Myth and Reality: Agrarian Scene in Left Ruled Bengal (1977 - 2002)

ON 21 June 2002 the Left Front Government in West Bengal celebrated a record 25 years in office at a stretch. This occasion has also inspired a steady stream of articles and commentaries, assessing the achievements and failures of this government in such diverse areas as civil rights and political democracy, education and health services, industry and infrastructure, and of course, agriculture, in this monograph we have preferred to zoom in on the last-named, and decidedly the single most important area.

Have the much-celebrated land reforms heralded a relatively egalitarian rural order? Which class forces have harvested the biggest benefits from Operation Barga and Panchayati Raj? What was the real extent of productivity growth in agriculture over the last 25 years? And what are the implications of the ‘improved’ Left Front’s “new agriculture policy” the Chief Minister is desperately trying to push through? How do changes in agrarian relations in this state compare with all-India trends? How does the ruling CPI(M) cope with questions of class struggle in rural Bengal?

Arindam Sen, member of Central Committee, CPI(ML) and Liberation editorial board, discusses these and other questions in some detail, and that is followed by a brief resume of our movemental intervention in the agrarian scene of West Bengal in recent years.

– Central Committee, CPI(ML) Liberation

References:

Basu, Dipankar (2001): Political Economy of ‘Middleness’ Behind Violence in Rural Wast Bengal, EPW, April 21.

Bose, Biman (2000): Expose TC-BJP campaign of slander and violence – unleasb Mass struggles. People’s Democracy, September 24.

Bhaumik, Shankar Kumar (1994): Tenancy Relations and Agrarian Development – A study of West Bengal.

Ghatak, Maitreesh and Ghatak, Maitreya (2002): Recent Reforms in the Panchayati System in West Bengal toward Greater Participatory Governance? EPW January 5.

Ghosh, Ratan (1981): Agrarian Programme of the Left Front Government, EPW, June (Review of Agriculture).

Government of West Bengal (1995): The Recommendations of The. State Finance Commission, 1990-95.

Khasnabis, Ratan (1994): Tenurial Conditions in West Bengal : Continuity and Change, EPW, December 31.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich: The Agrarian Question in Russia Towards the Close of the Nineteenth Century, Collected Works, Moscow 1973, vol. 15. Marx, Karl: Capital, Vol. Ill, chapter 20.

Ray Ranjan (2000): Poverty, Household Size and Child Welfare in India, EPW, September 23.

Theisenhusen, William C. (2001): Poverty Amidst Plenty, in Horacio R Morales, Jr., James Putzel et al (eds): Power-In The Village.

Three Pillars and Gaps Galore

A. Land Redistribution

How about the actual redistribution of the vested land? Table 2 shows that if one takes 1977 as the median dividing the post-1953 period of land reforms, almost 60% of the actual redistribution (6,26,284 out of a total of 10,38,000 acres) was accomplished before that and the rest 40% afterwards. The yearly rate of redistribution also declined progressively. Comparing the last columns of Tables 1 and 2, we find that 3.7 lakh acres of land vested with the state re­mained undistributed. A Land Reforms Tribunal was set up in 2000 for speedy settlement of legal disputes pending for long years in civil courts, but so far it has cleared only 13,373 acres of land. (Paper, presented by Mishra and Rawal; see below)

Litigations, of course, are not the sole reason for lakhs of acres remaining undistributed. In a report submitted to the WB government at its request in 1993, Nirmal Mukherjee and Debabrata Bandopadhyaya pointed out that at the end of 1981, vested agricul­tural land undisturbed by court cases amounted to 3.5 lakh acres, of which only 94,000 acres were distributed during the next 12 years. Moreover, some 80,000 acres of land had just “vanished”, if official records were to be believed. The surveyors showed that, together with undistributed land, these “vanished acres” were “worth at least Rs.34 crore per annum” and panchayats could not easily avoid “the charge of collusive misappropriation” on these accounts.

Seven years after the publication of the Mukherjee-Bandopadhyaya survey, Manas Ghosh reported in The Statesman (September 25 and 26, 2000) that the CPI(M) peasant wing was “lording it over” some 3 lakh acres of undistributed vested land and extracting 20 to 25 per cent of the production profits, which amounted to over Rs.40 crore even in mono-cropped areas.

Whether one believes the Statesman report or not,, there is no de­nying that a huge quantity of ceiling-surplus land is still kept hidden with collusive arrangements among landowners, government depart­ments and panchayat officials. Peasant organizations are flatly de­nied access to information on this score, while the statutory “standing committees for land reform” under the block level panchayat bodies function as centers of corruption and favouritism. The powerful land lobby often prevents pattadars (allottees of pattas or title deeds) from actually taking possession of the land. Effective redistribution of such land remains a key item on the agenda of the peasant movement in the state.

Apart from the question of vested but undistributed land, there is another, no less important issue: should not the ceiling be lowered further? We think it should. In a state where the number and propor­tion of marginal farmers are on the rise (currently 72% in official reckoning), there is no reason why the old ceiling limits (17.29 acres for irrigated and 24.12 acres for unirrigated land) should be kept as they are. Per acre yields have risen several times in the intervening years, so in order to just maintain the level of egalitarianism, the ceiling limits need to be revised downward. That would touch only a miniscule highest rung of the rural rich and benefit an incomparably large constituency of the underprivileged.Using official figures, Dipankar Basu calculated that “by bringing down the ceiling on landholdings in 1997 to 10 acres, the LFG could have poten­tially made available an amount of land that works out to 98% of all the land that it has managed to redistribute for the past 23 years ... And this would have adversely affected only 1.36% of the rural households! (Basil, 2001) In fact this is precisely what a section of CPI(M) ranks demand even as the government’s loud claims of completion of ‘practicable’ land reforms lead to the opposite demand for liquidating the peasant organisation itself, since it has nothing left to do! (see box) But lowering of the ceiling is too much to expect from the present, dispensation, which is reportedly considering upward revision of ceilings. The upper ceiling has al­ready been abolished for agricultural operations undertaken by agro-based industries and food-processing units, and considerably relaxed for urban areas; these may well be the first steps in the ‘right’ direc­tion!

B. Operation Barga

IT WAS a real operation that started with a big bang. Bureau­cratic red-tapism was brushed aside, and some 8000 “camps” were organized throughout the state, between October 1978 and June 1982, to register as many as 6,75,000 bargadars (sharecroppers). But it took no more than about a decade for the whole thing to end with a whimper. The. 1992 NSS data pointed out that only 30.6% of all bargadars were registered and that there was a distinct class bias, too: of the landless tenants, only 16% were recorded, whereas in the case of big tenants the corresponding figure was as high as 71%! This puts to rest all controversy as to which class, at the end of the day, has benefited most from the great reform!

Several other limitations of the programme are also to be noted. Nowhere in the state is Operation Barga (OB) extended to bodo [boro] cultivation (summer crop of rice), although there is nothing in the law to prevent that. Secondly, the law (West Bengal Land Reform Act 1955, as amended subsequently) stipulates that the lessor would get half share only when he supplies all the inputs, and will get 25% share in all other cases; but the Operation did not attempt to enforce this in any way. In real life we find about half-a-dozen different shar­ing arrangements, almost always advantageous to the lessor.

But the most fundamental question about OB concerns its po­litico-economic orientation.

Elimination of all intermediaries between the state and the actual cultivator (who engages in direct cultivation with own or/and hired labour) — of all rent-collectors other than the state — constitutes a key bourgeois democratic reform. It facilitates the unhindered flow of capital into agriculture, so advanced representatives of the bourgeoi­sie support this reform. Communists also fight for it in the stage of democratic revolution because they wish to abolish the vestiges of feudalism, unfetter the development of productive forces and clear the arena of class struggle, making the battle between capital and labour more direct, more intense. Way back in 1952, the Kumarsha conference of the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha passed a categori­cal resolution saying “it is the aim of the Kisan Sabha to put an end to the sharecropping system and grant ownership right to the bargadar”. The 1973 CPI(M) resolution on Certain Agrarian Issues also held that the “right of the tenant to the ownership of the land he is cultivat­ing is to be guaranteed, except to those who are lease-holders from small owners.”

