ISTR Sixth International Conference Toronto, Canada / July 11-14, 2004 Contesting Citizenship and Civil Society in a Divided World

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Farmers’ Movement, Poor Farmers and Justice: The Role of the Civil Society Initiatives-Experiences From Mandya District in Karnataka, India
by
Poarkodi Natarajan
University of Mysore, India

INTRODUCTION: In India, we might say that there are primarily two types of agrarian mobilizations. One is of the poor agricultural labourers and marginal farmers, the other is of the more prosperous and independent owner-cultivators who produce a considerable marketed surplus.1 This apart, there has been several spontaneous micro-mobilisations and individual protests.

Significant historic peasant insurrections against the zamindari, mahalwari, ryotwari and jagirdari systems have been witnessed in the past. The Santhal insurrection, the Mopillah rebellion, Punjab peasant revolt, Kheda peasant struggle, the Nijai Bol movement and the Champaran struggle are few such struggles.

In the post independent India, two ideologies were associated with peasant movements, Viz., i) the Bhoodan and Sarvodaya of Vinoba Bhave and Jai Prakash Narayan and ii) the Communist. However, significant peasant movements such as Tebhaga, Telangana, Naxalbari and land grab movements emerged on the basis of communist ideology. 2 They were significant because they changed certain social structures. While Tebhaga was primarily a tenant revolt, the Telangana, the Naxalbari and the land grab movements were against the monopoly ownership of land by landlords and demanded redistribution of land to the poor and landless. And till date, it is the communists who make the mobilization of poor agricultural labourers and marginal farmers with short term demands on wage hike, assured employment and better working conditions and long term demands for equal distribution of land and other resources.

From late 70s, the other significant movements of the owner-cultivators or farmers have surfaced in few states. Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha (KRRS) of Karnataka, Shetkari Sangathan of Maharashtra and Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) of West UP, Punjab and Haryana have been very vocal and visible in the past two decades. Here, apparently, the agriculturists present themselves as an undifferentiated phalanx as they often did during British India. But one should bear in mind that these farmers’ movements distinguish their interests quite clearly from the interests of the agricultural labourers. 3

Sharad Joshi, the proponent of farmers’ movement in India, now the advisor on agricultural policy for Prime Minister, Vajpayee, made a vociferous espousal about the Bharat vs. India – the rural India vs. urban India dichotomy. The primary contradiction is characterised as that between the rural and the urban. Therefore, the enemy is the government at the centre and at the state. Tikait of BKU has been using the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan and not Bharat vs India and has been gaining support of middle farmers and even small farmers, even here the general orientation of struggles are against the government policies, the corruption in the administration and many other related issues. Further, despite their call and assertions for broad peasant unity, these movements have been pro-rich in programmes and in practice. Their general demands are; increase in public investment in agriculture, low input cost, higher cost for agricultural produce, remunerative price or minimum support price, easy availability of institutional loans and of late guaranteed procurement of farm produce. All these demands have mainly oriented from the perspective of the market rather than the small and poor farmers.

However, in some studies, the concept of peasant movements has been treated as an expression of the peasant’s search for identity. The dimension of the identity-oriented New Social Movements as seen in the peasant movement of Karnataka refers to collective actions of a group to produce solidarity and identity in the hierarchical structure of the Indian society.4 These were manifested in the ransacking of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Cargill Seeds Corporation, Cremate Monsanto campaign and so on.

The Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha, which originated and gained popularity in 1980, during the Naragund-Navalgund struggle, against the government imposed betterment charges for irrigated lands with retrospective effect, has been continuously crusading against the MNC seeds, Dunkel Draft, GATT, WTO, Monsanto, seed patents etc. They recognize the primary contradictions as that of American imperialism and the Indian society and then the government and the agriculturists. Their demands have been withdrawal from WTO, GATT etc, formulation of a national agricultural policy, and the general demands mentioned above. In drought situations, they have demanded for waiving the interests and loans.

Agrarian crisis in Karnataka is aggravating day by day, and many farmers are committing suicide in the state due to heavy indebtedness, crop failure and inability to find market. There is a crying need for civil society initiatives to save their lives and livelihoods. It is in this background the present study is conceived to bring forth some of the crucial issues in the farmer’s movement in India in general and Karnataka in particular. The study will be exploratory in nature and will focus on the following issues in the Mandya district of Karnataka in India.

1. Has the movement addressed the issues of poverty among the poor farmers?

2. To what extent has the movement addressed the social issues of small and marginal farmers and agricultural labourers?

3. What strategies do they have to tackle the problems of poverty among farmers?

4. Are they handling the problems of small and marginal problems? If they are, then what are the issues and how are they handling them needs to be explored.

METHODOLOGY: An extensive Interview will be held with the Leaders in the Farmer’s Movement, the Farmers (both big and small), the Policy Makers, the Academicians and Researchers. A time-structured questionnaire will also be used wherever required. Participatory research methods will be applied as and when necessary. The data will be analysed in the light of the available literature on Farmer’s Movements.

This research would help trace the nature of the farmer’s movement, the strengths and lacunas of the movement and the modes of their operation and the shortcomings at the policy level. The study would enable us to understand the state of farmer’s movement and thereby help in understanding such civil society initiatives and make the civil society initiative more meaningful. This study will also add to the existing knowledge bank on farmer’s movement and will go a long way in shaping the farmer’s struggle round the world, as we always draw from the other’s experiences.

End note

1Pg 193, Farmers Movements in Contemporary India by Dipankar Gupta, Social Movements in the State by Ghanshyam Shah

2Pg xviii, Conceptual Problems in the Study of Social Movements, Social Movements in India by M S A Rao

3Pg 195, Farmers Movements in Contemporary India by Dipankar Gupta, Social Movements in the State by Ghanshyam Shah

4Pg 233, Themes in Studies on Old and New Social Movements in India, Social Movements, Old and New – A Post-modernist critique by Rajendra Singh

References

Social Movements, Old and New – A Post-modernist critique by Rajendra Singh

Social and Political Movements by Harish K Puri and Paramjit S Judge

Social Movements in the State by Ghanshyam Shah

Social Movements in India by M S A Rao

Rural Sociology by S L Doshi and P C Jain

Date received: September 30, 2003

Copyright © 2003 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Conferences Inc. Document # caml-42.