The Interplay of Peasant Movements and the Indian State: An Analytical Perspective

In this discourse, I intend to propose that the primary instigator of peasant movements in India is the state’s consistent failure to accord due priority to agricultural advancement.

Introduction

Indian peasant movements, featuring a diverse array of issues and demands, reveal distinctive spatial and temporal characteristics. Their recurrent appearance in Indian politics speaks volumes about the significance of agriculture in the socio-economic fabric of the country, particularly in employment creation and economic output. Despite accounting for nearly half of the nation’s workforce, the agricultural sector’s contribution to the GDP stands at a modest 18 per cent.

A historical retrospective reveals India’s rich tapestry of peasant or farmers’ movements, tracing back to the colonial era. These uprisings were instigated by farmers across India as a response to the oppressive rule of Zamindars, landlords, and British colonial overlords. Exploitation, dispossession of land rights, new tax impositions, and altered agrarian relations with the Colonial state or feudal lords triggered these movements.

The end of colonial rule signaled a transformative shift in the character and nature of the peasant or farmers’ movement. Post-independence India witnessed two principal types of peasant struggles: Marxist and Socialist-led peasant movements, including the Telangana Movement, Tebagha movement, Kagodu Satyagraha, Naxalbari Movement, and Lalgarh movement, and Farmers’ movements initiated by affluent farmers in states like Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Gujarat.

Sociohistorical Analysis

Post-independence India has been a stage for numerous social movements, including farmers’ movements. However, unlike others like the women’s or environmental movements, which also address civil society, farmers’ movements have primarily targeted the state. This stems from the central role the state assumed in policy-making post-independence, which rendered it accountable, either directly or indirectly, for all agrarian society’s associated problems, ranging from equity and productivity to innovation.

To understand the role of the state in the ensuing agrarian crisis and subsequent peasant movements, it’s crucial to chart the evolution of the peasant movement in India and their key concerns. Sudha Pai proposes a three-stage theory of peasant movements in post-independence India, based on criteria like patterns of land ownership, state’s developmental priorities, technologies, the class structure of the peasant movement, and leadership:

1. Anti-feudal movements against exploitation by landlords or the state, demanding land redistribution, higher wages for labour, lower rents for small peasants, and an end to other exploitative practices.
2. Movements by affluent peasants or capitalist farmers following the Green Revolution in the 1960s, and the subsequent commercialization of agriculture and class differentiation.
3. Movements since the early 1990s due to a general crisis in Indian agriculture that led to a slowdown in the rate of agricultural growth and the structural adjustment programme (SAP), leading to the globalization of the Indian economy and resultant changes in the policy regime.

Sudha Pai’s sociohistorical analysis provides a three-stage theory to understand the evolution of peasant movements in India:

First Phase of Peasant Movements: 1947–1970s

The genesis of peasant movements in post-Independence India, spanning roughly from 1947 to the 1970s, was largely a reaction to the feudalistic land ownership structures that prevailed. The primary demand during this period was for comprehensive land reforms to uproot these archaic systems and establish productive ownership of land resources. The state, as the developmental custodian, was tasked with abolishing the oppressive intermediaries and exploitative tenancy practices.

However, the execution of these reforms was hindered by the variance in state policies, as land fell under the purview of individual state legislation. This resulted in a myriad of approaches to implementing land reform laws, often causing a fracture in the tenant-landowner relationship. The legal frameworks provided enough loopholes for the dominant interests to retain their lands, rendering the intended land reform laws and ceiling acts relatively ineffective. Nonetheless, the state succeeded in abolishing zamindari, an exploitative system inherited from the colonial era, as it was largely viewed as oppressive by the agrarian society.

The perceived indifference of the state towards their plight led the peasant movements to take a radical turn post-1960, as exemplified by the Naxal Bari movement. The Maoists capitalized on this state of affairs, advocating for violent means to dismantle the state machinery.

Analyzing the Peasant Movements: Nationalist, Marxist, and Subaltern Perspectives

Scholars have sought to understand these early peasant movements through three primary lenses: Nationalist, Marxist, and Subaltern. The Nationalist perspective, common in nations emerging from colonial rule, emphasized the need for land reforms, echoing the views of scholars like Gunnar Myrdal who advocated for a resurgence of interest in the ‘institutional question’.

Marxist theories, as presented by the likes of AR Desai and DN Dhanagare, highlighted the emergence of an agrarian proletariat due to the failure of land reforms. Contrarily, Subaltern theorists, including Partha Chatterjee, rejected the class-based analysis and instead interpreted peasant struggles as a manifestation of class consciousness rooted in the concept of community.

These anti-feudal movements were seen as charting a path for India’s agrarian transformation, one that didn’t rely on a ‘single revolutionary leap’ but on the ‘dynamic interdependence’ of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary actions. Each legislative action opened avenues for further grassroots mobilization, while the limitations of legislative efforts triggered additional extra-parliamentary movements.

