India is being acknowledged as a major power with its economy growing at a high rate and it is beginning to reflect in the transformation of its cities and urban centres.
However, this development is non-uniform and the rural area has not been able to reap their benefits. The benefits of economic growth are not spreading to more than two-thirds of the population consisting of more than 70 per cent of the population and 80 per cent of the poor population living in rural areas. The obvious symbols of development do not reflect the problems of rural areas which need attention.
The growth pattern of the Indian economy despite being the fourth largest in the world is not uniform. Though there has been substantial improvement in the growth rate for manufacturing, services, and communications sectors, yet the performance in important sectors such as agriculture, infrastructure development, community and social services and rural development as a whole is not up to the mark.
A country can be considered developed only when the development has reached to its rural people. There has been alarming decrease in agricultural growth in recent year and so have investment and profitability of agriculture, the area under irrigation and net sown are under crops. The Economic Survey 2006–2007 also raise grave concerns about the low yield per unit area across almost all crops becoming a regular feature.
The crisis gripping the rural India is reflected in the words of Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, the distinguished agricultural economist, who stated, “The agrarian crisis has its roots in the collapse of the rural economy. Unemployment leading to outmigration of the assetless is growing. The minimum support price mechanism is not operating for most commodities. At every level of the livelihood security system, there is a tendency to make profit out of poverty. Something is terribly wrong in the countryside”.
In current situation, the peasantry in various parts of the country is helpless to take extreme measures in their inability to face the various kinds of adversities. Unpredictable climatic variations, increasing debt burden, inability to meet the rising cost of cultivation are leading to recurrent crop failures causing frustration among the farmers. In this backdrop, it becomes all the more necessary to tackle the challenges of rural reconstruction.
Agriculture is the backbone of Indian economy and it needs strong attention and action to devise a comprehensive and time-bound programme to release the sector from stagnation. The need of the hour is to provide larger irrigation facilities, better seeds and agri-inputs and fertiliser at reasonable costs to farmers, along with marketing, finance and infrastructural facilities. Farmers should not be left at the mercy of variations in weather, financial resources and market conditions.
Support prices and provisions of cheap credit are not sufficient to increase productivity and employment generation in the sector and strong land-related structural reforms is the need of the hour. A better rural growth strategy would be to realise the importance of small family farms to bring out reforms, thus, providing the poor with access to land.
Some facts about the agricultural turnaround made by West Bengal through extensive land reforms measures undertaken by the state government over the last three decades are presented as follows:
In West Bengal, land reforms comprised of two important elements: redistribution of land and tenancy reforms, known as Operation Barga (share croppers). Under Operation Barga, 1.5 million bargadars or registered tenants consisting of over 30 per cent Dalits and 12 per cent Adivasis were granted permanent and heritable right to cultivate leased land.
In total, 2.9 million landless and marginal farmer families consisting of 55 per cent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes were redistributed around 1.1 million acres of agricultural land. In addition, 6.8 lakh households below the poverty line were distributed homestead land.
As a result of these institutional reforms in agricultural land ownership, too many peasants helped in production activities that led to enhanced production of food grain at the rate of 6 per cent per annum. As a consequence, West Bengal emerged as the country’s largest producer of rice and the second largest producer of potato.
Cropping intensity also increased as a result of these reforms from 136 per cent in 1980 to 180 per cent in present times, the second highest in the country. This contributed a consistent share of 3.6 per cent for agriculture in the State’s GDP much better than the country’s figure of 1.53 per cent. The population percentage below the poverty line declined from 60 per cent in 1977 to 21 per cent in present times due to the highest growth of per capita net state domestic product registered during the 1990s. The per capita calorie intake in rural Bengal rose by 9.6 per cent during 1983–1984 while nationally it decreased by 3 per cent during the period.
In India, 87 per cent of the villages are in population group of 2000 or below. Hence, the farmers living in these villages get small markets without efficient linkages and financing options thus falling prey to middlemen and moneylenders. Many a times, productivity is also affected by agricultural inputs of low quality, sometimes even spurious products, that may trap the farmer deeper in poverty.
The agriculture sector cannot be left at the mercy of imperfect market fluctuations. In addition to adopting short-term measures such as cheap agricultural credit and remunerative support prices, substantial long term investments should be made by the state in water conservation, minor irrigation, electrifying villages, building rural roads and markets, providing robust primary education and health facilities in the rural areas.
The cooperative movement proved to be quite efficient and accomplished in addressing the problems of rural India. Rural development involves adopting a multidisciplinary approach, and an in-built mechanism should be devised that involves people’s representation in the conceptualisation, planning, and management of any rural development programme, especially relating to crop production, water conservation and minor irrigation. A large network of grassroots entrepreneurs as self-help groups (SHGs) are emerging in India and generating incomes in rural areas, justifying self-help as the best help. These groups are examples of the new ‘social economy’ emerging in India. In present times, more than 25 lakh SHGs are operating with nearly 75 lakh ‘swarojgaris’. They should be encouraged, for they play a big role in transforming rural India by unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of common Indians.
It is not about deciding on implementing industrial development directives or pressing for agricultural growth that development challenges in rural India would be met. It does not make good economic or political sense to reduce the whole issue to one of a choice between one sector or the other. The way that must be followed is by helping the rural sector realise its own potential for development by making best possible use of gains of modern science and technology and industrial development.
Our vision towards future advancement should use the modern concept of Gross National Entitlement where people even from the vulnerable sections, instead of being forced to accept what is being distributed by the system, get the right to have quality education, earn their living, access good healthcare, obtain basic needs and have the freedom to live in dignity.
This objective is possible to achieve by determined efforts as accomplished by several countries in short time in recent decades by effectively overcoming underdevelopment problems and inequalities. A living example is that of Vietnam, which has undergone incredible developments in a short period both in its urban and rural areas even after enduring exploitation by long periods of colonialism and devastated by imperialist wars. Our political leadership should take into consideration issues of rural India, where agriculture is the basic occupation, as major national issues. It should overcome the political and geographical barriers as well as factional considerations with focus of our national endeavour on fast and comprehensive development of rural India. To accomplish this objective, the prime responsibility of the nation will be to ensure adequate health care, quality education, sufficient infrastructure for development and improved living standard of rural people. The future progress depends in the development of rural India and partisan political confrontation should not hinder this objective.
India stands at a critical juncture that has potential to bring rural India into the mainstream of economic development. Every challenge brings with it some opportunities also. This provides us with an unparalleled opportunity to effectively utilise the maturity in our economic system, the potential of a global market and the technological advancements brought about by the InfoTech revolution to bring in a new dimension of development to rural India.
The realisation and emphatic acknowledgement is apparent in India and the world that India is going to play a pivotal role in making twenty-first century the Asian century. To realise this assumption India need to bring in its large rural population also in the main stream to accomplish the dream of turning India into a developed nation. The emergence of a prosperous rural hinterland with strong agricultural base only could facilitate the wheels of industry and commerce to rotate smoothly.