INDIANS VILLAGES - IN THE 21ST CENTURY REVISITS AND REVISIONS EDITED. BY SURINDER S. JODHKA EDWARD SIMPSONIndia’s Villages in the 21st Century Revisits and Revisions Edited by Surinder S. Jodhka Edward Simpson OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSGORAN DJURFELDT VENKATESH ATHREYA N, JAYAKUMAR STAFFAN LINDBERG A. RAJAGOPAL R. VIDYASAGAR Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu* his chapter’ looks at social mobility during 1979 to 2004.* Here, social mobility is defined as mobility of households between different positions in social structures. We will be looking more spe- cifically at: (a) mobility out of and into farming, (b) mobility inside the farming sector, operationally defined as mobility between size-classes * This research has received financial support from the Swedish Research Council, Sida’s Research Council for Developing Countries, and Swedish South Asian ‘Studies Network (SASNET). Athreya, Rajagopal, and Vidyasagar were affiliated to South Asian Integrated Water Resources Management Consortium, while Djurfeldt and Lindberg are with Lund University, Sweden. We want to thank the Participants of a seminar held in March 2007 at the Department of Sociology, Lund University, and the working group on Development Sociology at the annual meeting of the Swedish Sociological Association in Lund in January 2007. Special thanks to Agnes Andersson, Bjérn Holmquist, and Magnus Jirstrém.40| Géran Djurfeldt etal. of operated area, and finally (c) we will study the consequences in terms of changes in real household income. Since increased income, other things equal, implies decreased poverty, it is a way of looking at poverty alleviation. It has the further advantage of being independent of arbitrary ways of fixing a poverty line. ‘We want to test some hypotheses about the driving forces of mobil- ity and their consequences for people’s life chances. We think of three major drivers of social mobility and the social transformation that they result in. The first one is local industrialization and the structural transformation of the rural economy, which is an indirect consequence of industrialization and urbanization. Industrialization has been running at an uneven but increasing pace during the twenty-five-year period under discussion. Our field is both indirectly and directly affected since it lies close to the Karur-Tirupur textile industry belt, which is a major global centre of knitwear pro- duction, supplying both the Indian and increasingly also the global market. The textile dynamics obviously has many indirect effects on growth in urban and nearby rural areas and on the growth of other industries, such as building and construction, as well as services such as retail trade, hotels, and so on. In our field area, it is mainly these indirect effects, which we loosely term as the structural transforma- tion of the rural economy, which contributes to social mobility inside rural society. However, we also have a few small textile industries in the area itself. From the viewpoint of agriculture, urbanization and industrializa- tion do not only result in people permanently migrating from villages. They also result in villages and rural economies getting transformed by (a) a growing non-agricultural sector in rural areas, (b) seasonal migration, and (c) by pluriactivity, that is, of rural people combining income-earning activities within and outside the agriculture sector. Our material suggests that, at least in our study area, these trends are not driven by agricultural distress. As we will see, the indica- tions are the reverse, that is, the real income effects of the structural transformation of the rural economy in our study area are, on the whole, positive. ‘Thus people migrate, permanently and seasonally, and they com- mute, for example by train from the wet villages upstream towards the textile town of Karur. As a consequence, the agrarian sector decreases Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |41 in relative terms—both in terms of labour absorption and asa source of income for local households. There are also drivers of social mobility within the rural economy, As we will see, there appears to have been a respectable rate of growth of farm income over the period. Moreover, we will show that agricultural growth may have contributed about as much as local industrialization to the growth of real incomes and thus to poverty alleviation. In the first leg of this study, we document the effects of the Green Revolution, which apparently continued to be dynamic in the 1980s. We agree with Lipton and Longhurst (1989), who argued that the Green Revolution had a considerable and beneficial impact on poor farmers. We will not go deeply into this, but the data we present indicate that the Green Revolution has since then lost its poverty profile. More capital-intensive patterns of growth are now played out. However, social mobility is not only driven by these economic forces but also by political ones. There are important social policy interven- tions by the union and state governments, which influence people’s life chances (see Lindberg et al. 2016). There is a broad repertoire of policies, many of which would not be classified as social policies in a conventional sense, but which do influence life chances. It is tempting to referto the broad perspective introduced by Wood and Gough (2006) and Wood (2003). Lacking the entitlements needed to escape poverty (Sen 1981), the poor are, according to Wood’s analogy, driven to enter into a ‘Faustian bargain’? with patrons such as local landlords, moneylenders, employ- ers, and others controlling the access to resources. In terms of the Faustian analogy, the poor are driven to sell their souls to the patron- izing ‘devils’ in exchange for which they get entitlement to food, work, credit, et cetera. In the bargain, they are driven to compromise on their political and social rights. The important function for social policy in this perspective is to supply the entitlements that poor people need in order to avoid the Faustian bargain. Social policies in the above sense consist of a broad repertoire of interventions like the Public Distribution System (PDS), the mid-day meal schemes in schools (in which Tamil Nadu is a pioneer), and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). Although not42| Goran Djurfeldt et al. originally conceived as a measure of poverty reduction, PDS has gained an increasing importance in supplying basic necessities to the poor people. Although the functioning of the PDS and the ration shops, through which it is working, is widely divergent in the different states of India, they work comparatively well in Tamil Nadu. In our area, most households rely on the ration shops for their food grains. The effectiveness of the system is testified to by the answers to the survey question: ‘Does it happen that you have to forego a meal? If yes, when did it last happen?’ Only one interviewee answered ‘yes’ and in his case it last happened in the year 2000. In addition to the PDS, as Lindberg et al. (2016) have documented, there are a range of other interventions, like the expansion and improve- ment of the health system, of social services such as water, education, the devolution of power to the panchayats, and a whole repertoire of policy interventions that have potentially significant effects on life chances. Their effects on mobility will be indirectly brought out further in the chapter.4 Local industrialization, structural transformation of the rural and agrarian economy, and social policy interventions over the last three decades have thus resulted in increasing levels of living in terms of food security, decreasing poverty, improved housing standards, increased levels of education, et cetera. This again, as we will see, has been associated with a process where large landowners and the landless have, to some extent, exited agriculture, giving rise to a less skewed distribution of operational holdings and of household incomes within the agrarian economy? Yet another demonstrable consequence of these overall processes is a tendency for the status hierarchies in agrarian society to change. More specifically, we will document that, on the one hand, opening of opportunities in the off-farm sector and, on the other, policy interven- tions including affirmative action of various sorts have made it pos- sible, to an increasing extent, for the old underdogs in agrarian society, that is, the Dalits or the ex-untouchables to escape the indignity and degradation of village society. This is not to say that all of them have escaped the Faustian dilemma. For those who remain inside the village economy and with few opportunities outside of it, the old hierarchies tend to persist. Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |43 ‘The emancipation of the Dalits has consequences for the old rulers. Deprived of a source of cheap labour, the old patrons often opt out of agriculture, especially in connection with a generational trans- fer, which parents can use to prepare for a non-farm career for their children. When the old top dogs tend to leave, it creates new chances for the ‘middle dogs’ to strengthen their position. Thus we will hypothesize a middling or centripetal tendency in the structure of operational hold- ings, reflecting a strengthening of the family farm sector. We use Djurfeldt’s definition of notional family farmers as: (1) The notional family farm is characterised by an overlapping between three functional units: (a) the unit of production (.e. the farm), (b) the unit of consumption (i.e. the household) and (c) the unit of kinship (ie. the family). (2) For its reproduction, the notional family farm requires family labour, i. labour performed by members of the family /household (and here ‘we are not referring mainly to managerial work). This implies that if the farm no longer requires family labour for its reproduction, it is no longer a notional family farm, although it may still be a farm family business. (Djurfeldt 1996) In our area, family farms used to be a small minority of all farms (Athreya 1990, passim). According to our hypothesis, the growth of family farms occurs at the expense of holdings operated by means of tenants or agricultural labourers. Note that social policy contributes to this process by providing the entitlements that workers previously could only get from the landlords. The strengthening of the family farm sector obviously also implies an increased share of family labour as compared to total labour in cultivation. In this chapter, we start out descriptively, documenting the above- mentioned tendencies with our survey data. This is done by means of cross-sectional data from the two panel waves, 1979 and 2004. Comparison of the cross-sections gives us the net result of structural changes and mobility between the two waves. Relying only on such data is hazardous, however, and cross-sectional data must be comple- mented with longitudinal ones to get a more complete picture and to44| Goran Djurfelat et al. try to extract the driving forces behind the tendencies observed. In the accompanying paper (Djurfeldt et al. 2007), by means of three regres- sion analyses, we aim to try to substantiate the causal claims made above and spot any spurious correlations in the cross-sectional data. The Area and the Fieldwork In 1979, Athreya, Djurfeldt, and Lindberg (1990) did a study of agrar- ian change in Tamil Nadu in south India. They studied six villages in Tiruchi district, Tamil Nadu, and did a detailed survey of, among others, a main sample of 240 households. Twenty-five years later, the current authors returned to the same villages, set on tracing the original participants and their descendants. A pilot study con- ducted during the summer of 2003 and involving a sub-sample of the original households showed that it was indeed possible to trace a surprisingly large proportion of the original sample (well above 90 per cent). Therefore, attrition was not expected to be an insur- mountable problem. We launched a full-scale resurvey during the autumn of 2004. ‘Treating the 1979 study as a baseline, we created a panel database of both qualitative and quantitative data. In the following sections, we will go through the methodology of the panel study, the sampling strategy and the weighting system, attrition, and other aspects neces- sary to judge the validity and reliability of the results reported in the paragraphs that follow. ‘The original sample is a multi-stage one, beginning with the purpo- sive selection of two units, Manaparei and Kulithalei Panchayat Unions, in what was then Tiruchy district. The idea was to select a contiguous and relatively small area containing the variance between dry, rain-fed tracts and the ‘wet’, irrigated areas which are so typical not only of Tamil Nadu, but of much of south and central India. ‘The second stage was the selection of six revenue villages within the first stage units. This was done with so-called PPS sampling, that is, with probability proportional to size.° At the third stage, finally, we selected forty households in each village with simple random sampling (SRS). Deducting two refusals, we got 238 households. This was the main sample. Variance estimators are standard formulae in simple random samples, but in multi-stage sampling, the formulae have to be worked out foreach specific sample design. As demonstrated in Athreya et al. (1990, p. 36ff.), Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu | 45 we can use standard SRS estimators, provided we take account of the design effect (Kish 1957), which is a function of both the number of stages and the type of sample (PPS, SRS, and others). For variables which are not too skewed, Athreya et al. (1990), have shown that the ‘design effect’ in their sample can be taken to be about 1.3. What this means is that, if we want to avoid false positives or Type I errors, 30 per cent should be added to a confidence interval and to the critical value of the test statistic. For 2004 data, since a further sampling stage is involved, the design effect may be higher (see further in the chapter). Since the two ecotypes—wet and dry—are substantially different in their agro-ecological as well as social and cultural characteristics, they should be treated as two different universes for the purposes of arriving at estimates of a range of characteristics. Estimates should, therefore, ordinarily be made separately for the two ecotypes. Creating the Panel” Attrition is a problem in all panel studies, since a portion of the original units disappear from the population, either by passing away or by emigrat- ing from the area. Over a whole generation, the problem is likely to be severe. However, we did not want only a panel, but also a new cross sec- tion. This was to enable us to compare the cross-sectional sample made in 1979 with a similar cross section in 2004, but containing the surviving units and their descendants. If there was more than one descendant household, we randomly selected one of them to replace the original one. Moreover, we tried to trace households who had migrated from the villages. To make the 2004 sample representative of the current agrarian population, we made lists of households who had settled in the village since 1979 and drew a sample of these. In many settings, the ambition of tracing households after twenty- five years would have been in vain. However, given the limited geo- graphical mobility and the impossibility of remaining anonymous in a village setting, it proved easier than expected to trace almost all of the original main sample households. Thus we traced 233 households out of the originally selected 238 main sample households. Of the remain- ing six, five had become extinct and one respondent had refused to be interviewed in 1979 itself. Of the 233 households traced, some still remain under the same head, which in this context normally is a male, and most of them remain in the agricultural sector. Others remain in46| Goran Djurfeldt et al. the village and the sector, but have anew head. Still others have passed through a generational transfer where landholdings and other property have been partitioned between the heirs, normally among the sons of the former head. Yet others have emigrated, but left enough traces in the village to enable us find out to where. ‘A questionnaire was developed, largely following the instrument used in 1979. Data collection started in September 2005 and ended in February 2006 but referred to the crop year 2004-5.* We judge the quality of our data to be high. This is due first of all to the work we put down in 1979 when we thoroughly cross-checked all information on important variables such as landownership, with land registers, neighbours, ct cetera. The enthusiastic response we received when returning in 2004 contributed to our data quality. Structural Transformation of the Agrarian and Rural Economy On the basis of our survey data, we estimate the agrarian population and its growth over the twenty-five-year period, from 1979 to 2004. Although the total population of the six villages has grown by about 24 per cent over this period, we estimate that the agrarian population has been more or less constant.’ The pattern is different in the two eco- types, with a slight increase in agrarian population in the dry ecotype, especially in one of our villages, namely Naganur. In the wet villages, the general pattern seems to be a slight decrease. ‘This means that almost all growth in population has occurred outside the agrarian sector. The general conclusion is that these village economies have gone through a considerable structural transformation in the last gen- eration. In a foreseeable future, the agrarian population will be down to half the total population. The trend is compounded, of course, by migra- tion, which seems to have increased during the last half of our period. Emigration Looking at the households that have left our villages since 1979, we spot no statistically significant differences in destinations or in reasons for migration, although there is a slight tendency for the labouring classes Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu | 47 (agricultural labourers and poor peasants according to the 1979 clas- sification) to migrate more in search of employment. However, there are interesting differences between classes in rates of migration. In Table 1.1, we look at the proportion of the 1979 sample that have since emigrated from the villages. ‘There is a clear and statistically significant difference (at 1 per cent level) between the labouring classes, whose emigration rate is 0.17 and the landed households (middle and rich peasants and others), whose rate of emigration is below 5 per cent. However, our hypothesis of a higher rate of outmigration for the big farmers and landlords does not gain support from the earlier data. This notwithstanding, we will continue to argue that the growing weight of the non-agrarian sector has differential consequences for the top, middle, and the bottom of agrarian society. Although all are affected, the old underdogs, primarily the agricultural labourers, are more prone to seize new opportunities in the non-agrarian sector than the landed and middling households. Besides, they may also find survival difficult as very small peasants, with substantial rent paid on leased-in land. This may be especially true since the late 1990s, with a sharp increase in input prices, decline in output prices, and shortfall in institutional credit, but we do not have primary data on these aspects. Similarly, the top strata tends to exit agriculture, in part due to the constraints on profitability and the scarcity and ‘high cost’ of labour (high only in relation to an earlier situation where they could exploit labour at their will, and not in terms of any notion of a decent wage) TABLE 1.1 Rates of Migration since 1979 by Class Class position, 1979 Mean Std. error n Labouring classes 0.173 0.037 110 Family farmers 0.047 0.025 88 Big farmers and landlords 0.000 0.000 a Other and uncodable 0.233 0.082 27 Total 0.122 0.022 232 Source: Study conducted by the authors. Note: Per cent missing = om. --48| Goran Djurféldt et al. and the increasing difficulties of extracting rent. Perhaps equally or more important is the fact that they may simultaneously be attracted by growing opportunities in the non-agricultural sector. When the top dogs and underdogs exit agriculture, they leave space for the mid- dling sectors, what we will term as the family farmers, to strengthen their position. Is the hypothesis about the exiting of the top dogs contradicted by the mentioned data? Not necessarily, since exiting does not necessarily imply leaving the village. The top dogs may be exiting agriculture and with some family members remaining in the village. We will return to this issue later. Housing Standards Table 1.2 gives as good a description of the general trend as any: While twenty-five years ago about 60 per cent of the agrarian popu- lation in our villages, in Indian terminology, lived in ‘kutcha’ houses, that is, huts of mud with thatched roofs, less than 25 per cent do so now. ‘The percentage living in solid ‘pucca’ houses has almost tripled, from less than 20 per cent to above 50 per cent. With this improvement in housing standards goes increased own- ership of consumer durables and furniture. Together with indicators available in official statistics, such as improvements in child mortality and literacy, this goes to show an appreciable progress over the last gen- eration. As we will see, this is the outcome of growth in the farm sector, and also, importantly, of the structural transformation of the economy. Tale 1.2 House Type by Survey Panel House type 1979 2004 Kutcha 60.3 28.6 Semi-pucca 20.1 19.8 Pucca, 19.5 51.6 Total 100.0 100.0 Source: Study conducted by the authors. Note: No. of cases in 1979: 367, missing: 0; in 2004: 213, missing: 0. Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |49 The Growing Role of the Non-agricultural Sector An increased allocation of family labour to non-agricultural activities does not necessarily, and over a longer run, result in an increasing share of income from such sources. The change in the share of income would depend on the pattern of investment. If much non-farm income had been invested in the farm sector, we would not necessarily expect an increased share for non-farm income. Parallel to our first wave, Harriss (1981) pointed to the important role of the family networks spanning the farm and non-farm sector, especially business investments. She argued that non-farm income typically would be reinvested in farmin; Obviously, this would differ according to the vagaries of the farm busi- ness climate and one could argue that the likelihood of such investments would be lower today than in the ‘golden days’ of the Green Revolution. We see from Table 1.3 that in total and on average, households have increased their allocation of household labourers to non-farm activities by more than 100 per cent. The corresponding increase in the share of household income from non-farm sources is 52 per cent. One cannot draw the conclusion from this that non-farm workers earn less than farm workers do. Instead, one possible expla- nation for the lower growth in the share of income from non-farm sources than in the share of labourers in the same sector is that over the period, parts of non-farm income have been invested on the farm and thus contributed to the increase in farm income. Most investment has gone in wells and irrigation equipment, evidenced, for example, by well density in the dry area having gone from one well in 10 acres of operated land to one well in 2 acres today, a fivefold increase. Generational Transfer Before proceeding any further, we have to devote a section to genera- tional transfer. The most remarkable finding is that although custom- ary law stipulates partible inheritance along the patriline,!° most of the first-wave households have avoided dividing their holdings. Out of the ninety-seven cases of partition that we have in the sample, 78 per cent were the only heirs. It would be possible to check against old data to find out how many of these were the only children of the family, but it is unlikely that more than a minority were. This implies -*Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |51 that the parents had manoeuvred to put up their kids, especially their ce Beas put up , especially PEE Reis preteen ESS Te sons, in other occupations and to make only one son the heir of their he landed property. al ele eevee resi eee : ' gleleiaenaalea Bhaaietsis This deviation from customary law can be explained as an effect of ; 5/2 |3 transformation of the rural economy and local industrialization, which 3 y i Bl aie makes it feasible for parents to avoid dividing the ancestral property, ; ZlilBlergacas 'ealesgea because they can place the ‘superfluous’ children in other occupations. a\alz ey It further implies that local agriculture, to some extent, avoids the trap, f Pls foreseen by many, of landholdings getting increasingly diminutive and 4lglsig ane gis e's s|9 25 2 8 fragmented. Bees Ssssiss ssysssss It is also worth noting that a sizeable minority let landed property 3|5 3 pass along the matriline. However, out of the ninety-seven cases we have 5 Zlglelesgaelag'sslaggaal 2 data on, the gender of only thirty-seven heirs was known. Assuming that CSA Rus Sit 28) 3 ES ‘ By : g/*[leces ayes ssiessssy & the remaining fifty-eight inherited patrilineally, in 8 per cent (weighted z 3 estimate) of the cases both sons and daughters inherited land. In 2 per ii] | i 2) |s 5 cent of cases, land was inherited by daughters. Matrilineal inheritance | ‘ Ple\Fea ess kle 8 FalesgR sl zg has for long been a practice in cases where there are no sons to take | 3\2i6 z over, so this practice might not after all be as important as the presum- g/3 = ably spreading practice of non-partible inheritance of land. 3 2 aE er erin se he Te eat co] eee ot no 4 i b el2Zlg/8 Se BSR ' SSIS A SES = Bi S| hem ena S| uel el Re Bim eel 0s i i ; Sa Laila Poe mALTTE BSNS SS aes ay Entry into and Exit from Farming . Els ie § fe ‘ x Wilelalon oe mies ert tse cee ont ce One would expect the structural transformation of the rural economy i Sled BN eS Sees iy Spree Smt SS lc hes ates ( : 4 s/°)RISSSS S888 SRSESSZz G to imply that people leave the land, and they do, but not universally and ; g Als sss slog ssjlssoagg 2 eee sg 3 | with the same tempo. Moreover, there is a stream in the other direction, 4 & r that is, into farming, as Table 1.4 shows. 