THERE is increasing recognition of the need to understand regional variations in rural transformation rather than arbitrarily flatten out these observations to draw national level inferences. In post-reform India, the prominence of sub-national policymaking and regional variations in development trajectories calls attention to regional political economy and its role in shaping policies of growth and distribution.¹

In the ongoing debate on development models among Indian states, the Tamil Nadu model has gained credibility within both popular and academic discourse by virtue of its ability to sustain economic growth along with a set of egalitarian social welfare measures.² These measures are an outcome of a history of ‘democratic action’ rooted in the state’s long history of lower caste and lower class mobilization.³ Scholars attribute this development to a kind of populism that translated a collective demand for a broad-basing of education and caste based social justice into a policy of affirmative action in higher education and public employment.⁴ While such measures helped the ‘middling’ sections within lower caste groups, parties that have come to power based on such mobilizations have also addressed vulnerabilities of the poorer sections through a range of welfare schemes since the mid-1960s that have visibly expanded in recent years.⁵

Competitive populism between the two dominant political parties has led to an expanding domain of welfare, despite the emergence of a growth regime that is not too different from that observed in other states in the country. The decline in public employment and privatization of higher education has eroded the potential of affirmative policies, even as growth has been accompanied by a growing informalization of employment.⁶ The regime of welfare dominated by a well functioning universal PDS (public distribution system) is also spreading itself over a landscape of rural distress marked by highly fragmented landholding structures, declining returns to agriculture, and high levels of rural indebtedness.⁷

 

While households have diversified into a range of informal non-agricultural employment in response to a decline in agricultural incomes, a significant number of rural households continue to derive their income solely from agriculture. A sizeable portion of the remaining rural households too rely on agriculture for a share of the household income alongside diversification into insecure non-farm employment.⁸ Despite the state being recognized for its long history of democratic action, there is in fact little evidence of organized peasant resistance to this process of pauperization. This paper proposes that collective action by the peasantry has morphed into caste based mobilization, since such mobilizations appeal to a range of economic interests within and across rural households with diversified livelihood strategies – the cultivator to the casual worker/petty trader to the educated seeking employment in the formal sector.

 

It is worth recalling that Tamil Nadu was home to one of the earliest farmers’ mobilizations in the wake of the Green Revolution.⁹ Previous mobilization of the marginal farmers and agricultural labourers for better wages and terms of contract was replaced by demands for better prices and subsidies in that period.¹⁰ Though the state government conceded to the demand for free electricity, Lindberg points out how the government, through exercise of violence and political manoeuvring, managed to break the movement. Importantly, electoral competition between the two dominant parties ensured that such subsidies continued.

Writing off of farmers’ loans continues to be an electoral promise that is often kept. In recent years, the previous government headed by the DMK promised free pump sets to farmers to replace dated and inefficient ones. A new scheme, the Tamil Nadu Agricultural Labourers-Farmers (Social Security and Welfare) Scheme that offers accident and health insurance, scholarships for education of children, and old age pension for agricultural workers and marginal farmers, was introduced in 2006. Coupled with universal schemes like the PDS and pension schemes for the aged and widowed, such welfarist interventions have clearly cushioned marginal farmers from the declining returns in agriculture.

Nevertheless, the relative lack of decline in poverty and other indicators of agrarian distress clearly suggest that the state response has been inadequate. In 2011-12, 17.5% of the self-employed in agriculture were below the official poverty line; this situation is only marginally better than that of agricultural labour, among whom more than 25% continue to be poor.¹¹ Clearly such welfarist interventions have not adequately compensated for the poor returns to farming. The absence of overt peasant action to counter stagnating incomes, though not unique to the state, therefore needs to be explained. This absence is even more striking in a state that was home to one of the earliest sites of farmer mobilizations in the country.