The party’s Bengal leadership, however, proved to be more pru­dent. Harekrishna Konar, renowned peasant leader and a minister in the UF government, announced that sharecropping could not be abol­ished by law so long as the “present social structure” existed. Benoy Chowdhury, a minister in the LFG, wrote in 1985 that occupancy rights could be granted to the sharecroppers only after all the tenants were properly recorded; any attempt to do that now would lead to large-scale evictions. (Chowdhury, 1985)

The question of ownership was thus cleverly shelved, and the CPI(M)’s middle-rich support base kept intact. The direction of the government policy was then put on reverse gear : a quest began for a way in which the tiller of the soil could secure ownership not through movement but by paying, a compensation, i.e., a way in which he could just buy up the land he tills. The idea of a land bank corpora­tion was mooted, which would help such transactions with easy credit. Not surprisingly, the financial institutions did not oblige the state gov­ernment by supporting the scheme, and that was the end of it all. Meanwhile, the landowners themselves devised their own mechanism for civilized eviction — a rural equivalent of golden handshake, as a peasant leader called it — where a small part of the land (or, in a few areas, a paltry sum of money) is given to the sharecropper as a conso­lation for ‘voluntarily’ giving up all right to the land he tills. Al­though such deals are illegal, the CPI(M) was quick to take the cue. Just look at the following excerpts from a paper presented, at a state government-sponsored international seminar held in Kolkata in Janu­ary this year, by Suryakanta Mishra, a front-ranking minister and a new member of the CPI(M) Central Committee, and Vikas Rawal, an expert on agrarian economy in West Bengal:

“On the future of sharecropping in West Bengal:

“IN THE recent years, there is a trend of the landowner and share­cropper entering into a mutual agreement under which ownership right on, say, 25 to 30% of the sharecropped land is given to the sharecrop­per. Peasant organizations have been debating whether this should be accepted ... So far, the stand of Kisan Sabha has been not to enter into or encourage such negotiations because [in that case] all the share­croppers will ultimately get evicted. But with this increased urbani­zation, the cost of land in the vicinity of the urban areas and even in non-municipal urban agglomerations has been increasing very much. So if even the cost of, say, 10-20% of land is given to the sharecrop­per, he will get more return from the interest of the amount than from cultivating the land. It is clear that the non-involvement of the peas­ant organizations weakens the bargaining power of the sharecroppers in this respect.

“In the past there had been demands for making sharecroppers owners of the entire land. It does not seem likely that the existing correlation of class forces will permit that because a good number of landowners who leased out are not [sic! this word seems to be an inadvertent interpolation - AS] small owners themselves. The immediately realizable goal in respect of sharecropping is to allow a fair agreement for dividing the ownership rights between the owner and the sharecropper ... The government has been considering about bring­ing a legislation on this ...

“It is also debatable as to how much share in land should the sharecropper get. The peasant organizations have been demanding that the legislation should provide for fifty-fifty division between the sharecropper and the landlord. While this will be possible in rural areas, it might be untenable for the urban areas.

“... The Kisan Sabha is more or less united to take the line that until the legislative change in this respect is brought about, the Kisan Sabha should take the side of the sharecroppers in entering into such negotiations and help the sharecropper get a fair share in the owner­ship of land.”

So, this is the much-awaited follow-up to OB! The authors admit that in the peasant organizations, including their own, there is much resistance to the proposed legislation. They intervene in the debate on the side of the landlords, asking the peasant organizations to forget the old demand and take up the role of a dalal or intermediary in land deals (whether with a brokerage or not is anybody’s guess). They warn the peasant organizations not even to press for “a fifty-fifty division” in all cases. Making a mockery of Marxism, they reduce a question of principle – of abolition of semi-feudal land relations in favour of the peasants, of the tiller’s right to land — to the logic of the market. Leave farming, forsake your recorded right — they advise the gullible bhagchasi - for you can earn more just from interest income even if you get 10 to 20 per cent of the real worth of the land!

Is this a Marxist leader speaking, or a ‘benevolent’ dealer in real estates?

Mishra and Rawal, however, raise one valid question: does “the existing correlation of class forces ... permit” the transfer of owner­ship of “the entire land” to the sharecropper?

The percentage of tenanted land in total cultivated area in West Bengal declined drastically from 18.70 in 1972 to 12.84 in 1982, at least partly in response to OB, and then marginally to 12 in 1992 (NSS data, various rounds). But land lease operations still remain an important mode of surplus appropriation, with a large section of big landowners leasing out large chunks of their landholdings, usually to poorer categories. Thus in the 1992 rabi season, households owning 5 to 10 acres of land operated only 16.43% of total cropped area in the state, although they owned 22.98 per cent. In the case of house­holds in the above 10-acre category, the corresponding figures are 4.38 per cent and 7.62 per cent respectively. This means that, leaving out intra-size-category contracts, approximately 30 per cent of the area owned was leased out in the former (5-10 acres) category and 43 per cent in the latter (above 10 acres) category. (Basu, 2001).

After large landowners, small and medium absentee landowners together with rural people engaged in service, trade, independent pro­fessions etc. constitute another big chunk of lessors. From his field survey in 12 villages in four blocks of Medinipur district, SK Bhowmik found that lessors whose primary occupation was non-agricultural, comprised 43.92 per cent and 58.60 per cent in advanced and back­ward regions respectively. (Bhowmik, 1994)

As regards lessees, most of them are poor and marginal. Accord­ing to estimates of the statistical cell of the Board of Revenue, Gov­ernment of West Bengal, the average size of landholdings under tenurial contracts is 0.97 acre. (Khasnabis, 1994) The actual condition of the sharecropper is portrayed fairly accurately in a grassroots report, adopted at the Bainchi-Tinna local conference (Hooghly district) of the CPI(M), December 2001:

“... Recording of bargadars did take place on an extensive scale after the LFG came to power. But subsequently many of them took recourse to distress sale, even of recorded land ... Sharecropping is no longer remunerative. Increased cost of cultivation and non-remunera­tive prices of the produce are pushing the bargadar into a tight corner. As a result, the inclination towards giving up barga rights is increasing ...”

Well, would not many of these sharecroppers find some respite, may be, a way out of the extreme crisis, if they are allowed to keep the entire produce, that is to say, if they are granted ownership rights?

The overall picture on both sides of tenancy relations thus leaves us in no doubt that there is a strong case for granting ownership rights to the overwhelming majority of bargadars (estimated at a total of around 25 lakhs), may be with some compensation in some cases. For instance, a lessor who depends solely on rent for subsistence – e.g., aged/disabled persons, single mothers/widows and so on – may be provided with appropriate compensation or some other special arrangement. On the other hand, cases of reverse tenancy (more about that later on) are obviously to be exempted (hence our slogan: owner­ship to the small bargadars). Some other special cases will also be there, for the current class configuration in rural Bengal does not warrant a simplistic implementation of the “land to the tiller” slogan.

These are but questions of detail, which can and must be sorted out through democratic consultations among peasant organizations and concerned intellectuals, once the basic principle of tiller’s right to land is firmly upheld. But the CPI(M)’s perpetual fear of losing the support of the so-called “middles” kept the whole issue in limbo for some 35 years since 1967, and now with the proposed legislation, the half-measure codenamed OB is all set to be given a formal — and not so decent – burial. Pending that, the party’s 20th state conference has endorsed the Mishra-Rawal position, quoted above, on what we have called civilised eviction, and has taken the side of landowners — in­cluding absentee landowners — to launch a scathing attack on tenants. (see box) Readers would get an idea of what the party means by “multidimensional” peasant movement when they see that fighting against “opportunism” of sharecroppers is now regarded as a “key task” of this movement.

C. Panchayati Raj :

PROBABLY THE most acclaimed part of the LFG reform pack­age is the party-based panchayati raj (PR). In terms of its pioneering role, stability and regular elections, the Bengal model no doubt ranks first in the country. Now let us briefly take stock of the progress it has achieved so far in two key areas : (a) poverty alleviation (under the combined impact of PR and “land reforms”) and (b) devolution of administrative authority, and empowerment of the weaker sections of society.

A stubborn statistical duel has been going on for quite some time now in respect to agricultural growth rates and poverty levels in West Bengal vis-a-vis other states in India. It is not possible here to go into details and conclude the debate but we should at least set the record straight.

First, it is to be noted that a serious problem was involved in the changes in methodology for collection and preparation of crop output data. Until the 1980s the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics (BAES) conducted independent sample surveys for acreage estima­tion and crop cuts for yield estimation. The subjective estimates of the Directorate of Agriculture, the state agency charged with imple­menting policies to boost agricultural production, could be checked against the BAES figures, and the BAES data were generally used as the basis of official state government estimates. In the early 1980s the DoA unilaterally began to ‘adjust’ some BAES estimates. In the mid-1980s the integrity of the data was further compromised as BAES sample surveys for acreage estimation were abandoned altogether, and official yield figures were converted to a simple average of the often quite divergent BAES and DoA estimates. Such flaws in meth­ods naturally cast doubts on the official estimates and inferences. (Rogaly et al, 1999).

Secondly, even if the production figures supplied by the state goveminent are taken to be fully reliable, much depends on the choice of the base year. A growth rate of 6.9% per annum in foodgrains can be, indeed has been, reported between 1981-82 and 1991-92. Now, in 1981-82 as well as in 1982-83, the harvests were unusually low. If 1983-84 is chosen as the base year, the same data would show an annual growth rate of 4.3% per annum up to 1991-92. (Sengupta and Gazdar, 1997).

