Path of socialism in India, is a strong agrarian movement

Vipul Divya

India is a country where today in the IT age, two distinct and separate worlds exist together- have’s and have not’s. Then, there is also a intermediary world in which elements of both the worlds exist. Indian socio-economic condition is unlike that of western community. Marx and Engels but could have written a very little about India. It is a society that could not have dug the fathoms of their mind. It is a society which could not be imagined by them. The great divide between the people in India is not only between have’s and have not. But many other factors simultaneously exist here which separate people from people- religion, caste, region, gender are just few of them. Then, the other important difference between India and Europe was that there never was any industrial revolution on the pattern of Europe in India.

The Indian labour market can be categorized into 3 sectors:

a)Rural workers who constitute 60% of the work forces.

b)Organized or the formal sector which constitute 8% of the workforce and

c)Urban unorganized or the informal sector that constitute32% of the workforces

The overwhelming masses (about 70%) in India are dependent for the livelihood on agriculture. Today, India ranks second worldwide in farm output. Agriculture and allied sectors like forestry and fisheries accounted for 16.6% of the GDP in 2007. The economic contribution of agriculture to India's GDP is steadily declining with the country's broad-based economic growth. Still, agriculture is demographically the broadest economic sector and plays a significant role in the overall social-economic fabric of India.

One-third of rural households are agricultural labor households, subsisting on wage employment. Only about 9 percent of the total workforce is in the organized sector: the remaining 91 percent are in the unorganized sector, self-employed, or employed as casual wage labour. One-third of rural households are agricultural labour households, subsisting on wage employment. Only about 9 percent of the total workforce is in the organized sector: the remaining 91 percent are in the unorganized sector, self-employed, or employed as casual wage laborers. The labour force in year 2006 has grown up to 509.3 million out of which 60% are in agriculture, 12% are employed in industries and the residual 28% are in services.

The major problems which are responsible for the plight of agricultural labour may briefly be  discussed as follows:

1. Special Economic Zone (SEZ)

A Special Economic Zone (SEZ) is a geographical region that has economic and other laws that are more free-market-oriented than a country's typical or national laws. "Nationwide" laws may be suspended inside a special economic zone.

The objectives of SEZs can be clearly explained as the following: (a) generation of additional economic activity (b) promotion of exports of goods and services; (c) promotion of investment from domestic and foreign sources; (d) creation of employment opportunities; (e) development of infrastructure facilities,

‘The major incentives and facilities available to SEZ developers include:-

Exemption from customs/excise duties for development of SEZs for authorized operations approved by the BOA.

Income Tax exemption on income derived from the business of development of the SEZ in a block of 10 years in 15 years under Section 80-IAB of the Income Tax Act.

Exemption from minimum alternate tax under Section 115 JB of the Income Tax Act.

Exemption from dividend distribution tax under Section 1150 of the Income Tax Act.

Exemption from Central Sales Tax (CST).

Exemption from Service Tax (Section 7, 26 and Second Schedule of the SEZ Act),

List of Special Economic Zones in India

Currently there are 114 SEZs (as of October 2010) operating throughout India in the following states'®!: Karnataka - 18; Kerala - 6; Chandigarh - 1; Gujarat - 8; Haryana - 3; Maharashtra - 14; Rajasthan - |; Tamil Nadu - 20; Uttar Pradesh - 4; West Bengal - 2: Orissa - |. Additionally, more than 500 SEZs are formally approved (as on October 2010) by the Government of India in the following states®!. Andhra Pradesh - 109; Chandigarh - 2; Chattisgarh - 2; Dadra and Nagar Haveli - 4; Delhi - 3; Goa - 7; Gujarat - 45; Haryana - 45; Jharkhand - 1; Karnataka - 56; Kerala - 28; Madhya Pradesh - 14; Maharashtra - 105; Nagaland - 1; Orissa - 11; Pondicherry - |; Punjab - 8; Rajasthan - 8; Tamil Nadu - 70; Uttarkhand - 3; Uttar Pradesh The dilemma of the left over SEZ: .

In the joint communiqué dated 19th October 2006, the principal constituents of the Left Front, namely CPI (M), CPI, RSP and Forward Block criticized the Central SEZ Rules 2006 for asking the state governments to delegate power under the Industrial Disputes Act 1947 to Development Commissioner and to declare SEZs as Public Utility Services. In a letter to the Committee on Subordinate Legislation of the Rajya Sabha, Dipankar Mukherjee, the CPI (M) leader and all- India secretary of its labour wing CITU, says that ‘no such back door vesting of powers to Development Commissioner through a rule will be acceptable to the trade union movement of the country’. Hence, he demanded that such clauses should be fully deleted from the SEZ Rules. But, what about the CPI(M) Government of West Bengal? Is the former CPI(M) Government of West Bengal could have been given special privilege to flout the joint communiqué, go against the communist ideology and indulge the capitalists. What has happened in Singur, is not hidden from anyone. The CPI(M) Government had to pay the price for it in the election. Even then there are two working SEZ in the West Bengal- Unitech Hi-tech Structures Ltd. at Rajarhat, Kolkata and MLL. Dalmia & Co. Ltd. at Kolkata, West Bengal.

