India is a country of villages. According to 2001 census 72 per cent of her population lives in villages. After more than fifty years of economic planning 742 million people still live in rural areas. The proportion of rural population has declined from 74.29 in 1991 to 72 per cent in 2001. Agriculture provides employment to’ around 60 percent of the total workforce in the country. Therefore whoever wants to study and understand India has to direct his/her attention to what is happening and is not happening in the villages. Colonial masters realised that they should better know villages if they want to rule over this land. Since the land revenue was one of the important sources of income the British revenue officers were the first to encounter society and economy of the Indian villages. A village became a focus of study when census operations were started especially after 1901. Some of the earliest political actions against the policies of the colonial government were organised not in urban areas but in villages. Farmers indebtedness, higher rates of land revenue and inadequate fainine relief were the causes around which these actions were Organised in 1870s. Justice M.’G. Ranade; the foundér of Indian Economics had argued that India’s economic problem was two fold as (a) phenomenal poverty and (b) dependence on agriculture and its solution lied in industrialisation and commercialisation of — agriculture. Mahatma Gandhi was the first Indian leader who’ realised what place a village occupies in the life of Indian nation. He believed that India’s soul lived in her village and thought that if the village perished India will perish too. "It will be no more Indiaher own mission in the world will get lost". Gandhi argued that cities have exploited the villages. The blood of the villages is the edifice on which the cities are built. He wanted the blood that is inflating the arteries of the cities to run again in the blood vessels of the villages. (O’Leary: 1994: 143)
Unfortunately strategy of economic development adopted after independence did not reflect this view. Even though around 72 per cent population lives in rural area that agriculture provides employment to about 60 per cent of our workforce the share of agriculture sector in the national income has gone down from 55.4 per cent in 1950-51 to 30.9 per cent in 1990-91 and 26.1 per cent in 2001-02. Declining share of agriculture sector in country’s national income is considered an indication of development. But the fact remains that the proportion of Indian population dependent on agriculture has not declined in that quantity. Very low plan outlay on agriculture in last nine plans is the most important reason for such a state of affairs. The plan outlay on agriculture has remained as low as 20 to 24 per cent in last fifty years except in the first plan (1951-56) when it was 31 percent. This lop- sidedness has resulted into a considerable gap between the development of urban and rural areas both in economic and social sectors. Minhas, Jain and Tendulkar have shown that incidence of poverty is greater in rural area by 8.3 percent. In 1987-88 for instance population living below poverty line was 44.8 per cent in rural as against 36.5 per cent in urban India.
Instead of looking at percentages if looked at actual number of poor people we come to know the real gravity of the problem. In urban areas this number in 1987-88 was 77 million while it was as high as 284 million in rural area. (Minhas, Jain, Tendulkar: 91: 6-13)
The gap between the rural and urban is glaringly seen also with respect to the growth rate of employment. It was around 1.41 to 1.96 per cent between 1983-94 (see Table !.1).
On human development side also we get the similar picture. The birth (30.9), death (10.6) and infant mortality rates (87) are higher in rural area than in urban area (24.3, 7.1 and 54 in that order) (Government of Maharashtra: 1996: 14). With respect to literacy, schools, employment, infrastructure and such other indices of economic and human development the gap between village and cities is quite wide and it is no doubt an outcome of our Strategy ot development.
The efforts to restore the balance between the two were done by the union and also the state governments. The first such attempt was in the form of the community development programme started on 2nd October 1952. The land reforms of fifties were meant to rationalise the land holding patterns. But the most decisive step in restoring the balance between the rural and the urban was the green revolution a package of programmes for the intensive development of agriculture sector. It was undertaken during the third plan period (1961-66).
