RURAL LIVELIHOODS

GeNext of rural households do not want to live in villages anymore. The nation’s effort to spread education has finally enticed them to go to school and acquire knowledge, only to leave their homesteads for more remunerative livelihoods of cities. Very few of the younger generation of rural areas want to follow their heritage livelihoods of being farmers and agriculturists. Neither do they want to follow the traditional non-farm jobs of their parents, if any. They are all leaving their village homes to migrate to cities for non-farm unskilled jobs, where they encounter considerable difficulties in adjusting to an alien urban life. Yet they prefer such employment against farm practices or traditional village jobs, as urban wages are far more attractive than rural wages. Moreover, because of the global warming process leading to climate changes, farmers do not want to face the risk of weather vicissitudes and the instability of rainfed agriculture. The senior generation in the villages is, therefore, not persuading their children anymore to stay back in the villages to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence. On the contrary, they are encouraging their children to go out and earn a better living for themselves and/or to support the family back home. This is creating a serious void of agriculture labour in rural areas. The casual labour of villages or the farm labours today prefer to work in the city where the daily wages are higher. Moreover, accessibility these days is not that difficult. Villages are mostly well-connected and villagers can commute daily to nearby cities.

In contrast, urban children are more often than not following their parents’ footsteps and family professions, under very close parental guidance. Globalization has thrown open to them a plethora of choices to fancy and to practice. For villagers the compulsions of leaving home are more economic than social. Rural parents are unable to convince their children of the benefits of agriculture because they themselves are facing the changing trends in the climate and in the government policies. The dilemma is that villagers are unsure of the returns from their land even though the country as a whole is self-sufficient in foodgrains. Or is it that modern living and the employment scope in cities are pulling people out of villages?

Of the school going children in the villages, more boys are getting educated in the high schools than the girls (though there is a steady rise in their number, the percentage is still lower). This is because of a gender bias, with the boys being in an advantageous position than the girls, pertaining to commuting to schools distantly located either by cycling or in public transport. The girls, because of personal security are not permitted to commute long distances (unaccompanied) in public transport or to cycle down to schools far away from home. Thus parents prefer girls to study in the village school, which generally functions as a middle school. However, private education is becoming very popular, as learning English for better communication, to widen the scope for employment, is now being valued and is becoming popular. The private market in education is providing this scope to village children, which is supported by improvements in road transportation, whereby students from the villages are picked up and dropped back home (though at a cost) by the school vehicle.

Ambitions have also risen because of exposure to modern trends in education and living. Young boys now want to learn computers and work outside the village, as IT jobs have not yet penetrated villages. From a survey done on Child Rearing Practices (by Indus World School of Business) we found that boys would like to venture into diversified activities; whereas any village girl wanting to go for higher studies opted to become a doctor! Such thinking indicates lack of awareness of modern employment opportunities because of less exposure to the outside world.

The parents of these children are also going through a transition. While on the one hand they are becoming aware of the enlarged scope for livelihoods (often from their children) in the cities, they are unable to leave their homesteads and assets (which is basically immovable property) to settle in urban areas for better earnings. The reasons, however, are more social than economic. With changing trends of consumption, those who are diversifying their agriculture from foodgrains to cash crops are surviving the onslaught of modernism, including policy changes. But for those who do not have the scope to diversify, subsistence farming is the only option. Because of the rising costs of farm labour (as migration has become rampant) and low government levies for foodgrains, it is often not economical for many agriculturists to grow foodgrains anymore. Hence farmers, who grow only foodgrains, produce mostly for home consumption, even though marketing foodgrains have become easy with the development of “mandies” (markets) nearby, where their produce can be easily transported and sold. Growing cereals is, therefore, not remunerative anymore, unless they cater to a more diversified market of flowers, fruits, vegetables or other value-added cash crops such as soya beans, spices or cotton. With changing culinary habits, agribusiness in livestock is also becoming popular. Moreover, division of farmland from heritage adds to the woes of small farmers. Subdivision of agricultural land takes its toll on the income of those who own such land.

Another set of subsistence farmers are those who during their employable days go to the city to earn non-farm livelihoods or to do some stable public sector jobs (while their older generation looks after the land) and then come back home after retirement from an organized sector to lead a more peaceful life and follow the same occupation as their forefathers, to sustain themselves. Such “first time” farmers tend to only fend for themselves with the help of one or two not so well educated children who cannot work in cities because of lack of education and are compelled to stay in the villages with parents and work for agriculture. In such families the rest of the members of the third generation, especially the sons, follow the footsteps of their fathers in getting employed in urban areas, but keeping in touch with home through frequent visits. Such families do not cultivate their land for doing business. They are satisfied if they do not have to buy their daily requirement of foodgrains.

Two types of villagers migrate to cities: (i) those who are rich enough to avail of higher education in cities, on completion of which aspirations change and they do not return to the villages, but remain in the city doing urban jobs and (ii) those who are forced to migrate to the city as a survival strategy to earn a living. It is the second group of villagers who face difficulties in settling down in a city for want of money or fixed assets, as a result of which they live in slums, but soon get attuned to urban life. They earn a living, save some money and send remittances back home to support their kin in the villages. They have close ties with their families living in the villages and visit “home” frequently, especially during festivals or ceremonies. The richer class makes the city their home and do not come back to the village. They normally appoint a manager to take care of their cultivation and immovable properties.