 

A partial answer lies in the changing avenues of accumulation among a class of large and medium farmers that Jodhka talks about in the context of Punjab.¹² Much earlier, Balagopal, in one of his acutely analytical pieces on the emerging class structure in the Indian countryside in the post-green revolution era, points to the rise of what he terms the ‘provincial propertied class’.¹³ Questioning the dualistic Bharat versus India characterization of class contradictions in India by Gail Omvedt and Sharad Joshi¹⁴ in the early 1980s, Balagopal seeks to embed such a position in a changing context of accumulation in the countryside. The green revolution led to accumulation of surplus by a class of farmers who can be broadly labelled as rich and middle peasantry. Based on his observations of rural Andhra Pradesh, Balagopal contends that this class does not reinvest the surplus only in agriculture. Rather, this is a class that has diversified avenues of accumulation that range from agriculture to trade, cinema, education, real estate and politics. Thus, the class of farmers that Sharad Joshi claims to be exploited by urban India is precisely the class which invests surplus from agriculture into urban ventures. In other words, their class location does not quite suggest their supposed singular contradiction of interests with that of the industrial/urban capitalist classes.

 

My own fieldwork in western Tamil Nadu confirms the presence of such a class that has simultaneous interests in the rural and urban. Several small industrialists and traders were erstwhile agriculturists who have steadily moved into other domains of production and trade. Some of them continue to be rentier farmers. Heyer points to the diverse trajectories of farmers’ livelihoods and strategies in western Tamil Nadu in response to macro changes in the economy.¹⁵ In other words, a segment of cultivating households has indeed moved out of agriculture through surplus accumulation and diversification. However, there continues to be a numerically strong segment that is either steadily being dispossessed or continues to cultivate in distress. The fact that the bulk of landholdings in Tamil Nadu are either marginal or small is further suggestive of the magnitude of the latter phenomenon. For marginal peasants with few links to the urban, and with little scope for using the surplus to diversify, state policies appear to offer little respite. Their diversification is increasingly through entry into insecure urban or non-farm employment.

 

My contention here is that collective action among this group has primarily assumed the form of caste based mobilization. Wyatt points to the rise of caste based mobilizations and formation of caste based parties in the state, especially since the mid-1990s.¹⁶ Even earlier, the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) party was launched, drawing support from the numerically strong Vanniars in northeastern Tamil Nadu with significant dependence on agriculture. Since then many other caste-based parties have emerged, with the Kongunadu Munnetra Kazhagam (KNMK) and its offshoots in western Tamil Nadu being the most prominent one. The party draws its support from the Kongu Vellala Gounders, a numerically strong landed caste in western Tamil Nadu with caste members straddling multiple economic locations – large business groups, marginal/small and medium farmers, informal labour, entrepreneurs engaged in small and medium businesses, lower and mid-level state bureaucracy and a professional class that has grown largely with the growth of the software services sector in the country.¹⁷

Arguing for a politics of neglect of the region rather than of caste, the party’s manifesto simultaneously raises demands for greater support for farmers, like an increase in procurement prices paid to farmers of sugarcane, alongside an increase in the quota of seats reserved for this caste in higher education by seeking a most backward caste (MBC) status, and measures to support their urban future. The party also decries the slew of concessions given to global and pan-Indian capital in the form of cheap land and subsidized power and water supply through the SEZ route when small entrepreneurs in the region suffer from acute power shortage and other infrastructural deficiencies.

 

Though the party split up owing to internal conflicts, factions continue to organize protests and make demands on behalf of farmers. In the domain of agriculture, they have made consistent demands for tapping of toddy, free crop insurance schemes, facilities for processing of agricultural produce, completion of certain irrigation projects that were promised earlier and improvement of ground water resources.¹⁸ A souvenir published on the occasion of the farmers political rights conference organized in 2010, in fact prominently displayed the figure of Narayanaswami Nayudu, the leader of the earlier farmers’ movement in the state, despite the fact that he does not belong to the Kongu Vellala caste.¹⁹ Similarly, other caste based parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi also make claims on behalf of the peasantry in regions where they are dominant.