In the seventies the emphasis was given on eradication of poverty (1971) especially in the rural sector and then came the policy package named rural development, which included number of programmes of employment generation, self employment promotion, as well as housing for poor and agriculture development. During the Janata Party’s rule (1977-79) a rural bias was perceptible since the rich peasantry leadership of the north had come to power (Rudolph and Rudolph: 1987: 314-32). The multiple programmes of the rural development were eventually brought under one umbreila of the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP). It was started in all the $011 blocks in the country on 2nd October 1980. When the inadequacies both in its planning and implementation were revealed the government launched new and improved schemes such as Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (1983), National Rural Employment Programme (1980), Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (1989), Million Wells Schemes (1988-89), Indira Awaas Yojana (1985-86), Employment Assurance Scheme (1993) etc. for the benefit of the rural area and specially for the rural poor. _
These schemes and programmes have certainly benefited the villages but one fact which has come to the fore in last fifty years is that these schemes have not benefited the target groups to the extent they were intended to and it is mainly because of the social and economic inequalities and resultant uneven distribution of political power in the villages. The study conducted in forty eight villages in Maharashtra has indicated that the land owing clans belonging to dominant caste of the village monofilise the power positions at the local level (Vora: 1999: 199-218). These clans’ control the resources and power in such a way that any programme of by-passing them fall on the ground. The cooperatives and panchayati raj institution have not been able to do much in Maharashtra due to these stumbling blocks. Studies carried out in other states also point at almost identical conditions (Gough: 1989: 10-20). The village studies while assessing the rural development programmes will have to take into account these factors which are in a way internal to the village system.
Idea of village studies which had its origin in the colonial period was brought into practice by social scientist, policy makers, and activists in post-independent period basically for the purpose . of locating the impact of economic planning on the rural society. A rapid survey of literature on these studies suggest that the most of the studies belong to the category of case study in which an in- depth study is done of a single village. We also find that many scholars make a study of the same village after some years to record the. transformation. There are few sample surveys of villages to either understand the impact of development. programmes or to analyse the socio-political structure into rural areas. Most of the observations about villages are mainly based on a case study of a particular village.
The present volume makes a departure from the earlier studies in many ways. It brings together case studies of 170 villages from five states to present generalisations and to give across—state comparison. Thus it is not a report of a case study of a single village or a sample survey of the villages. The studies are done by the Indian Administrative Service officer trainees and not by social scientist or policy makers. Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration at Mussoorie makes each IAS officer trainee to stay in a village during the field training in the district and do a socio-economic survey of a village. Out of two years of training period of these trainees one year is spent in the district. One of their assignment during this year is to do a socio-economic study of a village in that district. The main purpose of these studies is to sensitise and educate the officer-trainees. The trainees present their reports during the Phase Il at the Academy. The guidelines regarding conducting the studies are given by the Course Coordinator and the Centre for Rural Studies (earlier known as the Village Study Unit). The trainees are required to examine the social structure of the village, the economic conditions of the villagers and the state of attains with regard to agriculture, village industries, land reports, the panchayati raj, cooperative institutions, irrigation and land revenue administration. They are supposed to study the impact of multiple government schemes and programmes about employment, education, health, family welfare and also the agriculture development. The villagers are not selected according to the method of random sampling. The officer trainees are not the trained researchers. The observations presented here are basically those of the fresh entrants to the administrative cadre. The micro-studies done by the trainees are brought together 'in systematic manner to present a general picture of the rural economy and the society ofa particular state by the senior officers at the Academy or the academicians. While preparing the state reports these scholars have provided the secondary data about the district or the state in order to contextualise the village studies. The aim of the state reports is to give an overall picture of the . state’s villages rather than throwing light on a village X or Y.
The five states covered in this volume belong to the central and western India and they are Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana Gujarat and Maharashtra. The studies from 170 villages belonging to 65 districts of the above five states are brought together in this volume to give a profile of central and western Indian villages.
The state of Himachal Pradesh is located jn the hilly areas and geographically differs from the states with respect to the land use pattern, the size of the villages and their spread. The population of the villages in this state is very small and these villages are dispersed over a large hilly areas. The proportion of urban population there is only 8.69 per cent. Even though the per capita Income ts Rs. 1948 which is much lower than that of other states the percentage of population living below poverty line is only 15.46 per cent. So here is a state where almost 9] per cent population lives in villages and even then the proportion of poverty 1s very low compared to all India population or that of Maharashtra and Gujarat the ‘developed states’. The foodgrain yield per hectare is also higher than these two developed states.
Social indicators of Himachal Pradesh also show that the conditions are certainly better than what you find in many of the developed studies. On the count of literacy; school going children Sex ratio, infant mortality rate, life expectancy and female worker participation rate Himachal Pradesh is either doing better than the other states or is at par with these states. It ts the only state in this group which is known for its horticulture specially the apple production.