Thirdly, agricultural growth in West Bengal is not as unique as it is sometimes made out to be: ‘it forms part of a general turnaround in eastern India — notably in West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — in the 1980s. The belated spread of green revolution to rice-growing areas seems to be the main proximate cause of this general upturn. After 1991-92, however, there has been a plateauing of foodgrains produc­tion in West Bengal in the 1990s : coming down from 12.7 million tonnes next year, rising slightly to 12.9 and 13.1 million tonnes in 1993-94 and 1994-95 respectively. (Rogaly et al, 1999) The latest state government policy paper (see section III for details) conceded that the growth rate of production and productivity of foodgrains “has either remained stagnant or tended to decelerate during the last one decade”, foodgrains production in 1999-2000 being in the order of 148.46 tonnes against an estimated requirement of 155.76 tonnes.

Another cause of concern, as the Mishra-Rawal paper cited above points out, is an “increasing... shift from production of foodgrains to other crops” and to plantations, fisheries etc., which “can threaten food security for the poor households”. The paper admits that the LFG is yet to come up with any action plan on this score. Having said all this, one must accept that agricultural growth in West Bengal un­der the LFG has been impressive. The point is, has that, coupled with other measures including “land reforms”, translated into any drastic reduction in rural poverty? The government says yes and cites in support figures from the World Bank Report (2000), which are in turn contested by others. The controversy took an unexpected twist in mid-March this year, when it came to be known that the Asian Devel­opment Bank (ADB) has offered to finance and coordinate a fresh, detailed “participatory poverty assessment” project in West Bengal because the state, along with a few others, stands below the national average in terms of poverty ratio. The ADB is currently the LFG’s closest partner in development projects, and the government is fa­vourably considering the proposal. In the mean time, let us cast a quick glance over a few recent estimates of rural poverty in West Bengal compared to other states and the national average.

Figures 1 and 2 show that rural mean per capita consumption as well as the head count ratio of rural poverty rose and fell in West Bengal more or less in tandem with the rest of the country, showing hardly any sustained special achievement. We have reproduced these figures from Haris Gazdar and Sunil Sengupta (Ben Rogaly et al, 1999). Basing himself on the 50th Round (July 1993 to June 1994) of NSS data, Ranjan Ray made very detailed estimates of rural and urban poverty. In Table 3 we present some of his findings, which show that in terms of all the available indices of rural poverty, West Bengal stood below the national average and fared better than very few states. (Ray, 2000) On the other hand, the LFG's performance in providing subsidised foodgrains to the rural poor is admitted to have been worse than that of state governments run by reactionary parties, such as Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu And from Table 4, prepared on the basis of yearly economic reviews of the WB and Indian governments and Census Reports, we find that the daily per capita foodgrains production in West Bengal continues to fall short of the national average; in fact the negative difference rose considerably during much of the LF period.

Coming to the question of devolution of power, recent studies — including one by the West Bengal government itself — have found that the onetime frontrunner now lags behind some other states. Early this year, Maitreesh Ghatak and Maitreya Ghatak, after taking note of the “admire[able] ... achievements of West Bengal as-a pioneering model of participatory government,” pointed out: “A recent inter-state study by Jain (1999) covering all the major states put West Bengal not only behind Kerala but Madhya Pradesh and Kamataka on indicators such as the power to prepare local plans, transfer of staff, control over staff, transfer of funds ... Furthermore, a committee set up by the West Bengal government itself has criticised the district level planning proc­ess involving the panchayat system and state bureaucracy for lack of coordination and insufficient participation of the people, or their elected representatives, at the village level. ... The state government bureauc­racy hands out district plans to district officials and lower tiers of panchayats have no say in the allocation of these funds or the implementation of these projects, unless they are requested to lend a help­ing hand. The amount of money spent through this channel is much more than that is directly handled by panchayats. Also, there is little attempt at coordinating between these two sets of plans at the district level [Government of West Bengal, p.6],” (Ghatak and Ghatak, 2002)

Why did the LF in West Bengal lag so much behind the LDF in Kerala? The authors have come up with several explanations. One is that the intense political competition the LDF faces vis-a-vis Congress compelled it to score political points over the rivals by launching the ambitious People’s Plan campaign just after regaining power in the 1996 elections. More generally, “... redistributing power and resources away from the state government, where the hold of the LDF is uncer­tain, to the local government can be viewed as a rational political move. In West Bengal, given the LF's secure tenure at the state government level, the need for such radical reform is much less.” (ibid)

This otherwise valid observation misses out on one important point, in the last few rounds of parliamentary and assembly elections the LF suffered serious jolts in the rural areas too, and that might have pro­vided the compulsion which prompted it to introduce and emphasise mandatory village constituency (gram sansad) meetings, in this meet­ing every villager is entitled, and expected, to participate and monitor the various projects from planning to execution to review stages. But this lofty idea of participatory decentralisation has to operate in a context of growing nexus between the CPI(M) and deep-rooted vested interests, a nexus that is getting strengthened in course of the CPI(M)’s prolonged stay in power.

In fact, this was experienced as early as in 1986, when an ambi­tious pilot project for ensuring people’s participation in developmen­tal planning at the village level was taken up in Medinipur by the district authorities in collaboration with IIT, Kharaghpur. According to those associated with the project, it fizzled out because, “firstly, the elected panchayat representatives felt threatened that their newly acquired status would be eroded by direct empowerment of the peo­ple and their involvement in the planning process. Secondly, a large part of the panchayat members as well as leaders and functionaries of political parties were employers of wage labour and they felt threat­ened by the prospect of the empowerment of the working people.”

The same set of circumstances have put paid to the subsequent gram sansad facelift too. In the bourgeois administrative framework of decentralisation and devolution, the problem is best summed up in the following words, “... the early success of the panchayat reforms in West Bengal has generated some political forces that stand in the way of further, more radical, reform ... A coalition of white-collar em­ployees (School teachers, government employees) and middle peas­ants, the so-called rural middle strata, have emerged as an important power base in the party and resist further devolution of power that a true people’s plan would entail.”

The masses of the downtrodden, however, are wise enough to un­derstand that any measure of democratisation can only be achieved in course of struggles against organs of power, not excluding the panchayats. They are engaged in continuous skirmishes with the panchayat representatives of rich and upwardly mobile middle peas­ants, who rule rural Bengal in league with the police and the state bureaucracy, over a host of issues including land and wages, relief and development, favouritism and corruption, and so on. From avowed centres of mass mobilisation, PR institutions have decomposed, over the years, mainly into targets of mass movements. The battle for peo­ple’s supervision on panchayat bodies and for greater devolution of power to the gram panchayats from the upper tiers and from the state bureaucracy has to be intensified simultaneously, both from within and without the panchayati raj institutions.

D. Potholes on the Reform Road

LET US hear, once again, from Suryakanta Mishra and Prakash Rawal: “As the land reforms could not be combined with a large-scale provision of formal credit and non-land inputs, the small and marginal fanners who had obtained land under the programme were again exposed to the sections of rural society that controls other forms of capital ... Although the old types of moneylending have declined ... their place has been taken up by new types of moneylend­ers. It is basically a pre-capitalist relation, though of a new type.

“... pre-capitalist relations continue to persist in the agrarian rela­tions and production processes in various forms. Sharecropping is widely prevalent ... informal moneylending is rampant.

“... There was a transformation from semi-feudal landlords in the direction of capitalist landowners ... most typically they are neither feudal nor capitalist... While the land base of this class has weak­ened, it is difficult to say what has happened to the overall levels of economic disparities, say in terms of their share in ... value of all as­sets and capital, and in value of production. It is likely that the overall levels of disparity have not declined very much ...”

Now, have a glimpse of what the party’s lower-level cadres feel about the burning problems: "The cost of cultivation has risen sev­eral times, so marginal and small farmers are being forced to take loans from mahajans (moneylenders) or, alternatively, to lease out their lands to rich farmers on seasonal basis. Distress sale of land is also witnessed. Capitalist concentration of land is taking place.” (from the Report adopted at the CPI(M)’s Sixth Pandua Zonal Conference, Hooghly District, December 2001)

Well, such observations in the ruling party’s official papers and documents reveal no more than the tip of the iceberg. We shall dis­cuss these issues in the light of our own experience and investigation, but before that a few words on one major gap left untouched by the reforms.

Lack of what Mishra and Rawal call “adequate state intervention in agricultural marketing” is a problem the ruling CPI(M) complains about all the time, but does nothing to solve (to whatever extent pos­sible for a state government). To insistent demands of state procure­ment of at least the major crops and of crop insurance and subsidised inputs, the state government continues to turn a deaf ear, proving thereby its utter incapacity to support the farming community in this era of liberalisation and globalisation. As we write these lines, paddy is selling at Rs. 320-350 per quintal throughout the state – which is well below the cost of production – as against the minimum price of Rs. 530 recommended by the state government. The grossly non-re­munerative prices for the second year in a row — and that in a situa­tion of declining on stagnanting production — clearly indicate underconsumption resulting from declining purchasing power of the masses. The Chief Minister, of course, lacks the courage to admit this and tries to explain away the whole thing as a result of overpro­duction, reduction in smuggling to Bangladesh, and so on.