Resistance from this party stalled a move by the previously elected government to launch a financial city or acquire land for a new airport from villages dominated by Vanniar peasants.²⁰ Through Pasumai Thayagam, a civil society organization affiliated to the party, they have also announced a manifesto for farmers in the state.²¹ Simultaneously, such parties have also made efforts to facilitate the move out of agriculture by demanding increased reservation in higher education and greater access to various government schemes. The long history of anti-upper caste mobilization has privileged equal access to education as a key move to address caste disparities. Caste based parties also work to ensure that state schemes for their respective castes in education and employment are tapped into or expanded.

 

Importantly, their actions are directed at Dalits and at what is seen as the state’s support for the latter’s well-being. The intermediate caste based parties see the mild gains made by Dalits through both assertive and populist state intervention as being inimical to their welfare. The provision of free rice and subsidized food through the public distribution system, along with better implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, has led to an undermining of traditional rural social relations that enabled the cultivating castes to access agricultural labour on the former’s terms.²²

The entry of sections of Dalits into jobs that are less marked by caste has also created new anxieties among men from the intermediate castes. It has resulted in political mobilization among such parties to unleash violence in response to the growing incidence of inter-caste marriages between Dalit men and women from intermediate castes.²³ This has also been spurred by a crisis in agrarian masculinities, as illustrated tellingly in Kanganam,²⁴ a recent Tamil novel by Perumal Murugan, set in western Tamil Nadu amongst the Kongu Vellalas. The protagonist is a small peasant who takes pride in the fact that he has been able to render an arid piece of land remunerative through sheer hard work. Seeking to cement his success as a farmer through marriage, he is disappointed to find that there are hardly any takers for a peasant! Girls that the marriage brokers set him up to meet deride his agrarian masculine demeanour and are wary of leading life in a village working on a farm.

 

This narrative of peasant masculinity, out of step with the changing ethos of a rapidly urbanizing society, echoes observations made in an earlier study that points to shifting practices and notions of masculinity across caste in a village in northern Tamil Nadu in the wake of rapid socio-economic transformation and the accompanying decline of land as a source of power and control.²⁵ The recent attacks on the writer Perumal Murugan, orchestrated by caste outfits and Hindu right wing groups in response to what was seen as his demeaning of the Kongu Vellala caste practices, too can be interpreted in this light.

Demands have also been made by the intermediate caste parties to repeal the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which they perceive is used by the Dalits to victimize them.26 While upward mobility may undermine the need to make political claims among the well-to-do sections of the peasantry, factors of political economy drive collective action among segments that have failed to access more secure livelihoods. In the absence of other forms of political organization that may possibly voice their interests, this rationale appears to have paved the way for a greater identification with caste identities. The vulnerabilities posed by highly insecure off-farm employment avenues due to growing casualization of work, may also have contributed to this. While the factors driving caste consolidation cannot be confined to the economic, its relationship to economic change cannot be discounted.

 

To conclude, while a small segment of cultivators has exited agriculture on favourable terms, many continue to cultivate under duress or diversify and/or exit under distress. An expanding domain of welfare that offers a safety net, even as it is believed by sections of cultivators to undermine some elements that sustained agricultural production, has shaped the response to the crises unfolding in the Tamil countryside. Excessive attention by the state to populist welfare at the expense of interventions in the productive economy may have paved the way for a regime of rural dispossession that appears to be seemingly costless at present. However, this is likely to have implications for sustaining a future trajectory of growth accompanied by welfare.

 

Footnotes:

1. R. Jenkins (ed.), Regional Reflections: Comparing Politics Across India’s States. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2004.

2. A. Kalaiyarasan, ‘A Comparison of Developmental Outcomes in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly 49(15), 2014, pp. 55-63; J. Drèze and A. Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions. Princeton University Press, 2013.

3. J. Harriss, ‘Comparing Political Regimes Across Indian States: A Preliminary Essay’, Economic and Political Weekly 34(48), 1999, pp. 3367-3377.

4. A. Wyatt, ‘Populism and Politics in Contemporary Tamil Nadu’, Contemporary South Asia 21(4), 2013, pp. 365-381; N. Subramanian, Ethnicity and Populist Mobilization: Political Parties, Citizens and Democracy in South India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999.

