rewarded surreptitiously.

The other enemy of our people is the bye-product of an uncontrolled party government, namely the exploitation of all governmental power for the special use of groups, cliques, factions and even unscrupulous individuals who have gained control of the ruling party at various levels. This new incubus has joined hands with the administration and is levying a heavy toll on public funds and also on the slender resources of peasants and of public institutions like cooperatives and village panchayats.

It will be a crime to ask our six crore of food-producing peasant families to trust themselves to the tender mercies of this administrational and political buccaneering which will destroy their freedom, their food and their families.

 

* Reproduced from ‘Food For Forty Crores’, Seminar 2, October 1959, pp. 12-15.