To return to our discussion of the LF reform regime, it has left unscathed the old agrarian marketing chains and practices, where traders and warehouse-owners routinely discriminate against small producers. The latter was promised help by the cooperative ‘move­ment’, but that was as much a non-starter in this sector as in others. On the contrary, a proliferation of trading intermediaries has taken place under — and in no way challenging — the old monopolistic con­trol over local wholesale trade. The nexus between the regulatory state authorities and the “urban” commercial elite, which had devel­oped during the Congress regime has only been strengthened. For details on the buckling of the LFG to trading interests, readers may consult Ross Mallik (1993), and a paper by Barbara Harriss-White in Ben Rogaly et al (1999).

IN SECTION I we have considered the consequences of agrarian reform (and the lack of it). But these do not fully describe the goings on in rural Bengal. Closely related but basically autonomous trends in political economy also contribute, in more fundamental ways, to the reshaping of class relations and contours of class struggle. In this section we propose to consider some of these broad, largely pan-In­dian, trends in the typical context of Left-ruled Bengal.

A. Merchants Capital: Spreading Tentacles

TO BE fair to the LFG, it did try to extend institutional credit cover to the rural poor when it first came to power. But the success was limited and short-lived. In 1979-80, about 6% of a total of 22 lakh bargadars and pattadars received bank loans (Ghosh, 1981). Even this could not be maintained because the cooperative credit struc­ture soon fell into a state of limbo, thanks to corruption and misman­agement, while commercial banks stopped whatever meagre advances they had extended to the poor peasants once the latter became defaulters. The 1980s saw the moneylenders on a comeback trail, and the situation steadily worsened ever since.

According to the latest round of rural investigationThe survey area covered 4,464 families spread over 7 districts — Nadia, Bardhaman, North 24 Parganas, Hooghly, Murshidabad, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri — with the first two accounting for the majority of villages and families. conducted by the CPI(ML)’s West Bengal State Committee, mahajani loans (loans taken from village moneylenders) constituted 28.51% of the total rural credit while credit from cooperative societies accounted for only 7.06%. The rest 64.43% were provided by commercial banks, but as much as 62.19% of this loan was cornered by the above-3 bigha house­holds which constitute only about 28% of rural households. The below-3 bigha households, i.e., 72 per cent, had to be content with less than 38% of bank credit. This group, however, took more than 56% of mahajani loans. Generally speaking, the trend is for the poorer families to depend perforce on such loans, often used up on mere subsistence or exigencies like marriage, shradhha (last rites) etc. The more interesting finding is that a large number of middle peasants take recourse to mahajani loans because what they get from the for­mal credit market does not suffice for modern cultivation. Thus we see that families owning 7 to 10 bighas of land constitute only 5.22% of total households in the survey area, but they take 16.5% of mahajani, 15.76% of cooperative and 10.87% of bank loans. Usuri­ous capital thus remains the main source of credit not only for the poor but for the lower-middle peasants too. The picture changes rap­idly as one moves up the size-class scale. In our survey area, there are 39 households (1.43% of the total) in the 20 to 30 bigha category. Of these, only 2 families took loans from moneylenders amounting to Rs.52,000 (1.59% of all credit from this source), 3 took loans from cooperative bodies (Rs. 1,32,000 or 16.32% of the total) and 11 fami­lies borrowed from banks (Rs.9,27,000 or 12.57% of all bank credit). 

The operation of usurious and mercantile capital takes very many forms. The age-old system of dadan (taking a loan by mortgaging the crop to be grown) is a growing phenomenon in many areas, particu­larly in the case of vegetables and commercial crops, which need high investment. The harvest is tied, and the price pre-fixed by the creditor (often a trader) is well below the expected market price, this differ­ence implying interest at an exorbitant rate. The most widespread practice these days is for the trader in fertilisers, pesticides etc. to sell these on credit and charge, say, 20% extra over the normal price when repayment is made after harvesting, usually in cash but sometimes in crop. The imputed rate of interest in these cases ranges from 6 to 10 per cent per month, more or less comparable to money advances re­payable after harvesting. Such exorbitant rates are sought to be justi­fied on the ground of high risks involved: no legal document, no col­lateral in real life, however, default rate is very low because the lend­ers wield direct social power over the poor borrowers; moreover, the latter sincerely try their level best not to lose this very last resort.

The current trend of decline in interest rates in the organised credit market does not seem to have any bearing on the informal rural credit market because the latter operates in virtual isolation from the former – in areas where formal credit institutions do not tread. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, panchayat employees and other salaried people also play a not very insignificant role in this market. Recycling of loans — borrowing in the formal market and lending in the informal — is often resorted to by propertied people having “proper connections”.

The small and middle peasants’ dependence on merchant capital extends further to marketing and warehousing, and takes many forms. To cite one, buyers and sellers meet and transact at the aratdar’s (stockist) shop, using his weighing balance, and the latter charges around 7% (on the sale proceeds) for this small service; in some cases he also helps the prospective buyer and seller to come into contact with each other. The loss a small cultivator incurs on distress sale, the ‘extra’ which the small producer of, say, potato, has to pay for a space in the cold storage – these are only some of the more common means by which merchant’s capital sucks out a good part of the pro­ducer’s surplus, and in many cases even of the necessary product.

The renewed and extended domination of merchant’s capital is an unmistakable feature of semi-feudalism — of retarded transition from feudal to capitalist mode of production, that is — and the West Bengal experience is a striking illustration of the “law that the independent development of merchant's capital is inversely proportional to the degree of development of capitalist production”. (Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 20, also see box).

In other words, the crisis of capitalist transition and the domination of merchant capital, in West Bengal and in our country as a whole, are two sides of the same coin. There are many ways in which dominant merchant’s capital “tends ... to preserve” the elements of semi-feudalism. Probably the most important one in the case of West Bengal is that by financing the peasant small holding and small tenancy structure it enables the latter to survive and reproduce itself in the face of unequal competition from developed rich peasant farming and the pressures of market forces. Of course, it is a losing battle but the small cultivator carries on, and the price he pays for unviable farming is perpetual anxiety and a life standard often going below that of the rural proletariat. The last sentence in the quotation from Capital in the box — where “old mode” should be taken to mean, in our case, not feudalism proper but semi-feudalism in a semi-colonial setting – thus portrays an accurate picture of our poor bargadars and small owner-cultivators.

B. Capitalist Trends in Tenancy

FLABBY AND conservative that it is, capital in India penetrates agriculture not in steady steps sweeping away the remnants of feu­dalism, but in hesitant detours accommodating and utilising those remnants. One of the many symptoms of this is that traditional bhagchas (sharecropping) is being replaced not so much by direct cultivation by capitalist landowners as by small-scale thika chas (lease cultivation). The latter refers to fixed rent (to be paid in cash or in crop) seasonal tenancy, i.e., a lease contract for one season or year which may or may not be renewed for the next season(s). The advantages to the landowner are obvious: he gets an assured, no-risk return without any monetary investment; he keeps the lessee under constant economic pressure without any personal interven­tion because he is free to change the lessee at will; there is no threat of “barga record” and he is even free to take up direct cultivation as and when that appears to be lucrative enough, and also to revert to lease contracts later on. Not surprisingly, the incidence of lease cul­tivation is the highest in Punjab and Haryana (accounting for 85% of all tenancy contracts while for India as a whole 47% of tenancy contracts are for fixed money (29%) or fixed produce (18%), whereas only 40% account for the traditional produce sharing. (Sarvekshana, October-December 1995).

For the West Bengal situation we can depend on our own investi­gation. According to a survey conducted by the Kolkata chapter of Indian Institute of Marxist StudiesThe survey was conducted in 1998-99 in seven villages (mouzas) spread over all the five agro-climatic zones of West Bengal. It was our privilege that we had with us unprocessed data from a similar survey – based on the ‘same questionnaire and methodology (the census system) – conducted in these and other villages in 1978 by a group of left intellectuals – it was thus possible to compare the two sets of data., the area under tenancy (all types taken together) increased from 350.16 acres to 401.60 acres in the survey area. Within this the proportion of sharecropping declined from 86.70 per cent to 44.54%, that under fixed rent system (thika) rose from 4.96% to 47.08%, and the 'mixed' cases remained almost con­stant at a little more than 8%. The switchover to the fixed rent system is quite rapid (in tune with the national average) but the rate is far behind that observed in Punjab and Haryana.

Another new trend is reverse tenancy — substantive farmers leas­ing in land usually on seasonal or yearly contract. It emerged as a notable trend in the 1980s and 1990s when many poor and lower middle peasants found the enhanced cost of modern farming prohibi­tive, even as families with investible surplus found the high profits lucrative and began to expand their operational holdings. There is wide divergence of opinion as to how strong this trend is in West Bengal. In 1993, Ross Mallick noted that the incidence was quite high. SK Bhowmik in his 1993 work took note of the presence of reverse tenancy, “though not as intensively as in some green revolu­tion areas.” In his 1994 article Ratan Khasnabis observed that “such peasants [indulging in reverse tenancy – AS] are very small in per­centage terms”. In any case, the actual incidence of reverse tenancy varies greatly not only from area to area but also from season to season and year to year because rich peasants take to or give up this practice in accordance with the rise and fall in profit expectations.