However, by the late 1970s, the focus on land distribution and equity was gradually eclipsed by the capitalist developments within the agricultural sector. As India moved towards modernity, the agrarian landscape began to reflect these changes, setting the stage for the subsequent phases of peasant movements.

Second Phase: The Rise of Capitalist Farmers and Caste-Class Dynamics

The second phase of India’s peasant movements was sparked by the Green Revolution, which brought a shift in the developmental focus of the state from equity to productivity, driven by technological advancements. The selective implementation of the Intensive Agricultural Development Programme led to class differentiation among Indian farmers.

By analyzing the surplus production owners, Sudha Pai classified farmers into four primary classes, each with regional variations, by the end of the 1960s. These included:

1. Capitalist farmers who owned more than 10 acres, employed hired labour, often rented out their land, and extracted surplus in the form of rent.
2. Rich farmers who owned approximately 4–10 acres, cultivated their land, and often leased additional land to expand their holdings.
3. Middle farmers owning between 2 and 4 acres, part-owners and part-tenants, who relied on family labour.
4. Small and marginal farmers who operated 1–2 acres, most of whom were tenants and supplemented their income with agricultural and landless labour.

The Green Revolution also had a significant political impact. It facilitated the rise of dominant castes and bullock capitalists. Gail Omvedt emphasized the importance of caste in land ownership, suggesting that the Green Revolution led to class fragmentation intersecting with caste. This growing class differentiation made larger landowners more conscious of their interests, leading to the rich farmers’ movements in the 1970s. There is a notable correlation between high productivity districts and these movements, including Punjab, Haryana, western UP, Gujarat, irrigated districts of Maharashtra and Karnataka, coastal Andhra Pradesh, and parts of Tamil Nadu.

These movements were distinctively referred to as ‘New Farmers’ Movements’, a part of the broader New Social Movements of the 1980s. These movements were characterized by a newfound awareness of remunerative prices, a shift from class antagonism to class collaboration, and a step away from political backwardness and social insularity.

In addition to the Green Revolution, the successful mobilization of the small and medium peasantry in parts of north India was also influenced by a specific caste-class combination and clan-based leadership. Notably, Charan Singh mobilized a substantial section of the cultivating middle/backward castes such as Jats and Gujjars, both as ‘kisans’ and ‘backward castes’.

However, the political dominance of peasant communities was soon eroded by the state’s neoliberal turn. The Green Revolution, followed by the structural adjustment programs, led to the emergence of peasant farmers, invalidating the previous peasant-farmer binary.

Third Phase: The Effects of Globalization and Market-Oriented Policies

The third phase of peasant movements in India, marked by the state’s perceived negligence towards agricultural development, has been significantly influenced by the changing economic landscape post-1991. Esteemed scholars like Utsa Patnaik and P Sainath have critiqued the state for its inability to prioritize agricultural development, citing it as a primary cause of the growing agrarian crisis.

The 1990s saw several critical shifts in the Indian economy that directly impacted the agricultural sector and, subsequently, the nature of farmers’ movements. The adoption of the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in 1991, which led to the globalization of the Indian economy, brought about significant policy changes with profound implications for agriculture. This included the removal of controls and subsidies, the phasing out of price support, a growing reliance on market forces, and the liberalization of the economy, facilitating the free import and export of agricultural commodities.

Journalist P Sainath has even implicated the state as the primary culprit behind the escalating farmer suicides, citing the state’s indifference towards small and marginal farmers who bear the brunt of monsoon uncertainties, market instabilities, and other external factors. These farmers often lack alternative income sources to cushion the risks associated with agricultural activities. Consequently, promoting animal husbandry and horticulture has become central to government plans to double agricultural income by 2022, a goal that now seems more remote, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unlike the 1980s, the 1990s witnessed fewer large-scale, organized farmers’ movements. The changing economic climate has led to a new breed of farmers’ movements, largely shaped by increasing class fragmentation within the farming community. Major movements have mostly been localized to states and regions where capitalist agriculture has taken root. With the dismantling of centralized planning and agriculture being a state subject, many state governments have adopted market-oriented policies.

In recent years, however, we have seen a resurgence of farmer movements, exemplified by peasant marches to Delhi. However, the realization of peasant aspirations continues to be hampered by the intricate web of interest groups they must contend with and the state’s gradual withdrawal from its welfare role in a market-driven economic system.

IV. Conclusion: Tracing the Arc of Peasant Movements in India

In summation, the trajectory of peasant movements in India can be broadly divided into three distinct phases. The first phase saw the movements primarily confronting the state’s apathy in implementing land reforms and its failure to concentrate on agricultural development from the Second Five-Year Plan onwards. During the second phase, the peasant movements became more issue-specific and less ideologically driven, focusing on securing better procurement prices and pushing for increased agrarian investment. The third phase has witnessed a considerable fragmentation and weakening of the peasant movement. Consequently, agrarian mobilization in post-Independence India has been largely shaped by two defining factors: the state’s central role in steering agrarian policies and the capitalist inclination within agriculture.