A category of villagers who depend on rainfed agriculture often believe in dual livelihoods, with one non-farm livelihood as a standby under difficult climatic conditions. These people normally acquire one skill or the other which they use in times of need. For example (as witnessed in another of my field trips while working for an ADB TA), many farmers of North Bengal are also weavers, who earn from weaving when crops fail or during lean periods. Close to a city, farmers take up skilled or semi-skilled jobs of truck-drivers or auto-rickshaw drivers, carpenters, masons, potters, etc. when they cannot work in the field. In some cases many live in villages adjacent to urban areas and work in the city. We found cases of carpenters and public-sector workers near Bhopal who live in the village and commute for their daily work. They have very small pieces of land that they till, but cannot depend for their living totally on the soil. This pattern, however, is based on the conditions of water shortage for irrigation or on monsoon failures.

The 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture mentions that GDP growth generated in agriculture has large benefits for the poor and is twice as effective as growth generated in the other sectors. Hence promoting agriculture is still a viable solution to economic growth as it reduces poverty. But at the same time, as countries get richer, contribution of agriculture to the country’s development diminishes. However, rural poverty can only reduce when there is a decline in the rural population and or when agribusinesses increase with urbanization. Actually it is growth in non-farm economy and increase in agriculture productivity that will help rural areas to come out of poverty. In the urbanized economies, agriculture works like any other tradable sector and predominates in some locations (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). As our ex-President Dr. Abdul Kalam Azad has said in his PURA concept, growth is possible only when export-oriented productivity increases.

There are two sectors of agriculture – the non-tradable staple crops sector that provide the domestic markets and the tradable non-staple sector that export products for improved income. Staple crop sector is price inelastic (World Development Report on Agriculture, 2008). Moreover in India the government has imposed regulations whereby a certain portion of the grains will have to be compulsorily sold to the Food Corporation of India to provide for the PDS, at a very low levy fixed by the government. Consequently because of less profit, cultivators are reluctant to grow staple crops, thereby posing a serious threat to food security. Corruption here is rampant and producers are loosing patience with the government system to contribute to food security. This has been reported from all large-scale producers of foodgrains. Farmers and cultivators are, therefore, changing over to market-oriented agriculture such as cotton, flowers, other cash crops or even livestocks to fetch them more money to either make profits or breakeven with their investments made in farming. In M.P. a major cash crop is soya beans. Horticulture and floriculture are also becoming popular, especially in villages around cities, where marketing is easy and transport is not a major problem anymore of transferring the produce.

Given the situation India should move towards such agriculture that will enhance growth of other sectors through production and consumption links. Agro-processing and food-marketing can be tried and promoted within the villages. Other agribusinesses like herbicides and fertilizers are yet another solution. At the same time, it is to be remembered that growing food grains is essential to maintain food security. The issue that comes up is whether rural to urban migration is good for the economic development of India at this stage? Does providing unskilled labour to the city outweigh the need for rural productivity? What kinds of skills are required in the city that can be contributed by villagers? Or should there be a reverse process of skill-training of villagers to introduce agribusinesses in villages?

As the World Development report says, agriculture has, in many countries, not been used to its full potential for growth because of its anti-agriculture policy biases and underinvestment, and often compounded by misinvestments and donor neglect, with high costs in human sufferings. But the challenge today is of smallholder-driven approach to agricultural growth that reconciles to economic, social and environmental functions of agriculture. The dilemma is of sustaining productivity and income growth in the face of declining prices for grains and traditional exports. However, rising demands for high-value horticultural and livestock products in these rapidly growing economies offer farmers opportunities to diversify into new markets.

The World Bank report also mentions that agriculture’s performance has been impressive in the recent past. From 1980 to 2004, the gross domestic product (GDP) of agriculture expanded globally on an average of 2.0 per cent a year, which is more than the population growth of 1.6 per cent a year. This growth, driven by increasing productivity, pushed down the real price of grains in the world market by 1.8 per cent a year over the same period. Developing countries achieved much faster agricultural growth (2.6 per cent a year) than industrial countries (0.9 per cent a year) in 1980 – 2004. Developing countries accounted for 79 per cent of overall agricultural growth during this period. Their share of world agriculture in the GDP rose from 56 per cent in 1980 to 65 per cent in 2004. In contrast they accounted for only 21 per cent of non-agricultural GDP in 2004. The transforming economies of Asia (of which India is a part) accounted for 2/3rd of the developing world’s agricultural growth. The major contributor to growth in Asia and the developing world in general was productivity gains, rather than expansion of land devoted to agriculture. But the dilemma is that due to rising productivity, prices have been declining for cereals – especially for rice, which is the developing world’s major staple food – and for traditional developing-world export products such as cotton and coffee. Improvement has been due to the use of better technology, better policy and the application of widespread irrigation, improved variety of crops and the use of fertilizers, although crop improvements have extended well beyond the irrigated areas to embrace huge areas of rainfed agriculture. Another reason for expansion has been the growth in livestock. So is the case with horticulture and aquaculture. In India there has been a real revolution in the production and marketing of milk.

Acknowledgement
This write up is based on the field experience I gathered from an IWSB research project for which I visited the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, to work on Culture and Child-rearing Practices.