In sharp contrast with such profit-oriented tenancy stands the sub­sistence tenancy of the poor bhagchasi whose net share of the pro­duce (after deducting the expenses he incurs on cultivation) covers just what is needed for subsistence. So what he gets amounts, in terms of economic content, to a form — a semi-feudal form, one might say — of wage, i.e. the value of labour power. Such tenants or agrarian workers in disguise also come out as day-labourers in farm or off-farm employment; in the true nature of things they personify and rep­resent a process of painful metamorphosis of landless/poor peasant into the rural proletariat/semi-proletariat as a consequence of retarded and tortuous transition to capitalism.

We do not go into further details on tenancy relations in West Bengal; vast literature is available on the subject (see, in particular, Comrade B Sivaraman’s two-part review article on Bhowmik’s ex­haustive work (1993) in Liberation (September and October 1996 issues). Our brief discussion, it is hoped, has brought into focus considerable materials relating to what Lenin had described as “the formation of capitalist relations within this very [accompanied by “feudal features” – AS] renting of land”. (Lenin, 1908; emphasis in the original)

C. Modes of Surplus Appropriation, Accumulation and Domination

IMPORTANT CHANGES in conditions of cultivation (e.g., the spread of bodo paddy cultivation, multi-cropping, the shift from mainly rain-fed to mainly irrigation-dependent farming in many areas) and a certain degree of development of productive forces (in inputs like HYV seeds, machinery, techniques and skills) over the past two decades have led to appreciable changes in inter-class and intra-class relations in our agrarian society. Take the case of new methods of irrigation.

The introduction of the green revolution package in West Bengal demanded, and soon led to, an irrigation boom in the 1980s. In addi­tion to traditional sources like tanks, rivers and canals, “shallow” tubewells (those fitted with diesel, and rarely electrical, pumpsets) became very popular and proved very effective. Since the late 1980s, however, falling water tables led, in many cases, to the introduction of mini Submersible Tubewells (MSTW). The MSTWs can access more secure water sources (more than 15 meters below ground, com­pared to 8 to 10 meters in the case of shallow tubewells) and this eliminates or reduces the risks of the tubewells running dry during the peak seasons. Moreover, they have a command area several times bigger than the “shallows”. But the high cost, and the reluctance of the bankers to grant loans under the “minor irrigation development programme” except to those whom they consider creditworthy, place these machines beyond the reach of even the upper middle peasants. In areas where other means of irrigation are unavailable, a monopoly over water supply is created, and the MSTW owner uses that in ei­ther of two ways: selling water at an exorbitant rate to other cultiva­tors in the command area, thereby extending a hegemonic influence over them; or offering to take others’ plots in the command area un­der thika lease, thereby expanding his operational holdings and prof­its. Either way, he stands to gain and dominates the scene.

But the implications of this, still continuing, shift of emphasis to “submersibles” or “mini deep(s)” as they are popularly called, do not end here. Diesel-powered pumpsets are not only far cheaper but much more portable and versatile: they .can be easily carried and used for irrigation from rivers, canals, tanks and also fitted to tubewells. For middle and rich peasants with scattered holdings these have been a great help. The, MSTW, a far more fixed arrangement with a fixed structure and command area, enhances the urge for consolidation of holdings and concentration of land (cf the mention of “distress sale” and “capitalist concentration of land” in Hooghly district, which boasts a large concentration of MSTWs, in the Pandua Zonal Conference Report of the CPI(M)).

At another level, the rapid depletion of ground water caused by them is believed to lead to arsenic poisoning (over 2 lakh people in 7 districts in the state are reportedly affected by arsenic-induced ail­ments), and also threatens the availability of groundwater in the fu­ture. The problem peaked in the mid-1990s when the experts blamed the excessive withdrawal of groundwater also for shortage in the state’s main canal-feeding reservoirs (The Statesman, 11 December, 1995). There was even talk of purchasing water from Bihar. The 1997 bodo paddy faced deep crisis in districts like Murshidabad, Birbhum, Howrah and Hooghly. All this forced the state government to monitor and restrict the installation of new MSTWs, thereby preserving and strengthening the water monopoly of existing owners. The latter freely exploit their grip over this absolutely unsubstitutable input to behave like “waterlords” and charge an absolute rent, so to say, on dependent cultivators. Community MSTWs do supply water at a much cheaper rate, but they are grossly inadequate to meet the rising demand, and the LFG seems to be in no mood to ensure collective water rights to the weaker or less well-to-do sections of the peasantry.

Like sale of water, hiring out of tractors and other implements like diesel pumpsets has also emerged as major means of extending he­gemony and appropriating surplus. In many cases, ploughing by tractor becomes even technically necessary and a smallholder has to depend on the goodwill of a big cultivator of an adjacent holding to get his tiny plot ploughed by tractor simultaneously with the bigger holding. He makes a good payment for this service, of course; still he feels obliged because refusal by the owner/hirer of the tractor would put him in a fix. New ties of dependence thus, grow up – new forms of what used to be called patron-client relationship. The monetary gain is also great: many a capitalist farmer is known to have bought a second tractor with the profit made simply by hiring out the first. In fact, reinvestment of surplus in modern implements (and in trade) is generally believed to be free from the hassles associated with very big landholdings and to yield safer, higher returns at least in the short run. This is the main factor (not the ceiling law), which explains why the degree of concentration of modem agricultural machinery is much higher than that of land — a fact brilliantly brought out in the Party state committee’s rural investigation report.

In this survey we found that households owning more than 15 bighas (approximately 5 acres) of land constitute 4.57% of rural house­holds but own 34.91% of all arable land, 71.53% of tractors and 84.5% of "pump-shallows". If we calculate the coefficient of concen­tration (percentage of any particular item — say, land — owned by a particular size-class divided by percentage of households in that size-class) for each item, we find that it is 7.66 for land (34.91 divided by 4.57), 15.65 for tractors and still higher at 18.50 for pump-shallows. But this does not mean that the top rungs of rural society are loosen­ing their grip on land; the very opposite is true. On the basis of NSS data, Dipankar Basu calculated that the value of the coefficient of land concentration in the 5 acre-plus category has increased from 4.81 in 1972 to 5.94 in 1982 to 7.19 in 1992 (Basu, 2001). These findings tally perfectly with ours. It appears that the rising trend has continued, reaching 7.66 in 2001.

We can therefore infer that during the LF rule the upper middle and rich peasants have, thanks to their incomparably better access to capital-intensive technology, actually consolidated their relatively small (compared to the past and to certain other states) advantage in land-holding. They have also diversified into sundry agro-related businesses like mini rice mills, fertiliser and pesticide retailing, petty money-lending, and so on; but land still remains the base of their socio-economic prosperity and influence.

It is the top rung of these prosperous and well-to-do farmers that constitute the West Bengal version of kulak class, the principal target of class struggle today. They often appoint managers to supervise their sprawling operations, send their sons (rarely, daughters too) for higher education in metropolitan centres and maintain close relations with dominant political parties. They wield the maximum social au­thority and control political power at local levels, providing the funds and materials (rice, liquor etc.) needed for mobilising votes. They have no qualms about changing sides and such shifts in their support played not a small part in the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-BJP chal­lenge even to the rural bastion of LF. It is they who take the lead in uniting the rich and middle peasants against the rural poor (on wage questions, on developmental issues like priority in electrification, the location of, say, a community tubewell, and so on) as well as in tack­ling the movemental forces with the power of money and political connections. Unlike their counterparts in Bihar, they do not keep pri­vate armies, but, if need be, can get the same purpose served by the police and CPI(M) cadres or TMC/BJP/Congress musclemen. For a graphic illustration of the ways of this class vis-a-vis the rural proletariat, read the story of Dadpur, reported in sub-section E, below.

D. Subsistence Farming and Economic Diversification

THE AGRARIAN economy in West Bengal continues to be a small peasant economy, but one that draws support and substance from a spurt in multiple economic activities in the non-farming sec­tors. In fact, rural West Bengal at the turn of the century is marked by a queer coexistence of two opposite trends: (i) continued and renewed centrality of subsistence and supplementary farming and (ii) growing monetisation and diversification of the non-agricultural economy.

“About 72% of the producers in rural West Bengal”, Mishra and Rawal pointed out in their paper, “... produce primarily for their sub­sistence and not for the market.” In addition to this subsistence farm­ing by small cultivators, one also witnesses among wage workers the spread of what we have called supplementary farming. Considerable sections of wage earners in agricultural and/or other jobs try to make sure that at least part of the rice required for consumption is pro­duced on their own or leased-in land. According to the Rural Labour Enquiry, 1993-94, almost half of rural labour households in West Bengal possessed small amounts of land — as against less than 6% in Punjab, less than 15% in Haryana and less than 25% in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. (Let us note in passing that this indicates a particularly sluggish differentiation of the peasantry — which is a function of capitalist development — in West Bengal.) Such otherwise irrational and unviable farming can actually take place because the producer de­prives himself, and perhaps, his family members too, of the wages due to them. This is his survival strategy, particularly for the slack seasons when jobs are difficult to come by, and grain prices are par­ticularly high.