5 5 4 4 4 S Data for 1979 in Table 1.4 are representative for the agrarian popula- a é 8. reg seg (eg tion in that year. However, it includes not only that cohort, but also rep- 3 a SS eee ieee aes resentatives of the partitioned households. The table does not include 2 Hee (eee e 86a 8 es representatives of the small group of households that were non-agrar- Sees areere eter ge Ware dew lies ian in 1979 and who have entered agriculture since then, Likewise, it g gq g s SRE eee amere) ae oe ved ae does not include a small group of immigrated households that are part o| S26 ma S12 228 gle 2 Se Slee of the 2004 agrarian population. Of the 2004 non-agrarian population, g| OA fB OR SER OES Ea oO S/F only those who are descendants of 1979 households are included. a 8 } = | Data for 2004, then, are not completely representative of the 2004 2) 8 e agrarian population, but for large parts of it. Thus we take the marginal Z| 8 3 > g z distributions in the table as representative or nearly representative of z 5 ele p Bs & the agrarian population in both rounds. igrarian pop’52| Goran Djurféldt et al. TABLE 1.4. Cultivator Status by Survey Wave and by Partition Status, Total Percentage Household partitioned Cultivated land in Cultivated land in since 1979 1979 2004 No Yes Total No No. 25.9 45 30.4 Yes 24.1 45.5 69.6 Total 50.0 50.0 100.0 Yes No 12.8 55 18.3 Yes 20.6 61.1 81.7 Total 33.4 66.6 100.0 Source: Survey conducted by the authors, Note: Total no. of cases = 233, per cent missing = 0. Differences are significant at .1% level Here is another effect of the structural transformation of the rural economy: While 67 per cent of the households having undergone a generational transfer are cultivators, 82 per cent of their parents were so twenty-five years ago. Thus, there is a net exit from farming which can be due either to proletarianization of farmers or, which would largely be another term for the same process, an exit from an unrewarding existence as a farmer to a more promising future in the non-farm sector, most probably occurring in connection with a generational transfer. ‘The predominantly downward mobility (that is, out of farming) is reflected in the two mobility matrices of Table 1.4, reflecting net rather than gross mobility. Looking first at partitioned households, we see that in total 6 per cent of the heirs have been upwardly mobile from non-cultivator to cultivator status, while 21 per cent have been downwardly mobile and lost or got rid of their cultivated holdings somewhere during the period. Exiting from cultivation is somewhat more pronounced in the unpar- titioned category, While 30 per cent of these households did not farm in 1979, today 50 per cent do not. As would be expected, downward mobility is slightly lower among the unpartitioned households—24 per cent compared to 21 per cent among the partitioned ones (statistically significant at 5 per cent level). Generational transfer seems to cause some downward mobility, but presumably less than would have been the case if all holdings had been partitioned as per traditional law. Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |53 Proletarianization Two of the most common hypotheses about agricultural development is that it leads to proletarianization of small farmers and to polarization. They represent two different processes of change that may be related but not necessarily so." These hypotheses belong to the standard narrative, but they are not often put to rigorous test. When they have been tested, they often failed to get empirical support (see, for example, Djurfeldt and Waldenstrém 1999; Edmundson 1994; Fuwa 1999; Hayami 1997; Schendel 1981; Dasari 2004). When in the first panel wave we looked at retrospective data and tested the hypotheses mentioned, we found that over a generation, landlessness was likely to have slightly decreased because many agricul- tural labourers during their lifetime succeeded in getting access to land. A generation ago, then, there was still a net entry into agriculture—a trend which seems to have reversed since then. Similarly, when compar- ing the 1979 distribution of land with land that was inherited, we found a slight centripetal tendency, that is, a tendency to less inequality in the distribution of land (Athreya et al. 1990, Chapter 5). Sitting now with data from two panel waves, we have a chance again to test the proletarianization and polarization theses. However, and as would be clear by now, we add a new dimension to the analysis by also considering the structural transformation of the rural economy, a dimension abstracted from the work cited. Let us look first at the pro- portion of landless households in the agrarian population (Table 1.5)."2 In the wet area, the proportion of landless labourers seems largely stable, while in the dry area it has gone down. Landlessness was very high in the wet area even in 1979, so one would not expect dramatic increases thereafter. This may also have to do with labour outmigration Tapie 1.5 Percentage of Landless Labourers in Agrarian Population by Ecotype and Panel Wave Ecotype 1979 2004 Wet 30 31 Dry 16 9 Source: Survey conducted by the authors. ‘Note: Number of cases in 1979 = 240, per cent missing = 0; number of cases in 2005 = 213, per cent missing = 0.54| Géran Djurfeldt et al. and to fewer number of children per pair of parents than in the pre- vious generation. Thus there is no support for the proletarianization thesis. This looks more like a stable situation in the wet area, although as we have seen, the agricultural labourers there are less specialized in agriculture today. This again has to do with expansion in the non- agricultural opportunities and increased mechanization, especially of ploughing, threshing, and to a lesser extent, irrigation, all of which means a contracting demand for labour. In the dry area, on the other hand, the landless labour population seems to have substantially gone down. One may have expected some degree of proletarianization, but there can also be counteracting ten- dencies, with more land coming under the plough and increased inten- sity and profitability. Also, it has been cheaper for landless labourers to acquire dry land when more of it has been left fallow. The same driving forces as in the wet area have slightly different effects here. To the extent that this is not only an effect of mechanization, it could reflect a devel- opment towards more family labour and, thus, could again promote a centripetal tendency in the agrarian class structure. Emigration could also play a role, as would remittances, especially from the members of the households either in non-local, non-agricultural employment, or in the armed forces. Agricultural Labour Income With the competition for labour between the farm and the non-farm sectors, the former usually tends to be the loser, in the sense that the scarcity of labour increases, which again causes an upward pressure on wages. A frequent counter strategy by farmers in that situation is to mechanize."? Accordingly, a great deal of mechanization has occurred, in ploughing, irrigation, and threshing, although not yet in harvesting." Ar the same time, the agricultural wage labour force has gone down (in the dry area) or become more pluriactive (in the wet one). This brings down the time labourers devote to agricultural labour. These processes have had the following effect on employment (see Table 1.6). ‘We see that mean days of employment has declined slightly for men in the wet area (although, as standard errors indicate, the decline is not statistically significant), while for women there has been more substantial Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu |55 TaBLe 1.6 Working Days per Year for Agricultural Labourers by Gender, Ecotype, and Panel Wave Ecotype Gender 1979 2004 Mean Stderror Mean Std error Wer Male 165 9.11 153 8.23 Female a7 7.69 134 6.09 Dry Male 69 8.98 91 9.34 Female 129 7.90 113 691 Total Male 136 7AL 133 6.72 Female 157 5.72 125 476 Source: Survey conducted by the authors. Note: Number of cases in 1979: 106 men, missing: 0%, 145 women, missing: 1.4%; number of cases in 2004: 87 men, missing= 0%, 135 women, missing = 0%. reduction, from 171 to 134 days, or about 22 per cent, which is statistically significant even when you correct for the design effect.!° The latter reduc- tion is probably because of the mechanization of threshing of grains. In the dry area, on the other hand, the decline of the total labour force has brought about an increase in employment for men, from sixty-nine to ninety-one days (just about significant at 5 per cent level), while employment for women in the dry areas has gone down slightly, again probably as a consequence of mechanization. Inequality Scholarly opinion appears to agree that increasing inequality is not a necessary consequence of economic growth, unlike what Kuznets (1971) once generalized for the earlier phases of development. Case studies of different countries show radically different correlations between economic growth and inequality (Frazer 2006). In the Indian debate, most scholars seem to lean towards the interpretation that inequality has increased with the economic growth in the 1990s (ADB 2007: 49-59). However, this goes for the economy as a whole. When it comes to the agrarian sector, the number of studies are less, except for the early period of the Green Revolution, when many authors con- cluded that it increased inequality.!