The minimum area required for setting up a SEZ is

Multi-product SEZs to have an area of 1000 hectares or more.

Services-Sector SEZs to have an area of 100 hectares or more. To support sectors where India has a competitive advantage, such as gems and jewellery, information technology. bio-technology, sector-Specific SEZs in these sectors can be set up over an area of 10 hectares or more

For all other sectors, the area must be at least 10.0 hectares.

The area requirement for multi-product SEZs has been relaxed to 200 hectares and for Sector- Specific SEZs to 50 hectares, for certain States (Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, Tripura Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Sikkim, Jammu & Kashmir, Goa) and Union Territories, keeping in view the difficulty in finding large tracts of contiguous land in such States/Union Territories.

From where such vast tracts of land will come from? The Government in connivance with the corporate houses/multinational companies acquire land from the farmers forcibly deploying

goondas and illegally using State machinery and gives minimum money and calls it compensation and never rehabilitates them.

2. Land Ceiling Act and Land Acquisition Act

The ceiling area of land for one family consisting of not more than 5 members can have —

15 acres equivalent to 6.0705 hectares of land of Class I land:

18 acres equivalent to 7.2846 hectares of land of Class II land:

25 acres equivalent to 10.1175 hectares of land of Class III land;

30 acres equivalent to 12.141 hectares of land of Class IV land:

37.5 acres equivalent to 15.368 hectares of land of Class V land:

45 acres equivalent to 18.211 hectares of land of Class VI land:

As per law, 50% of the acquired land under Land Ceiling Act, 1961 would go to SC, ST and Backward Classes mentioned in the Government notifications and other landless persons. in practice, this never happens. The moneyed class buy the Government machinery or gets the benefit of loop holes of law or twist/interpret it as per his interest.

Further, the Government cannot acquire Private land without the owners approval. The Supreme Court (SC) has held that the government can’t use its “extraordinary” powers to deprive an owner of his land as it would violate the citizen’s Fundamental Right. The Court chided the Haryana government for proposing a sewage treatment plant near a school. Interpreting Section 17(4) of the Land Acquisition Act, which allowed authorities to take over private land without inviting mandatory objections from landowners, the apex court said the rule cannot be arbitrarily invoked. Under Section 5A of the Act, it is mandatory for the government to invite objections from affected landowners but in the present case the authorities invoked Section 17(4) that allowed the government to dispense with the rule. “Section 5A is not merely statutory but also has the flavour of fundamental rights under Articles 14 and 19 (freedom of expression),” a bench said.

3. Foreign Direct Investment

Karl Marx’s famous quotation on history repeating itself, first as tragedy and second as farce, is cited often, both in and out of context, but it clearly fit the mess created by the UPA government through its hasty announcement and not so calibrated suspension of decision to bring in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on the need to permit FDI in India, Congress is advocating two arguments. The first argument is that large organized retail is good for not just consumers, who would benefit from lower prices owing to cost efficiencies and competition, but also farmers, who would be beneficiaries of a stable demand for their produce at reasonable at reasonable prices. The second argument is that the segment of large retail that would be able to deliver these benefits to the consumers and producers would be the international retail giants with deep pocket and experience in structuring the supply chain to deliver these benefits.

‘The reality is that, in East Asia, the supermarket share of retail food sales on the one hand is about 50% and has increased from less than 20% over a decade and on the other hand, fierce competition among supermarket chains forces them to seek ever lower product and transaction costs and to minimize risk. It means, the supermarket giants are not investing at the production level for supporting the farmers. In the event, farmers who are supposed to benefit from FDI are put under huge pressure as they have to meet changing requirements and standards. which require high level of investment in irrigation, transportation, storage facilities and packaging technology. As a result, they will lose out. The status of the farmers will be reduced from independent producers to subservient and vulnerable role as sharecroppers or franchisees.

The decision of UPA Government to suspend its proposal to bring in FDI in multi-brand retail sector is attributable to several factors, which include the consistent and sustained opposition by the Left Parties. In 2005 also, when there was attempt to resurrect the idea, it was Left who submitted a strong objection and the matter was held in abeyance. Ayain, in the year 2009, the proposal to bring FDI was brought, but, again, it was due to opposition of Left, the attempt was thwarted.