Side by side with subsistence and supplementary farming, we no­tice a growing diversification of the rural economy manifested in the proliferation of off-farm employment and sideline occupations. Accord­ing to preliminary reports of the latest (2001) Census, there is a large exodus of workforce from cultivation to “household industries,” small rural industries, salaried jobs, professions etc., so much so that for the first time in history, the proportion of main workers engaged in cultiva­tion (cultivators and labourers taken together) has come down to 43% !

Well, that does not contradict what we see in real life.

A big — in many cases the bigger – proportion of those known as khet majurs (agrarian labourers) actually get an equal or higher number of work days as dinmajurs (day labourers) in unspecified jobs — such as in brick kilns, rice mills, various development projects like Indira Awas Yojana, minor irrigation projects and so on. With extensive urbanisation and the development of roads, markets, warehouses etc., occupations like rickshaw and cart pulling, carrying headloads, working as cleaners and garage assistants, hawking, operating small shops and so on now offer temporary or fulltime employment to a large number of people, specially the new entrants into the labour market. As for sideline or auxiliary occupations, mention must be made of poultry, livestock breeding, fishing, cane work, processed food preparation, beedi making etc.. Participation of women has increased several fold in these areas, and to some extent in agriculture as well. Moreover, poor people have devised ingenious ways of augmenting family in­come. Many of them lease out ponds (the owner, to be paid a certain amount of money) take up Poshani (rearing cattle-say, a cow-owned by another person, on condition that the first calf will go to the care­taker, who can keep it or sell it while the owner gets the milk or vice versa; actually there can be innumerable variations like these) and engage in such activities on an increasing scale.

What is the economic significance of all this? An attempt is being made in some circles to project these, particularly the Census find­ings, as yet another great achievement — a sign of (capitalist) devel­opment spilling over from agriculture into other areas. Do the text­books not tell us that economic progress entails an expansion of the industrial and tertiary sectors vis-a-vis agriculture? Well, in view of the various indices discussed in this essay, such an inference would sound utterly ridiculous. Judged in that overall context, the trends mentioned in this sub-section only point to a rural economy where agriculture, stagnating in terms of forces and relations of production, can no longer function as the mainstay of capitalist growth, which therefore takes place by other distorted means.

E. Trends in labour relations

WEST BENGAL shares with most other states a number of recent trends in agrarian labour relations: (a) growing off-farm em­ployment, (b) a shift from a permanent/attached labour to casual la­bour and from (c) intra-village labour employment to conjoint em­ployment of local and migrant labour, (d) progress from beck-and- call service and extra-economic coercion to voluntary contractual ar­rangement including group contract and (e) a marked increase in in­dependent class action on the part of agrarian labourers coupled with more collective (rather than personal as in the past) oppression by the capitalist farmers. Let us now see how these general trends take on particular forms in West Bengal.

We have already taken note of (a) while discussing the growing diversification of the rural economy. As regards (b), the main aspect is the dissolution of old landlordism and, with it, the end of traditional labour service and debt bondage sometimes extending across genera­tions. But that does not mean a complete end to all sorts of informal, often disguised attachment relations along caste, familial and eco­nomic lines. The traditional mahindar (attached labourer on 24-hour duty on a nearly permanent basis) is a rare figure today, but often the old system is recreated on a yearly contract. The chosen labourers also double up as field supervisors.

Even in the case of free workers, big farmers often strike up some sort of special understanding with some of them involving some small favours in return for assured supply of labour during peak seasons. The rich peasants prefer to lease put their separate plots to more than one poor/lower middle/landless peasants for bodo cultivation, with an implicit understanding that the lessee(s) with his family members will provide wage labour to the lessor during aman or aus crop on priority basis Modem cultivation, with its stress on time manage­ment, is thus prompting landowners to recreate pre-modem depend­encies, often mutual, in numerous ways. Such attachment, though voluntary and less than permanent (usually covering one or a few years), hampers the development of class solidarity among the wage-workers. The tiny section involved in such special arrangement usu­ally hesitate to join strike struggles because they do not wish to spoil the source of assured employment in the expectation of a small and uncertain increase in wages.

Now let us consider the third point (c). If the vestiges or new forms of “patron-client relations” add to the difficulty of organising the agrarian workers in their militant class organisations, so do large-scale migrations. Workers come from most parts of the state as well as from the eastern and southern districts of Bihar, seeking employ­ment in the main double crop paddy- and potato-growing region com­prising Bardhman, Hooghly and a few other districts. The foremost source districts are Bankura, Birbhum, Malda, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri, and the North and South Dinajpurs.

The potential as well as the actual use of migrant workers helps employers in destination areas to keep the wage level depressed. In the source areas, on the other hand, we find it difficult to build stable organisations of agrarian workers because its members are frequently in the roaming mode. Those who stay back in these areas sometimes find themselves in a potentially advantageous position; they can uti­lise the limited supply of labour to press for higher wages. But, more often than not, this is offset by other difficulties: demand (of labour) itself remains low and most advanced and youthful elements are not available in the village at the opportune moment since during every peak season they go out in search of work. The migrant workers on their part face all kinds of hardships, arbitrary dealings and awkward situations – e.g., when wily employers try and use them as blacklegs against striking local workers — but unorganised and away from their own soil, seldom can they put up an effective resistance.

As for point (d), all wage labour is by definition contractual, but at least a couple of new features merit our special attention. One, the labour haat. Workers and employers from nearby (and also rather dis­tant, but not very far) villages meet in an open field in the morning and the latter pick up the required number of labourers for the day. Only some – usually a minority – of the workers can sell themselves. Quite often a worker who leaves home at daybreak comes back at midday empty-handed (he has spent his pocket money on to-and-fro bus fare unless he is wealthy enough to own a bicycle) and with empty stomach, only to find his wife and children waiting in anxious expectation.

The labour haat is a crude, primitive form of capitalist labour market, brought into being by shortage of employment opportunities and developed communications. It differs from migration in that the latter takes the worker to a distant place for fortnights/months on end, whereas the labour haat entails daily commutation. In this market labour power is bought and sold, just like vegetables in the morning market, through hard, direct bargaining at a price approximating the ruling market rate. Almost always (except during short peak sea­sons) it is a buyers' market and the sellers, because they are not organised, gain but little from their enhanced mobility.

Secondly, phooran, or the system of hiring a group of local workers for a specific job (say, harvesting the crop on a particular field) against an agreed lumpsum payment, is growing more and more popular, par­ticularly for harvesting work. The workers strain themselves to the maximum, just as piece-rate workers in industries do, so that they can finish the job quickly and take up another shift (or two) the same day. For a few days their daily earning soars, while the employer gains by reaching the harvest to the market ahead of other farmers. But the process sidelines the famale and the middle-aged workforce, and quickly drains out the vital energies of the younger ones.

As for the last-named trend (e), the situation in West Bengal is definitely different from all other states. Here the CPI(M) deviated from its national policy by refusing to form a separate agricultural workers’ union, preferring to keep the “dangerous” class tied to the middle-rich peasant leadership of the kisan sabha. Independent class action of the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat is therefore possi­ble only by breaking the powerful political hegemony of the CPI(M) and fighting against the relief-reform-terror regime of the LFG. But that is the path they are taking — here and there, often unnoticed, slowly but surely. If the conscious trend-setter in the 1990s were our agrarian worker comrades in Karanda (Burdwan district), the latest example of this growing trend was witnessed in Hooghly district, not very far from Kolkata (see box).

Worried at such unruly activities on the part of khetmajurs, the state leadership of the main ruling party has come up with a two-pronged counter-strategy.

First, they have placed renewed emphasis on developing agrarian worker cadres who will safeguard the interests of employers (a la - Sirajuddin, dubbed “democratic forces” if not communists).

“The task of developing conscious cadres from among agrarian labourers is extremely important. One of our vital responsibilities is to see that unwarranted activities on the part of organised rural labourers do not alienate other sections of the rural democratic forces. Peasant front cadres from other family backgrounds find it rather difficult to carry out this task, -whereas the politically con­scious activists from khetmajur families do this with great effect. Our experiences in several districts have proved this.” (From 20th State Conference Documents).

The “experiences”, to be sure, include success stories as well as failures like Karanda and Dadpur.

Secondly, they have reiterated the need to keep the initiative in wage struggles firmly in the party's grip, so as to pre-empt class mili­tancy and to leave no scope for radical forces to 'foment trouble'. The 20th State Conference has sternly criticised the local leaders (most of whom are buyers of labour power) for their apathy and pretentious claims on this score:

“In spite of our consistent emphasis on this aspect, most of our district leaders are yet to realise the importance of this front. Instead of building up planned movements for wage increase, temporary mar­ket-induced increases in wages are .often sought to be projected as fruits of wage struggles ...” (emphasis added).