¢ aed 7 — SURINDER S. JODHKA Emergent Ruralities Revisiting Village Life and Agrarian Change in Haryana doption of Green Revolution technology in select pockets of dia during the 1960s and 1970s had a significant impact on the imaginings of the rural/agrarian landscapes of India. Even when cri- tiques pointed to its limited spread and possible social and ecological ‘side-effects’, it produced a sense of pride in the Indian development community and among the landowning rural elite. The face of the Indian countryside in the Green Revolution pockets started changing very rapidly. In terms of social groups, the most visible beneficiaries of this change were the substantial cultivators from locally dominant caste groups, the upper segment of the agrarian economy. The locally domi- nant castes consolidated their position in the regional power structure and acquired a new sense of confidence. However, this excitement about the Green Revolution and mod- ernization of Indian agriculture did not last for too long. By the mid- 1980s the Indian countryside began to show a new kind of restiveness. Interestingly, this restiveness was most pronounced particularly in . sor ey: Pe, ore Se en Seer caer ae A148| Surinder S. Jodhka pockets that had experienced the Green Revolution. The surplus-pro- ducing farmers began to mobilize themselves into unions demanding subsidies on farm inputs and higher prices for their produce. Market economy, they argued, was inherently against the farm sector and favoured urban industry and the middle-class consumer. Given the unequal power relations between the town and the countryside, they argued, agricultural sector suffered from unequal terms of trade, the evidence of which could be seen in the growth of indebtedness among the cultivating/farming classes. Farmers mobilized themselves in different parts of India quite successfully for over a decade, Though each of the movements had a local character in terms of leadership and strategies of mobilization, they coordinated their activities across regions. In a sense they were also successful in getting their agenda accepted at the level of national politics. The farmers’ movements of the 1980s also signalled the rise of a new social category of rural people who had prospered with the Green Revolution and were connected closely to the market economy and saw their fate being conditioned by the market but also aspired to go beyond the village. The agrarian economy could not satisfy their aspirations for social and cultural mobility. They began to move out of the village, from their local seats of power to legislative assemblies in the state capitals. The surplus they generated from agriculture went into education, urban trade, and other non-agricultural activi- ties (Omvedt 1992; Rutten 1995; Upadhya 1988). By the early 1980s, the social profile of this class had begun to change. The following lines by Balagopal provide a lucid account of this process of growing diversification: [A] typical family of this class has a landholding in its native village, cultivated by hired labour, bataidar, tenant or farm servants, and supervised by the father or one son; business of various descriptions in town managed by other sons; and perhaps a young and bright child who is a doctor or engineer or a professor. It is this class that is most vocal about injustice done to the village. (Balagopal 1987: 1545) ‘The Indian village was undergoing an unprecedented social and cultural transformation. However, it was not simply a story of economic growth but also of social transformation wrought with difficulties and contestations. Emergent Ruralities |149 Research Questions: Then and Now It was around this time, when agrarian issues had been intensely worked on by the social sciences for nearly a decade-and-a-half and had become politically sensitive, that I initiated my doctoral research on rural indebtedness and the changing nature of debt-dependencies in three villages of the Karnal district of Haryana. The district typically represented the prosperous agrarian terrain of northwest India. I began my fieldwork in March 1988 and completed it by the middle of 1989. There were three sets of questions that interested me: First, the general questions relating to the nature of changes taking place in the structure of rural credit markets; second, a set of questions related to the nature of indebtedness among the farmers, particularly their growing involvement with the market and how their relations with the arhtiyas (commission agents) in the marketing centre structured their choices on farming; and third, a set of questions related to the role that credit played in institutionalizing certain kinds of dependency relations of the labouring classes with their employer farmers. Though the Indian village had been an important and fashion- able area of research for sociologists and social anthropologists, they rarely looked at the kind of questions I had identified for my research. Economists, mostly using the framework of political economy or con- ceptual frames drawn on the ‘neo-classical’ tradition, had done most of the empirical work on agrarian change in India. While the econo- mists researching on agrarian change worked with the category of ‘class’ for classifying and analysing rural social structure, sociologists and social anthropologists were preoccupied with ‘caste’. Even when caste seemed a relevant factor in the study of rural social structure and change, it was rarely seen in relation to the agrarian social structure. Economists found it meaningless to talk about caste and the sociolo- gists /social anthropologists saw its core lying in the ritual domain and the value framework of social hierarchy. Castes were also seen to be functionally integrated and ideologically over-determined in a manner that questions of power and social inequality or marginality and exclu- sion either seemed secondary or simply irrelevant for understanding the ‘essence’ of Indian rural life (see Jodhka 1998). This textbook conceptualization of caste did not make much sense to me. On the other hand I found the economists’ writings on the political --150| Surinder S. Jodhka economy of agrarian change much more useful and inspiring. Unlike the sociologists and social anthropologist, the economists in India had also been preoccupied much more with state policy and development- related questions. Though the mainstream economists did not focus too much on relational structures, questions of poverty and social dis- parities had been among the core concerns with them. ‘The shift in India’s economic orientation during the early years of the 1990s had several implications for the agricultural sector. Apart from other things, it marginalized agriculture in the development dis- course on India. Social science research on rural and agrarian economy also declined. Agrarian questions no longer generated excitement in university seminars or in the popular media. Unfortunately, it was only when incidents of farmers’ suicides began to be reported from several different parts of India in quick succession during the late 1990s that agriculture returned to academic and political platforms. By the early years of the 21st century a new discourse on Indian agriculture began to take shape. The preoccupation this time was with ‘crisis’. While the Indian economy was growing at a much faster pace, the agricultural sector was experiencing stagnation. ‘The relative share of the agricultural sector in the national economy began to decline quite steadily. Rural India once again appeared as a site of gloom and depression where real incomes were declining and farmers committed suicide all the time. Interestingly, in this new discourse of ‘crisis of agriculture’ only occasionally were any references made to internal inequalities in agrar- ian India, not even by those who swore by the political economy frame- work and had participated in the debate on agrarian-class relations and mode of production. In fact very little research was being done on the internal dynamics of the political economy of agriculture. Most of their formulations also seemed to be emerging from analysis of jour- nalistic reports, or the large data sets produced by official agencies such as the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). It was in this context that I decided to revisit two of my three study villages. Over the twenty years that had gone by, the face of social science research had changed significantly in India and globally and so had my orientation to social science research. My questions during the revisit were of a different nature. They were mostly exploratory in nature, ‘with a comparative context in mind. What exactly was happening to Emergent Ruralities |151 the village and agriculture? Had the village really been socially and economically stagnant over the last twenty years or did it continue to change? If it had been changing, what had been the nature of this change and how had this change affected different categories of rural population? How were the cultivating farmers of different categories relating to agriculture as an occupation? Who had moved out of agri- culture in the twenty-year period and why? What kinds of changes had come about in the patterns of labour/ production relations? What kinds of changes had come about in caste relations? How did Dalit groups relate to agriculture? How had the rural power structure changed in the two decades?! The Two Villages The idea of a typical Indian village, which represents the traditional social structure and cultural values of Indian society in a microcosm, isa complete myth. It was a construction of colonial ethnography and served their