The rural gloom

In a potato field in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh. The gender gap in wages is growing, with women typically earning half to two-thirds of what male workers receive for the same work. - RAJEEV BHATT

The complete collapse of rural incomes and job opportunities signals a humanitarian crisis. However, this grim reality does not seem to command much public attention.

JAYALAKSHMI works as an agricultural labourer - when she gets work, that is. For the past month, even though it is now officially the harvest season, she has found work only for six days, at a daily wage of Rs.25 for a six-hour working day. Her husband has migrated to find work elsewhere. She thinks he has gone to the nearby town; but since she has not heard from him after he left two weeks ago, she does not really know where he is, or when he will return. The last time he went for such work, which was three months ago, he came back with only around Rs.400 as savings, which did not last them very long.

Meanwhile, the household consisting of herself, her two young children and her mother-in-law survives on a daily meal of a handful of rice along with some weeds that she gathers from the open fields near her village. Sometimes even cooking this becomes a major problem as she has no money for kerosene. The children are just slightly better off - the mid-day meal programme in the village school is functioning, so at least once a day in school they get a full meal. In this family, the children actually dread holidays.

For those who visit some of India's poorest rural areas, this is a common enough story that will cause no surprise. But Jayalakshmi does not live in one of the poorest parts of rural India - she lives in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, which is one of the richest agricultural districts of that State and even of the country as a whole. And her story is not unusual in Guntur, or any of the more well-off districts; indeed, it is now a common story in most parts of rural India, including in the north.

The crisis that has hit the farming community so severely over the past few years is finally receiving some public attention, and the Central government and some State governments, such as that in Andhra Pradesh, are waking up to the need to direct policies towards making cultivation viable. But the focus on the crisis in agriculture, which has been expressed so dramatically in the increase in farmers' suicides, has partly obscured a broader and more widespread economic depression in the countryside.

The complete collapse of rural incomes or job opportunities has created an almost unprecedented situation of desperation among the landless, who rely exclusively on wage labour to survive. Some of this problem originates further back, in the inadequate development of non-agricultural work opportunities in most of rural India. This was directly related to the decline in public expenditure on rural development, which had adverse multiplier effects on rural non-agricultural economic activity in general. More recently, farm-related activities such as dairy have been hit by the decline of cooperatives (some of them killed by official design) and the pattern of trade liberalisation.

In addition, accelerated mechanisation of many cultivation processes reduced the demand for labour in agriculture. Ironically, mechanisation has been actively encouraged by successive governments, without thinking of other means to absorb the surplus labour in the countryside.

Weather conditions have contributed to making the situation worse. For example, when crops fail, obviously there will be less need to hire labourers for the harvesting. And the current crisis in agriculture makes it even more difficult for farmers to hire labour, so they prefer to rely on family workers as far as possible, and grudge paying even the grotesquely low wages that are now prevalent.

Rural wage rates have not only failed to rise to meet increasing consumer prices; in many areas, even in the richer parts of the country, they have actually fallen through the expedient of declaring the job only for a "half-day". Even in the richer areas of Andhra Pradesh, for example, daily wage rates were between Rs.15 and Rs.30 for "half-days" (of six hours) and only Rs.50-60 for "full days" of very intensive work such as ploughing. The gender gap in wages is also growing, with women typically earning half to two-thirds of what male workers receive for the same work. This when the official minimum wage in the State is now above Rs.90 a day. In most other States, the situation is even worse.

Even at these low rates, labourers find that work is not easily available. The number of days worked on average has fallen sharply, and so wage incomes across many parts of the country are now actually substantially lower in real terms than they were even five years ago.

Despite the gravity of this situation, this grim reality does not seem to command much public attention. It is difficult to think of what more has to happen, before this crisis in rural livelihood is treated as the national emergency that it already is. The political fallout of this situation was already evident some months ago. Jayalakshmi, and almost everyone else she knows in her village, voted to throw out the government that had been responsible for creating the desperate situation they found themselves in. They are now waiting to see what the new government will deliver.