But in the context of the downward trend in crop prices, such struggles can only be conditional and restricted:

“... it is possible to assess the per capita surplus value generated by agricultural labourers by deducting the average input cost from the sale price of crops, and ... to decide on the fraction of that surplus value for which we can conduct wage struggles of agrarian labour­ers. ...”

So the quantum of the “fraction” remains to be decided by CP1(M) leaders who are admittedly averse to wage movements, and if the employers can show (as is their wont) that there is no surplus, the question of wage rise won’t arise at all-however badly the workers might need it! This is what the LF’s promise of “adequate living wage” for agrarian labourers (point 20 in the 36 point charter released in 1977) has boiled down to.

“WHAT governments gave out with a flourish they often took away by stealth.” Wrote William C. Thisenhusen, summing up his study of agrarian reforms in the Third World in general and Latin America in particular. (Thiesenhusen, 2001) This has been precisely the case with the Left Front regime, as the first two sections in the present article revealed. They also brought into focus the growing domination of upwardly mobile middle and rich peasants and the corresponding state government policy of “betting on the strong” — the trusted bourgeois strategy of relying on and supporting these sections for agrarian development and stability. From these findings we now move over to a study of the LFG’s second generation reforms (“our second phase in agriculture”, as Buddhadev Bhattacharya told Ananda Bazar Patrika, 12 May), about to be introduced after the first set of reforms ran into a blind alley.

When the Union Budget 2002 advocated further liberalisation, commercialisation and corporatisation of agriculture and recom­mended contract farming and corporate farming as the best roads to prosperity, all sections of the Left denounced that as the latest instance of shameless surrender to the WTO. They were particularly angry with the Centre’s pressure tactics : state governments were promised liberal aid packages if – and only if – they took the prescribed path. The CPI(M) in its 20th West Bengal State Confer­ence said :

“The WTO actually works as the watchdog of developed capi­talist countries and strives to expand the markets of their agricul­tural products. It is asserting tremendous pressure on developing and underdeveloped countries, and the central ruling clique in our country has shamelessly surrendered to its dictates.

So, to resist the degeneration of Indian agriculture and to pre­serve food security and security of livelihood as the main pillars of democracy, the WTO dictated agrarian policies of the coalition government led by the BJP will have to be defeated. The 20th conference of the CPI(M) therefore calls upon all members, cadres and sympathisers to join the countrywide struggle against these policies ...”.

As if to ridicule the solemn call of the party’s highest organ in the state, a policy document prepared under the direct guidance of Nirupam Sen and Suryakanta Mishra – both central committee members and key ministers spearheading the perestroika of “im­proved left front” – asserted that the state government should take full advantage of India’s agreement with the WTO, restructure agrarian relations to that end, and work for agricultural develop­ment with this new approach. The “Draft State Policy Paper on Agriculture, Horticulture, Food Processing Industry, Agricultural Marketting etc. (2000-2007)”, drawn up on the basis of recommen­dations of Mckinsey International, (a US-based global consultant commissioned by the WB government) and tabled before the state cabinet on 21 May, echoes the Union Government’s agrarian policy in almost all respects (see box, where we have omitted old and usual directives like infrastructure development).

These recommendations combine general guidelines with spe­cific measures for particular areas, complete with a very business­like list of “Actions to be taken by Different Departments” (of the state government). To take one example, the government is asked to “liaise with Cargill/HLL over the next few months to finalise integrated projects and begin implementation.” The Cargill/HLL group, according to market survey conducted by McKinsey, intends to invest around Rs. 100 to 125 crore for domestic retail and export of high quality rice from West Bengal, provided they are allowed to engage in contract farming. Venkateshwara Hatcheries and Eagle Industries have plans to invest Rs. 15 to 20 crore and Rs. 20 to 25 crore respectively in the poultry business, but only on condition that “zero labour problem” is guaranteed to ensure continuity of opera­tions, which they claim is a must for this particular sector. Pepsi plans to invest Rs. 5 to 7 crore in fruit processing, but demands that the wholesale price of pineapple be brought down from the present level of Rs. 3.50 per kg to Rs. 2 to 2.25 per kg.

So on and so forth, runs the lengthening list of conditionalities of agro-giants, routed through their representative McKinsey. The Bhattacharya-Sen-Mishra triumivrate has already accepted most of these in principle, but junior partners of the LF have openly ex­pressed their strong objections. Agriculture minister Kamal Guha (Forward Bloc) was particularly angry because he was not taken into confidence in the preparation of the draft policy and he submit­ted an alternative swadeshi document. Abdur Rezzak Mollah, the land reforms minister belonging to the CPI(M) and a good section of the cadres and leaders of the party — particularly those associated with the peasant front have also expressed their anxiety.

And with sufficient reason, to be sure. The McKinsey report seems to be a procedural step towards obtaining big loans from international agencies like the ADB, which generally sanction loans on the basis of project reports from trusted international experts. But it is ominous that those who call the shots in the government readily accepted this as the basis for thoroughly restructuring the basic framework of agrarian policy in the state. It is indeed necessary to build up public awareness about the political implications of the LFG’s 25th anniversary gift to the people of West Bengal.

1. The proposed blanket ban on workers’ struggles in the agro-based units and export zones is an ominous sign for the left movement in the state. It is not important how many workers will be affected by this — the numbers will be small because the employment generating potential of these capital intensive units is quite low – what is involved is a basic question of principle. The very fact that the CPI(M)-LFG failed to straightaway reject the proposed abandonment of primary trade union rights acquired through more than a hundred years of bitter battle, speaks volumes for its total surrender at the feet of big capital. There is, of course, nothing abrupt about it. The CPI(M)’s opposition to ‘militant’ trade unionism is an old story, and with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s slogan of “investor friendly government” all types of labour movement have already become taboo. If the government now accepts this audacious proposal of MNCs, that will only be one more step in the long march backward.

2. As for contract farming, its advocates project it as a pro-peasant alternative to corporate farming. Is it really so?

Under corporate farming, a corporate house takes several thousand acres of land under medium or long-term lease (better known as captive land) and conducts everything from cultivation to process­ing to marketing under its direct supervision. For the peasantry this means immediate land alienation, which they are very much opposed to. In return they get a paltry lease payment and in some cases one job per family in the farm. The small holder thus becomes a wage worker on the land he nominally owns. The queer arrange­ment, however, normally remains stable for at least some years.

In the case of contract farming, on the other hand, uncertainty prevails from day one. Under this system the agro-unit enters into contracts with hundreds of individual peasants, “on the basis of mutual trust”, for the production of a particular crop having a definite quality (often the quantity is also pre-determined), to be purchased at a specified price (which is likely to be lower than the ruling market rate, cf the Pepsi demand for drastic reduction of pineapple price). The cultivator forfeits his right to select or change the crop and to sell the produce to the highest bidder. If there is any breach of contract in respect to quality or quantity, the company can sue him and demand damages, which in all likelihood he will find impossible to pay except by selling his land to the corporate house or to a wealthy farmer.

In many ways, contract farming is dadan system of the era of globalisation. The cultivator becomes absolutely dependent on the corporate house for the sale of his produce — but only to start with. Gradually he also grows dependent for fertilisers, imported seeds etc. (with local dealers in these inputs often becoming commission agents for the agro-giants), and may be also for cash advances. Since the big houses enjoy an “exit option” — a euphemism for a licence to sack workers or close shop at will without any social or statutory obligation whatsoever — farmers always run the risk of suddenly finding themselves without a buyer of their crop, a cash crop, which cannot serve their consumption needs either. The option of switching over to another crop at the end of the bitter honeymoon is likely to have been foreclosed by reduced fertility of the soil (caused by various factors including excessive use of fertilisers) and destitution of the cultivator. The (ex)-peasant who leased out his plot under corporate farming also finds himself in a similar situation when the lease contract is terminated. At the end of the day, at least for small and marginal peasants the two paths converge in ruin.

It is thus meaningless to try and select a better form of bondage. Under both corporate and contract farming, not only land but human resources too become captive to the agro-giant, for the bulk of the peasantry both are tempting gateways to devastation. Con­tract farming, however, has one distinct advantage over the other option. It is more deceptive (and therefore likely to be somewhat more acceptable to the farming community). This particular quality makes it the preferred choice of the LFG, the MNCs, and their common friend McKinsey. And it is the last-named which recently came up with the latest argument in favour of contract farming. The spectacular panchayati raj in West Bengal — they say — would intervene and save the small peasant if a corporate giant tries to grab his land. The MNCs which are known to be powerful enough to dictate and dominate national governments are thus expected to obey a panchayat body or a district magistrate! One deception leads to another, and the whole thing gets curiouser and curiouser.