political interests (Cohn 1987; Inden 1990). The project of village studies initiated by social anthropologists during the 1950s further reinforced this idea (Jodhka 1998). Historically Indian villages varied significantly in size and in their social fabric. Their character was determined more by the regional agrarian histories and the local trajec- tories of social, economic, and ecological processes. No single village, ora group of villages, could represent the entire rural India. The two villages selected for the study represent a particular type of rural setting, which is becoming increasingly common in different parts of the Third World. These are villages that are actively connected to urban centres and are being changed very rapidly by the processes of industrialization and technology. Though the two study villages are still sufficiently far from urban centres to be treated as urban-peripheries, they are certainly not economically ‘backward’ or socially and culturally ‘traditional’. Of the two study villages, village-I is located at a distance of around 9 kilometres from the town of Panipat and the other (village- Il) around 17 kilometres. Both are multi-caste villages with diverse caste communities living within the villages and both experienced Green Revolution during the 1970s. Around the mid-1970s, the Government of Haryana decided to set up a thermal power station close to Panipat. Some of the farmers152| Surinder S. Jodhka from village-I lost a part of their agricultural land to the power project. However, it did not directly affect the agrarian economy of the village very much. ‘The villagers whose land was acquired were considered for jobs in the thermal power station and some of them managed to get regular employment in the plant. It also generated a lot of new employ- ment for casual labour. Over the years, the plant has been expanding and new ancillary industries have also been developing in the area. The Panipat oil refinery, which came up during the 1990s, is also located close to the two villages, within a distance of around 4 to7 kilometres. However, so far, the two villages have not lost much land to the refinery project. But quite like the thermal power station, it has generated a lot of new employment for casual labour for the locals. Demographics and Changing Social Ecology ‘As I walked around the villages, the first thing that struck me was the growth in the size of the two villages. They looked quite different from the way they did twenty years back. There were many more streets and the villages had grown on all sides. Though there were cases of outmi- gration, the absolute population of the villages had grown considerably. ‘Table 5.1 gives a good idea about the extent of change in population of the two villages over the past twenty years. Physical and demographic expansion of the villages also has several long-term sociological implications. Though most of the baras (localities) were still around caste lines and most people lived in baras of their own castes, the village had lost its old residential pattern. For example, Dalit communities no longer lived away from the village, or in segregated quarters. There were many more streets in the villages and the settlements had grown on all sides. In some cases non-Dalits had built their houses quite close to Dalit houses. In village-II, for example, in one of my group interviews I met respondents from four different caste groups living next to each other. Though none of them was from a landowning dominant caste of Jat or Ror background, they were not all Dalits. In fact one of them was a Brahmin. Another one was Jhimmar (a local Other Backward Classes [OBC] caste, traditionally landless) and yet another one from another non-Dalit caste. They all lived in close proximity to the extent that a non-Dalit’s house shared a wall with a Dalit house. Total Number of Households and Population in the Two Study Villages ‘TABLE 5.1 SC population % of SCs to total % increase in SC % Increase Total % Increase population No. of households Village population population 123.60 19.83 (14.67) 16.52 (14.18) 750 (331) 584 (360) 3,783 (2,256) 67.68 3,536 (2,538) 39.32 77.65 636 (358) 62.22 71.86 617 (359) Source: Census of India, 2001 and 1981 (figures in bracket are from Census of India, 1981). hee, or ene +154| Surinder S. Jodhka Both the villages had grown demographically but the growth of village-I was more than that of village-II. While twenty years back, village-II was slightly bigger than village-I, village was now big- ger both in terms of the number of households as well as the total population. This can perhaps be attributed directly to its proximity to the thermal power station. Also proximity to the town has kept back even those households within the village who have their businesses and jobs in the town. Table 5.1 also shows a significantly higher growth of the Scheduled Caste (SC) population in village-I. This has happened because of the recent inclusion of an additional community of Badis, or Bajigars, into the list of SCs. Demographics has interestingly become a contested subject and this contestation has larger implications in the context of new develop- ment regimes of the post-colonial world. Development and under- development do not remain mere structural locations but they also become sources of identity for the common people. Demographics is part of the state enterprise used actively for formulating and implementing development strategies. As Akhil Gupta writes about underdevelopment: Underdevelopment is also a form of identity, something that informs people's sense of self. Who people think they are, how they got that way and what they can do to alter their lives have been profoundly shaped by the institutions, ideology, and practices of development. (Gupta 1998: ix) Residents of the two villages recognized the crucial significance of numbers and modes of representing themselves to the state in the larger discourse of development and underdevelopment. It is not only the administrative categories of SCs and Backward Classes that have come to be part of the local parlance of self-description but even categories such as family and household are increasingly defined and described keeping the state processes in mind. This was quite evident from my field experience of trying to estimate the number of households. Table 5.1 provides us with a figure for the households as it was cal- culated during 2001 Census enumerations. However, the experience of ascertaining this number during the fieldwork turned out to be quite an interesting one. When I first inquired from the village sarpanches and some other knowledgeable informants about the approximate numbers of houscholds in the two villages, I was given an estimate Emergent Ruralities |155 of around 900 to 1,000 households for each of the villages. It sounded much higher than what I had expected it to be. I asked my field assis- tants to begin the process of listing streets and households. Given their local context they too were sure that the figure would not be very far from the numbers suggested by the village officials. However, when we completed the listing process we discovered that the number of households in village-I was around 550 and in village-II around 540, lower than the numbers reported to the census enumerators in 2001. Of these we were able to interview 503 and 491 respectively from the two villages. Why did this demographic inflation happen? The local administra- tion had recently undertaken a survey of the rural households for the purpose of identifying poor families so that they could be given ration cards of appropriate colours. Being listed as a family ‘below the pov- erty line’ entitled them for certain benefits and the amount of benefits would obviously go up if the units reported were more. Interestingly, the operational category used by the local administration for poverty survey was ‘family’ and not ‘household’. However, the earlier survey being fresh in their mind, the subtle distinction between the two cat- egories was of little significance, and could not be reported to ‘outside’ enumerators. Communities and Their Social Profile ‘Twenty years back when I worked in these villages, I presumed landownership and non-ownership to be the most important factors in determining the structure of opportunities and socio-economic well-being of households in rural India. Thus, I worked with the cat- egory of social class loosely defined through landownership. This was perhaps partly an effect of my own academic orientation and the fact that economists had produced much of the literature I read on agrarian social structure. However, over the years, social sciences in India have become much more sensitive to several other social variables and indicators of development. While the mainstream economics has moved from simple calculations of income and productivity to the complex reali- ties of ‘human development’, sociologists and other social scientists te Oa a Nees — oF156| Surinder 8. Jodhka have rediscovered ‘communities’ (Jodhka 2001) and have begun to give much more importance to other forms of subjectivities, the manners