The view of the Left is that, all the claims to justify the FDI in retail sector is false. There are about 40 million people employed in retail trade and the reality is that, in absence of any other employment opportunities, people took to petty trade. The entry of giant retail chains, would end up in displacing lakhs of people employed in retail trade.

The Left Parties must not be satisfied with the suspension of FDI in the retail sector as its history tells. In light of the sustained attempt of the Government to bring in FDI in the retail sector, it becomes the sacred duty of the Left Parties to reunite and bring a strong agrarian movement against such Capitalist Government.

4, Land Alienation

Concept

As per Marx, in a Capitalist society an alienated man lives in an alienated nature and he performs estranged labour and the product of his labour becomes alien to him. Alienation as a concept is used by many social scientists in India, merely as a sociological phenomenon. Since land alienation is the crux of the depeasantization of the tribals, the concept assumes utmost importance in the analysis of tribal rights as a part of human rights discourse. The problem of land alienation is a much deeply connected phenomenon with full of contradictions related to the existing socio-economic order. The separation of land from the tribal communities can be understood in a more scientific way with the assistance of the theoretical formulations of the concept of alienation.

Alienation was defined by Hegel and was used by Marx to describe and criticise a social condition in which man far from being the active initiation of the social world seemed more a passive object of determinate external processes. Marx says, alienation is fundamentally a particular relation of property, involving involuntary surrender to antagonistic ‘other’, Alienation is inherent in exploitative relations of production and its nature varies with that of exploitation. Hence alienation's manifestations also differs among societies based on slavery, serfdom and capitalism etc. Thus the concept of alienation may be interpreted to understand a specific problem of the tribals where land becomes the primordial source of exploitation and results in the creation of a society where exploitative production relations exit.

Violation of Land Rights:-

The question of land is not just result of the existing situation but its origin may be traced to the periods of deprivation of tribal lands or to periods of the withdrawal of their rights to exploit forest. Gradually, due to various structural changes within and outside the tribal systems, the more advanced groups forced the tribals either to retreat to the nearest jungles or to become landless labourers. Though land is the only source of their livelihood, as their other assets being extremely meagre, tribals were severally deprived. Basically, moneylenders, traders, the feudal lords, or the rich peasants exploit the tribals most. It is an established fact that there is a large scale alienation of lands which belong to the tribes and grabbers invariably in all cases are the non-tribes. This phenomenon has further been ruined by the emergence of new forces of production. Commenting on this, the National Commission on Backward-Areas Development (1980) says, "In a number of areas new industrial and mining complexes, many major irrigation projects were located in the tribal areas resulting in the submergence of extensive lands belonging to the tribals".

Also in the operations of denudation of forest on a massive scale tribal labour had been used to a great extent to clear off the forest area which was a method of the land lords to alienate the tribals from the forests. This further widened the gap between the tribal landless and landed gentry of the non-tribal communities.

Commenting on the problem of land alienation in tribal areas, the Committee on Plan Projects, Planning Commission, presented a report on the Tribal Development Programmes in 1969. The committee noticed that tribal lands in many areas passed into the hands of non-tribals, the legal prohibitions against such transfers notwithstanding. Sample studies in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and some other States have shown that transfers have taken place on large scale without the permission of the collector or other competent authorities as required by law. The loopholes were exploited by the money lenders and others and they continue to circumvent the legal provisions by entering into 'benami' or other clandestine transactions with the native tribals. The impotency of legislation to arrest this growing menace to the economic advancement of the tribal in such a situation is thus obvious.

Forms of Land Alienation:-

The first and foremost is the manipulation of land records. The unsatisfactory state of land records  contributed a lot to the problem of land alienation. The tribals were never legally recognized as owners of the lands which they cultivated.

The second form of land alienation is reported to have taken place due to 'benami' transfers, The report of the study team of the Union Home Ministry (May 1975) pointed out that large scale transfers of ownership of the Adivasis' lands are being allowed to go out of hands through illegal and benami transactions, collusive civil proceedings etc., in which land remains to be in the names of the original owners who are reduced to the level of share croppers.

Another form of land alienation is related to the leasing or mortgaging of the land. To raise loans for various needs the tribals have to give their land as mortgage to the local moneylenders or to the rich farmers.

Encroachment is another form of dispossessing the tribals of their lands and this is done by the new entrants in all the places where there were no proper land records. Bribing the local Patwari for manipulating the date of settlement of land disputes, ante-dating etc., are resorted to claim the tribal lands.

Concubinage or marital alliance is another form to circumvent the law and grab tribal lands at no cost at all.

Fictitious adoption of the non-tribals by the tribal families is also another method to snatch the lands of the tribals.