3. The overall stress on export oriented cash crops is fraught with dangerous consequences. The threat to food security resulting from this shift has been noted even by Mishra and Rawal. Moreo­ver, the experiences of cash crop crises in Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and many other states — leading to mass suicide by farmers as well as series of massive and militant protest rallies — highlight the absolute necessity of proper safeguards to be adopted before we ask our farmers to take the plunge. But the LFG has not announced any practicable and effective measure on this question.

To discuss the new agrarian model in greater detail would be premature at this stage, because we do not know whether and to what extent it will really get going. If it does, that will (a) amount to a first step in a long process of the peasantry’s growing entangle­ment in the extremely uncertain, volatile international market, where only the fittest survive; (b) usher in a period of wider and deeper penetration of imperialist capital into agriculture and associated sectors, with devastating effect on the toiling classes; and (c) thereby further spoil the prospect of healthy, progressive capitalist develop­ment in agriculture. Social democratic betrayal has already come full circle, with the new policy in place it will move on the next higher spiral.

THE FACT that West Bengal has seen not a single sustained move­ment of the rural poor over the last two decades despite our best efforts cannot be explained simply by referring to the CPI(M)-LFG’s class collaborationist policies and terror tactics. For these policies to succeed, for the whole social-democratic politics to succeed, a proper material foundation and a suitable .correlation of class forces were needed. And these were available, first, in the development, however lopsided, of productivity and productive forces during the 1980s; and second, in the suitable changes in the production relations which gave rise to new dependencies or symbiotic relations among mutually op­posed classes and strata. But today we see agrarian growth tapering off, the elements of conflict inherent in various dependencies and at­tachments coming to the surface under the impact of the national agrarian crisis now spreading to this state, and new fault lines com­ing up in the social base on which the present regime survives. Fresh scope is therefore certainly coming our way to end the stalemate. But that demands new initiatives on peasants’ and agrarian workers’ de­mands, a deeper, more comprehensive study of the agrarian scene and a better systematisation of our rich but scattered ideas on the dynamics of class struggle in a state which saw the extreme revolu­tionary offensive followed by the extreme counter-revolutionary ter­ror and then fell into a sordid social democratic equilibrium.

ON the morrow of the May 30 panchyat poll of 1993, five agrarian labourers were butchered in Karanda village of Burdwan district (another died later at the hospital) and thirty others severely injured at the hands of CPI(M) goons. The goons also set fire to the houses of the agrarian poor. Their only ‘crime’ was that, breaking away from the CPI(M), they had dared to show the ‘audacity’ of contesting elections under the banner of the CPI(ML)-backed Indian People’s Front (IPF). Ramnarain Goswami, the CPI(M) Rajya Sabha MP, was widely believed to have masterminded the brutal attack. The CPI(ML) organised widespread protests and also a 12-hour successful Burdwan district bandh on 3rd June, 1993. A protest march to the Writers’ Building was also organised on 8th June, 1993.

The entire press in West Bengal, including the section sympathetic to the CPI(M), exposed the CPI(M)’s political terror. Peasants had been killed before in CPI(M)-ruled West Bengal – the killings of jute growers in Jalpaiguri and peasants agitating for electricity at Shantipur in Nadia be­ing just two well-known instances. But earlier it was the police administration which used to kill, with the CPI(M) providing the ‘political defence’. But in Karanda, it was the party which directly perpetrated the massacre.

It was in the backdrop of an on-going tension in the CPI(M)’s rural social base and the consequent unleashing of terror by the CPI(M) that Paschim Banga Krishak Samity (PBKS) held its fifth conference on 24-25 March, 1994 at Burdwan Town Hall. On the eve of the conference a five thousand strong peasant mobilisation was organised on 23rd March, 1994 at Sidho-Kanu Dahar in Kolkata. Addressing the gathering, Com­rade Vinod Mishra asked the peasants to counter the CPI(M)’s continued threat of re-enacting Karanda by resurrecting Naxalbari.

On the third day after the peasant conference, CPI(M) goons killed Comrade Abdul Halim at his bed in the Kalna hospital in Burdwan dis­trict. Comrade Halim had been a CPI(M) member and district secretary of its youth wing, but crossed over to the CPI(ML) along with a significant number of activists and followers. The CPI(M) panicked and launched a number of murderous attacks on our comrades, and Comrade Halim had to be hospitalised after one of these attacks. The killing was reportedly masterminded by Harish Kar, the CPI(M)’s Kalna Zonal Committee sec­retary. Nearly 4000 people joined the funeral procession of Com. Halim. On March 29 Kalna town observed a total bandh and on April 1, life came to a standstill in both the districts of Burdwan and Nadia.

The murderous attacks notwithstanding, the Burdwan peasant confer­ence was followed by quite a few significant land seizure movements. On 15 April, 1994 more than 300 landless and poor peasants organised under the banner of PBKS pulled off the seizure of 100 bighas of land in Charmahatpur (Nadia district) on the bed of river Jalangj. Ten rich peas­ants — each of them owning about 40-45 bighas of land and enjoying the political patronage of both the CPI(M) and the Congress — had each occu­pied about 4-8 bighas of the vested land seized by the peasants. The land seizure gave rise to a confrontation between the landless and poor peasants on the one hand and the rich peasants on the other. The rich peasants repeatedly tried to forcibly evict the landless peasants from the land they had seized. In one such attempt hired anti-socials fired indiscriminately to scare the people and destroyed 20 bighas of jute cultivation done by the landless peasants. The landless peasants however put up a militant resist­ance and beat back the antisocials. In spite of the CPI(M) MLA Mr. Kashem vehemently opposing the labourers and exerting pressure on the adminis­tration to come to the aid of the rich peasants, the landless peasants under the leadership of PBKS were able to keep the land under their control.

Like the CPI(M) in Burdwan, in Murshidabad district it was the Con­gress which, as the main party representing big farmers and landlords, led murderous attacks on our peasant activists and party cadres. Comrade Nurul Haque, a District Comittee member who had led a number of strug­gles in the Khargram area on land, wage and other issues, was assassi­nated on 30 November, 1994. A protest bandh was organised, and the struggle continued. In July next year, a militant wage struggle was organ­ised in several blocks and it was crowned with success in many places.

Back in Burdwan, the PBKS captured about 200 bighas of land on 20 December, 1996, on the Debnagar char in the Mertala area under Purbasthali PS. About 140 bighas were distributed among poor and land­less peasants for cultivation and the rest was distributed as homestead land.

It is against such heavy odds that the poor and landless peasants and agricultural labourers have been organising and fighting under the banner of our Party and mass organisations like the PBKS and the recently formed Paschim Banga Krishi Majur Samity (PBKMS). Here are some of our more recent major initiatives.

Poor people who have got tittle deads under the land redistribution scheme are often prevented from actual use of the plots by dominant class forces with the support of ruling parties and the administration. To take one example, 240 bighes of vested land lay on the river bed of Jalangi near Nakashipara and Chapra blocks of Nadia district. Out of this, only 8 bighas had been officially handed over to 13 agrarian workers back in 1985. But even these 8 bighas remained under the control of the rich and powerful who controlled the rest 232 bighas. On the eve of the May 2001 Assembly elections, peasants captured the entire 240 bighas, but could not start cultivation. On February 2,2002, about 3000 agrarian labourers led by the PBKMS ploughed the land and planted seedlings. The police let loose savage repression, and that in turn gave rise to a series of mass protests. The struggle is still going on.

Following intense flood relief activities, a series of rallies and other forms of protest were organised against the irresponsible attitude of .the central and state governments towards the victims of the devastating floods of September-October, 2000 : (i) March to Writers Buildings in Kolkata on November 2, (ii) a day’s protest bandh in the worst affected districts of Birbhum, Burdwan, Nadia and Murshidabad on December 7, 2000 and (iii) 10,000-strong “Save the Peasants” mobilisation at Kolkata on 9 Janu­ary, 2001.

In the context of the growing numerical strength and movemental as­sertion of the rural proletariat and semi-proletariat, the PBKMS was built up from the grassroots level (the inaugural state conference was held at Burdwan on 22-23 September, 2001) as the core of peasant movement. In its local, district level and state level activities it has been able to mobilise a good section of the rural poor otherwise owing allegiance to the CPI(M). It has brought out a handy guidebook to help organise the rural labourers in large numbers and build up struggles on issues ranging from land, em­ployment and wages to intervention in rural development schemes and panchayati raj functioning. On 30 May this year it organised a mass meet­ing at Kolkata and submitted a memorandum to the state government demanding:

(a) A comprehensive legislation for agrarian labourers;

(b) Re-enumeration of the below poverty line (BPL) list in West Bengal in view of the fact that actually more than 40 per cent (and not 25 per cent as claimed by the state government) of the people in West Bengal live below the poverty line;

(c) Immediate state purchase of foodgrains at the minimum sup­port price;

(d) Withdrawal of the proposed new agrarian policy;

(e) Exemplary punishment of the killers of Karnda.

The PBKMS along with the Paschimbanga Krishak Samity organ­ised road blockades and other forms of agitation throughout the state on 17 June 2002 to press the above demands, followed by a state wide token strike of agrarian labourers on 15 July.