In the vicinity are two states Punjab and Haryana which are also covered by this volume. Both are famous for their success stories of green revolution. If one takes into consideration the economic indicators these two states are among the top five states in the country and in our group they excel all others. The per capita income of these two states is the highest and the population below poverty line is between 12 to 16 per cent only. It shows at least from these two figures that the economic disparity in Punjab and Haryana is not very high. This observation makes more sense if *we compare these two states with Maharashtra and Gujarat where population of poor is quite high even though these two States ‘are considered as the developed states in the country. And the interesting feature of Punjab and Haryana is that the urban population ‘is smallcompared to Gujarat and Maharashtra. Both ‘Maharashtra and Gujarat are known for the contribution of their industrial sector rather than the agriculture. In case of Punjab and Haryana it is the agriculture or rural sector which has performed exceedingly well and that is secret of their economic development as well as that of lower proportion of poverty. Does it mean that the states where villages perform well perform better so far as two crucial factors disparity and per capita income are concerned. It is true that the percentage of irrigated land is between 77.9 to 94.6 per cent in Punjab and Haryana and therefore their agriculture production is the highest in the country. In Maharashtra and Gujarat on the other hand, proportion of irrigation is between 16.2 to 27.4 per cent. Both are cases of regional imbalance and also sectoral imbalance. Whatever water is available is not being used rationally. In Maharashtra for instance almost 60 per cent water is used for sugarcane farming when there are around 148 drought- prone tehsils and 14000 villages with drinking water shortage (Dastane: 1992). The contribution of agriculture sector to the state income has come down from 28.1] to 21.2 per cent in last decade when the state still has 60 per cent rural population which mainly depends on agriculture. The percentage of poor population in Maharashtra is about 40 per cent. These figures suggest that the development does not reach the large section of the state population.
Does it mean that the model of development Maharashtra or for that matter Gujarat has adopted is responsible for such lopsidedness and inequality? The villages in these states are not performing to the expectation.
Punjab and Haryana as the Table 1.3 shows are trailing behind on the human development front. We come to know this fact if we look at number of school going children, the sex ratio, the female worker participation and female literacy rate. When it comes to gender dimension of development Punjab and Haryana do fall behind the states such as Gujarat and Maharashtra. Is it because the rate of urbanisation is lower in Punjab and Haryana? Can we argue that the green revolution and rural development may not necessarily help women and that in Punjab and Haryana villages everything is not that fine?
The state reports in this volume do discuss the issues and questions raised above. The village studies reported here were done between 1983 to 1994 and therefore they do not take into consideration the impact of the 73rd amendment which radically changed the panchayati raj institutions in rural areas. Since early 1990s was too early to judge the effect of new economic reforms these studies also do not sufficiently touch this aspect. -
There are these and other limits mentioned earlier. In spite of these limits we think that the academicians, administrators and social activists would find the state chapters useful not only for the overall perspective but also for the insights about the Indian village given by the officer trainees on the basis of their first hand experience of the reality. And we hope that this volume would provide to its readers a profile of rural India.
REFERENCES
Census of India: 1991, State Profile: 1991: India.
Dastane, Santosh, (ed.), Maharashtra: 1992, Dastane Ramchandra and Co. Pune, 1992.
Frontline, June 18, 2004.
Gough, Kathleen, Rura/ change in Southeast India: 1950s to 1980s, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1989.
Government of Maharashtra, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Economic Survey of Maharashtra; 1995-96, Mumbai, 1996.
Lloyd, |. Rudolph and S. H. Rudolph, In Pursuit of Laxmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State; The University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Madan, Vandana, (ed.), The village in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2002. |
Minhas, B. S., L.R. Jain and S. D. Tendulkar, “Declining Incidence of Poverty in 1980s”, Economic and Political Weekly, July 6-13, 1991.
O’ Leary, Basil, An Approach to Gandhian Economics, in S. Mukherjee and S. Ramswamy (eds.), Facets of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. Ill, Deep and Deep, New Delhi, 1994.
Vora, Rajendra, Dominant Lineages and Political Power in Maharashtra, in Irina.
Glushkova and Rajendra Vora (eds.), Home, Family and Kinship in Maharashtra, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1999.
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