Also the slackness in the implementation of the restrictive -provisions encourages the non-tribals to occupy the tribal lands. Lands alienation which takes place in various ways has assumed alarming proportion threatening the right to life of the tribal population. Though the problem lies elsewhere. it is being unfortunately always interpreted as the handiwork of certain individuals like the money lender, traders, land lords, etc, without understanding the class connection of these individuals. The unsystematic land records of the pre-colonial and colonial periods was followed by the present State. There was collection of ‘taxes - (a strange phenomenon for the natives and it was the beginning process of alienation) in the tribal areas,

in the name of protecting the interest of the tribals stringent laws were enacted by the government but the non-tribals found the loopholes to their advantage. This double edged nature of State policy in one of the facets of the existing contradictions in the Indian Tribal Society. The process of land alienation is not an accidental one, but it has arisen because of the concerted efforts of the antagonistic class interest that are operating in the tribal areas. This is not just migration of the non-tribals into tribal areas rather there is a history behind this migration and the State has Supported the migrant non-tribals to the settle down in the tribal lands.

5. Gender discrimination

India’s rank is 112 among 134 countries of the world in gender discrimination.70% of the two billion poor are women; two thirds of illiterate adults are women;

Employment rates for women are declining after increasing (yes, of course, the world wars are now over). At the same time many women are forced into veils and burqas, burnt for merely looking at men, stoned to death or buried alive for adultery, forced into sex, pregnancy and delivering HIV-infected children because they were raped, but if they were to report it, they would either be raped again, executed, exiled from their village or town or family.

The idea behind the concept of the feminization of Poverty is that high poverty rates among women are caused by discriminatory policies, practices and opinions (such as labor market restrictions. wage gaps, lack of equal education opportunities, substandard healthcare for women etc.).

6. Food Security

With the crop sector growth going down, the per capita net availability of food grain declined to the levels attained in 1950s, Net availability of food grain is estimated as gross production (-) seeds, (-) wastage, (-) export, (+) import, (+/-) changes in stock. In the decade of the 1990s, per capita availability of food grain fluctuated around 174 kg per annum. It was 186.2 kg in 1991. Since 2000, it has come down to 160 Kg and below. It was 151.9 Kg in the year 2001. Just for comparison, one should note that the per capita annual availability of food grain in USA is in the range of 1000 Kg. Correspondingly to the decline in food grain availability, the per capita per diem calorie intake has also gone down from 2153 Kcal, (1993-94) to 2047 Keal. (2004-05) in  rural India and from 2071 Keal. (1993-94) to 2026 Kcal (2004-05) in urban India (NSSO report no. 513).

These are average figures. To capture the stark reality, we have to also take into account the unequal access to food. The poverty estimates in India are based on a single norm, namely adequate intake of calories. The norms are 2400 Keal per diem per capita for Rural India and 2100 Keal per diem per capita for Urban India. The Planning Commission claims that in the year 2004-05, 28.1 percent of rural population was below the poverty line. However, the poverty line of Rs. 356.30 corresponds not to 2400 Keal but only to 1800 Keal. Thus 28.1 percent of rural population consumes less than 1800 Kcal. per day. If we consider the norms of 2400 Kcal. then we find that actually 87 percent of rural population should be classified as below poverty line. In other words 87 percent of rural population does not have sufficient purchasing power to buy food which will fulfill the calorie requirements.

Due to falling growth rates, rising inflation, worsening trade and fiscal deficit, decreasing employment opportunities, wage gaps etc. the condition of rural population has deteriorated so much due to anti- people policies of the UPA Government that under food security programme almost 75 per cent of the people in the rural areas and about 50 per cent in urban areas would be entitled to getting food grains at a ultra subsidized rate of Rs. 2 for wheat and Rs. 3 for rice. The Left has almost left this sector.

Remedy

The awakening of the industrial labourers and leading them to socialist path is not enough. We cannot dare to leave such a vast population venerable and on the mercy of Capitalist Government at the State and Centre be it UPA or BJP and that too in the light of the fact that these Governments are playing in the hands of big Corporate houses which are driven by their greed of more and more profits. We cannot rely om the Government which has no money for seeds, fertilizers etc. but can give benefits to the corporate houses and multinational companies accumulating in millions and millions of dollars.

Left Parties must unite to lead the workforces irrespective of their personal ambitions and interests. Agricultural labourers must be on the forefront of this struggle. The path to socialism must be a strong peasant movement but also a legal battle.

The Constitution of India has the flavor of socialism. Not only the rights to the people as ~“Fundamental Rights” can be enforced in the court of law but also “Directive Principles of State Policy” must be enforced.

The path to socialism in India must emphasize on agricultural movement taking the path of a left movement as well as legal battle.

Vipul Divya, 403, Sree Laxmi Tower, Magistrate Colony, Doranda, Ranchi- 834002

Email-vipuldivyal99@ gmail.com