5. A. Wyatt, 2013, Ibid.

6. M.S.S. Pandian, ‘New Times in Tamil Nadu’, Seminar 620, April 2011; K.R. Shyam Sundar, The Current State of Industrial Relations in Tamil Nadu. A report prepared for ILO, New Delhi, 2009.

7. A. Narayanamoorthy, ‘State of India’s Farmers’, Economic and Political Weekly XLI(6), 2006, pp. 471-473; M. Vijayabaskar, ‘Saving Agricultural Labour from Agriculture: SEZs and Politics of Silence in Tamil Nadu’, Economic and Political Weekly 45(6), 6 February 2010, pp. 36-43.

8. Institute of Applied Manpower Research, Rural Non-Farm Employment: A Study in Tamil Nadu. IAMR Report No. 3/2013, Institute of Applied Manpower Research, Planning Commission, Government of India, New Delhi, 2013.

9. R. Vidyasagar, New Agrarianism and Challenges for the Left, in T.V. Sathyamurthy (ed.), Class Formation and Political Formation in Post-colonial India. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1999, pp.179-201; A. Varshney, Democracy, Development, and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.

10. S. Lindberg, ‘When the Wells Ran Dry: The Tragedy of Collective Action Among Farmers in South India’, in S.T. Madsen (ed.), State, Society and the Environment in South Asia. Routledge, New York, 1999, pp. 266-296.

11. A. Kalaiyarasan, 2014, op. cit. (fn. 2).

12. Surinder S. Jodhka, Beyond ‘Crises’: Rethinking Contemporary Punjab Agriculture. Governance And Policy Spaces (GAPS) Project, working paper no. 4, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad, 2005.

13. K. Balagopal, Ear to the Ground: Selected Writings on Class and Caste. Navayana, New Delhi, 2011.

14. Founder leader of the Shetkari Sanghatana, Maharashtra, an organization representing the farmers’ interests.

15. J. Heyer, The Changing Position of Thottam Farmers in Villages in Rural Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Between 1981/2 and 1996. Working Paper No. 59, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford, 2000.

16. A. Wyatt, Party System Change in South India: Political Entrepreneurs, Patterns and Processes. Routledge, Abingdon, 2009.

17. M. Vijayabaskar and A. Wyatt, ‘Economic Change, Politics and Caste: The Case of the Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhagam’, Economic and Political Weekly 48(48), 2013, pp. 103-111.

18. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/coimbatore/Farmers-begin-8-day-padayatra-for-Avinashi-Athikadavur-project/articleshow/21610815.cms accessed on 11/9/14, http://www.kongusingam.com/english/index.html accessed on 9/11/14

19. Kongu Nadu Munnetra Kazhagam (KNMK), Vivasaaigal Arasiyal Urimai Maanaadu, Vizha Sirappu Malar (Farmers’ political rights conference souvenir), 19 December 2010, Karur.

20. http://www.bulletin247.com/english-news/show/ponneri-all-set-to-become-smart-city accessed on 17/12/2014.

21. http://pasumaithaayagam.in/includes/downloads/A_MANIFESTO_FOR_ FARMERS_IN_TAMIL_NADU-released _by_Dr._S._Ramadoss,_PMK,_on_3.10.2009.pdf accessed on 17/12/2014

22. G. De Neve and G. Carswell, ‘NREGA and the Return of Identity Politics in Western Tamil Nadu, India’, Forum for Development Studies 38(2), 2011, pp. 205-210; M. Vijayabaskar and A. Wyatt, 2013, op. cit., fn. 17.

23. M.S.S. Pandian, 2011, op. cit., fn. 6.

24. ‘A cord tied with a talisman or a piece of turmeric worn around the wrist till a particular auspicious event comes to an end or till the vow taken is fulfilled’, (2006, Dictionary of Contemporary Tamil, Chennai: Cre-A.)

25. S. Anandhi, J. Jeyaranjan and Rajan Krishnan, ‘Work, Caste and Competing Masculinities: Notes from a Tamil Village’, Economic and Political Weekly 37(43), 2002, pp. 4397-4406.