in which people constructed their own notions of ‘well-being’. Interestingly, the idea of community as a category of development experiences of the village seemed to work much better than any other grouping during the fieldwork. My respondents often articulated the differentiated experience of development of sections of their village over the past twenty years through the prism of communities, particu- larly, caste communities. They classified the village population through communities and viewed the economic experience of the rural popula- tion in terms of communities. Some had done very well while some others had not done so well and still others had done badly and over the years were seen to have either gone down, or remained where they were twenty years back. Village-I had two main communities, the ‘locals’ and the Punjabis. This village had a large Muslim population, a majority of which migrated to Pakistan at the time of Partition in 1947 and the land and homes vacated by them were allotted to Hindus and Sikhs who had to migrate out of western Punjab because of the Partition-related violence. The Punjabi settlers coined the term ‘locals’ for the ‘native’ inhabitants of the village who spoke the local Haryanavi dialect. The natives of the village referred to the Punjabis as ‘refugees’. This was particularly so twenty years back. However, over the years the term ‘Punjabi’ has replaced the term ‘refugee’. Only some older respondents still used the term refugee for the Punjabis. ‘The Punjabis were all from one caste community, Aroras, and they all came from one district of Western Punjab. Of the 503 households surveyed, sixty-seven were Punjabi Arora households. However, they had varied economic profiles. A small number of them (around fifteen households) could be classified as big farmers with holdings ranging from 20 to 60 acres or more. Except for one, all big landowners of the village were Punjabis. Another twenty to twenty-five households could be classified as middle and small or marginal landowners. A small num- ber of them were also poor. They owned no land and had been working as sharecroppers and wage/attached labourers in the village. A good number of them (nearly thirty households) had members of the house- hold employed in non-farm occupations. They either had small grocery shops in the village or had petty businesses outside the village, mostly Emergent Ruralities |157 in the neighbouring town of Panipat. Punjabis were also occupationally the most diversified group. The second major caste community of the village was that of Gujjars (ninety-seven respondent households). Though they had now been listed amongst the OBCs, they qualified to be a ‘dominant caste’ (Srinivas 1959). They were mostly landowners and farmers. They were substantial in number, locally and in the region, were ritually far above exuntouchables, and had enough members of the community edu- cated and connected to the town. They too were internally differenti- ated but not as much as the Punjabis. The village also had a good number of Brahmin households (thirty). With the exception of one family, which came to the village from Western Punjab, they were all ‘locals’. The Brahmins of the village did not see themselves as being superior to the other two dominant communities of the village. Ritual ideology has been quite weak in the region and being a Pandit was rarely seen as a dignified identity (see Jodhka 2002; Saberwal 1972, 1973; Tandon 1961). Most of them were small landowners and tended to see themselves as such, closer to the chhote log (poor and the marginal) of the village than to the bade log (rich and powerful) The largest chunk of the population was in the category of ‘back- ward castes’ (nearly 125), which were now listed amongst the OBCs. While the ‘OBC’ had not yet become a popular category of description in these villages, the word ‘backward’ has been in usage for a long time. The state government has had a quota of jobs for the listed ‘backward castes’ at the state level for quite some time, which was introduced much before the Mandal Commission recommendations came into effect. However, it is very critical to make a distinction within the ‘back- ward castes’, between those who have traditionally been landowners/ cultivators and those who have been predominantly landless. Apart from Gujjars, the Malis (or Sainis, as they are now called) have also been landowning cultivators, though the average size of their landholdings has been smaller than the Gujjars Jhimmars (who now like being called as Kashyap Rajputs) were the largest caste group in the category of OBCs in village-I. In fact with ninety-nine respondent households they were the single largest caste group in the village. Since a large majority of them were landless, they worked as casual labourers in the village or outside in the neighbouring ee =o158| Surinder S. Jodhka towns and industries. Some of them were also employed in regular jobs outside the village. They were among the poorest of communities in the two villages. Their position had clearly gone down. Twenty years back they were certainly better off than the local Dalits in terms of their incomes and quality of housing. ‘The second major community in this category was that of Kumhars. ‘They now called themselves Prajapats. Traditionally, they were the pot- ters. They also kept donkeys for carriage work. Their traditional occu- pations had over the years become redundant and they too had mostly been landless. But unlike the Jhimmars they had been more enterpris- ing. While some of them had been leasing-in land on share basis from the local farmers, others had invested in carts and trucks. However, the success stories were not too many and a majority of them continued to struggle on the borderlines of poverty. The village had several SC communities. The most prominent of them were the two traditional communities of the scavengers—the Balmikis (forty-eight households) and the Chamars (thirty-six house- holds). Quite like the ‘lower’ OBCs, the Dalits too had changed their names. The Balmikis were earlier known as Chuhras. Though non- Dalit villagers still used their old caste names in conversations with me, everyone addressed them as Balmikis while interacting with them. Similarly, the local villagers tended to identify the Chamars as Harijans. A majority of them seemed to like the title Harijan over Chamar, they had also begun to identify themselves as Ravidasis. Many of the villag- ers were familiar with the category Dalit, but very few of them used it in everyday conversation. Apart from these two major groups, there were also some other SCs. Most prominent of them were the Badis or Bajigars. Unlike the other SC communities, Badis had never been an untouchable caste. They had been living in a settlement away from the village but interacted with all castes without hesitation. The village also had several small groups listed as OBCs and SCs. They included the Dhobis, Jogis, Nais, Badhais, and several other Dalits and non-Dalit servicing castes. Village-II also had a similar caste profile. Quite like village-I, it had two major landowning caste communities—the Jats (ninety-two house- holds) and the Rors (104). Much of the agricultural land in the village was owned by these two ‘dominant castes’. Like the Punjabi Aroras of Emergent Ruralities |159 village, the bigger landowners of the village-II too belonged mostly to one community, the Jats. However, unlike the Punjabis, the Jats had always been living in the village. Village-II also had a few households of migrant Punjabis but they moved out to neighbouring towns dur- ing the 1980s. Village-II also had a much larger number of Brahmins (sixty households). Here also Brahmins were small cultivators and lived closer to the OBC communities of the village than to the dominant castes. Among the non-andowning OBCs, the largest population was that of the Jhimmars (forty-three) though they were not the largest community in the village. Jogis (thirty-six) and Kumhars or Prajapats (twenty-five) were the other major OBC caste groups of the village. The social and economic profile of these communities in village-II was quite similar to their status in village-I. Same was the case with Dalit groups. Here too the two major communities were those of Balmikis (forty) and Chamars (fifty). For the purpose of analysis, I have clubbed caste communities into four categories: first, the Dalits or SCs; second, the backward castes (BCs); third, the dominant castes (DCs); and fourth, the ritually upper castes (UCs), which includes the Brahmins, Banias, Aroras, and Rajputs. Ihave classified Guijars and Jats as DCs even though they are both listed as OBCs.? Table 5.2 gives us an idea about the caste composition of the village population as shown in our survey and as per our categories. ‘The proportion of Dalits was more or less equal in both the villages. However, the proportion of BCs was significantly larger in village-I. ‘The proportion of UCs was also larger in village-I, which was primarily Taste 5.2 Village-wise Caste Composition of Respondent Households Caste Village-1 Village-II Total Dalit 91 (18.09) 92. (18.73) 183 (18.41) BC 178 (35.38) 131 (26.68) 309 (31.08) pc 122 (24.25) 206 (41.95) 328 (32.99) uc 112 (22.26) 62 (12.62) 174 (17.50) Total 503 (100) 491 (100) 994 (100) Source: Author's survey.160| Surinder S. Jodhka because of the Punjabi Aroras in the village, who could also be clubbed with the DCs because a good number of them were, in fact, cultivators. Family, Gender, and Some Other Aspects of Social Life Family continued to be an important institution in the two villages. Almost everyone lived in a family. A few individuals lived alone but that was rarely out of choice. As expected, men headed most families and households. Woman-headed households were rare and in most cases it happened only when the male member died or left home. Unlike some other parts of India, not many men had gone away from home to work. Even when they worked outside, they got back home in the evening, Size of the households was also not very small. Nearly 75 per cent households had five or more members living together and 28 per cent household had seven or more members living together. Incidence of joint household was also not insignificant. Nearly 35 per cent of all the households were joint households. Their proportion was a little higher among the landowning DCs than for the BCs and SCs. The two villages typically represented the patriarchal landscape of northwest India. According to the census data of 2001, the sex ratio in the two villages was 894 and 890 respectively, well below the national average. At first glance nothing much seemed to have changed in family life. Women continued to be invisible from the public sphere. It was only after a month of interaction with the villagers that I came to know that a woman had actually won the seat for village sarpanch during the last elections in village-I and that it was currently a reserved seat for SC women. Whenever I enquired about the sarpanch I was either told the name of her father-in-law or husband. However, at a more subtle level, things had changed. For example, fewer women wore purdah and educating a girl child had become much more acceptable. Sending daughters to school was much more common across communities than it was twenty years back. In fact, there were several families who had sent their daughters out of the vil- lage for education. They lived in hostels on their own and aspired for careers, for a more dignified middle-class urban life. Education was valued. Both villages had government schools up to class twelfth. Village-I also had a separate school for girls up to class Emergent Ruralities |161 eighth. These villages also had private schools run by religious trusts. A good number of children also went to neighbouring towns to study. As per the official data of 2001 the literacy rate for village-I was 66 per cent (77 per cent for men and 55 per cent for women) and for village-II 67 per cent (78 per cent for men and 54 for women). Though nearly 30 per cent of our respondents were still illiterate, there were only 4 per cent households with no educated members and nearly 80 per cent of the households had three or more educated members in the family. Economic Life Until some time back, rural life was almost completely identified with agriculture and activities that supported agriculture. Though there were a large number of households that never owned land, they too largely depended on agriculture for their livelihoods. They either worked as casual/attached labourers with the cultivators or provided other sup- porting services to the cultivators. Mediated through the institution of caste, rural society of Haryana had a system of patron-client relations within which the agrarian economy was socially organized. ‘This traditional system of caste-based patron-client ties, the jajmani ties, had begun to weaken with the introduction of commercial agri- culture during the colonial period (Bhattacharya 1985) and had nearly completely disintegrated by the 1980s. However, twenty years back the two villages still had a predominantly agrarian character. Agriculture was at the centre of the rural social life. It provided employment to a majority of the working population of the village and it gave them their primary identity. Poor Dalits and other landless villagers looked up to the big farmers for employment, and occasionally for credit. Through credit, the farmers tied the labouring poor to work on land and at home. Those who owned big plots of land also controlled political institutions at the local level and commanded respect and authority in the village. This had almost completely changed. The change was more visible in village-I than it was in village-II but the pattern was similar. Less than 30 per cent of all households identified cultivation as their primary occu- pation. This was even lesser in village-I (23 per cent). As is evident from Table 5.3 the largest proportion of the households is in the category of labourers. However, they were not necessarily agricultural labourers. In fact, a large majority of them earned most of their livelihood from162| Surinder S. Jodhka TaBLe 5.3 Primary Occupation of the Respondent Households Emergent Ruralities |163 TaBLe 5.4 Caste-wise Primary Occupation of the Respondent Households Primary Occupation Village-I___Village-IT Total Cultivators 117 (23.26) 172 (35.03) 289 (29.07) Labours 206 (40.9) 153 (31.16) 359 (36.11) Shopkeepers/business 39 (07.75) 45 (09.16) 84 (08.45) Regular service/Governmentjob 108 (21.4) 63.(12.8)_‘171 (17.20) No regular employment 33.(06.55) 58 (11.8) 91. (09.15) Total 503(100) __491(100) __994 (100) Source: Author's survey. working outside the agricultural sector and only occasionally worked on land. More important, perhaps, was the number of people who had employment outside the village (17.20 per cent). This becomes particu- larly interesting when we see it in relation to caste. Landownership and cultivation continued to be a prerogative of the DCs and UCs in the two villages. Nearly 92 per cent of all the cultivators were from these caste communities. In contrast more than 80 per cent of those who reported their primary occupation as labourers were either Dalits or were from ‘backward castes’. However, diversification had occurred among all the caste groups. As is evident from Table 5.4, a good proportion of households in each category had a primary occupation outside agriculture. What is inter- esting is that proportionately the number of Dalits with regular jobs was highest and that of the BCs the lowest. Though they had both been poor and lacking in social and cultural capitals required for securing a regular job, Dalits had been able get these jobs partly because of their statutory quotas in education and employment being more effective that for the BCs. Apart from the economic activity, the number of working members in a household also determined the social and economic well-being of a household. Notably, nearly half of our respondent households had more than one full-time working member in their households and in some cases the number of working members in the household was as high as five. Further, the pattern across caste groups was almost the same. There were also some households where there were no full time working members. Caste Farming Wage Shopkeeping/ Regular Noregular Total labour _ business job __ employment Dalit 7 106 0 51 19 183 (3.8) (87.9) (27.86) (10.38) _—(100) BC 7 202 14 a2 34 309 (6.5) (65.37) (4.5) (13.5) (11.0) (100) DC 201 25 23 55 24 328 (61.28) (7.6) (7.01) (16.7) (731) (100) uc 64 26 47 23 4 174 (36.78) (14.94) (27.01) (13.21) (8.04) (100) Total 289 359 84 171 a 994 (29.07) (36.11) (8.45) (17.20) 9.15) (100) Source: Author's survey. Another manifestation of growing diversification was that the households in rural Haryana were becoming increasingly pluri-active (Jodhka 2006a; Lindberg 2005). Different members of the household pursued different occupations. Further, more than 15 per cent (152) of the respondents also reported having a secondary occupation either within the village or outside. In most cases the secondary occupation was a petty business, either some kind of shop within the village, or outside in the neighbouring village. A striking change in the two villages over the last two decades was a manifold expansion of the local market. Twenty years back the number of shops in each of the villages was around fifteen to twenty and most of them were grocery shops, which provided almost everything the villagers needed for their daily consumption. Most of these shops were owned and run by the local Banias or the Punjabi Aroras. This had changed significantly over the years. The number of shops in village was seventy-eight and in village-II it was sixty-four. More significantly the local market had also witnessed diversity and differentiation of vari- ous kinds, Members of all castes and communities were running them. Only 32 per cent of all the shops were now owned and run by the upper castes that used to have a near-complete monopoly over the local mar- ket in the past. Interestingly, even though none of our Dalit respondents reported shopkeeping as the main occupation of the household, there bein <= 7