Do Bigha Zameen

Population projections for 2020 vary between 1.315 billion and 1.421 billion, with 1.315 billion probably closer to the mark. National food security doesn8217;t mean we have to produce everything we consume 8212; that is, as long as we can pay for what we import like pulses. The simple point is that there is no macro land issue in being unable to feed a population of even 1.5 billion.

Second, what do we mean when we say farm incomes have to improve? Fifty seven per cent of the population describes itself as earning a living primarily from agriculture and that means crop output 8212; typically, foodgrain output. India8217;s failure is that this figure hasn8217;t declined. Instead of ensuring that people stay in agriculture, we need to ensure people get out of agriculture, in the sense of crop output. Commercialisation and diversification, away from crop output, and employment creation through off-farm activities will ensure that agriculture grows by 4 per cent, the target set by the Draft Approach Paper to the 11th Plan. It is important to note that when the Approach Paper says that agriculture must grow by 4 per cent, what it really means is that agriculture and allied activities must grow by 4 per cent 8212; agriculture proper can8217;t conceivably grow by 4 per cent. This is known and people often argue that jobs must be created in rural industries, a la China, given that India has witnessed a failed industrial revolution. However, what is often not stated is that in Great Britain, the industrial revolution was preceded by an enclosure movement that led to privatisation of land and the opening up of land markets. This took various forms and it is impossible to generalise about a process that varied regionally and spanned a range of centuries from the 12th to the 19th. But as a general proposition, it created land markets and allowed agricultural land to be used for non-agricultural purposes.

As our current debate illustrates, every such attempt leads to rising blood pressure. But there is nothing new under the sun. Read Sir Thomas More8217;s Utopia 1516, where he attributed an increasing propensity to theft to diversification into sheep-farming. 8220;But I do not think that this necessity of stealing arises only from hence; there is another cause of it, more peculiar to England. 8216;What is that?8217; said the Cardinal: 8216;The increase of pasture,8217; said I, 8216;by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them.8217;8221; Or for that matter, read Volume 1 of Marx8217;s Capital: 8220;The spoliation of the church8217;s property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a 8216;free8217; and outlawed proletariat.8221;

Is it better to earn a living as 8220;proletariat8221; or is it better to starve as a sub-optimal land-holder? What is sub-optimal is of course a function of the kind of land and the use it is being put to. Having said that, 69.38 per cent of our land-holdings are marginal less than 1 ha and another 21.75 per cent are small between 1 and 2 ha. Yes, there is uncultivated land, but the prospects of bringing more land under cultivation aren8217;t too bright, except in Rajasthan, Bihar, Gujarat and TN. Yes, land degradation can be reversed. Yes, surplus land can be redistributed better. But having done all that, we must recognise that people need to get out of farming unviable land-holdings, and that agricultural land will be put to non- agricultural use. In states like Punjab, Haryana, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, faster growth and urbanisation has led to tensions. But that reflects our obsession with land as a factor of production, to the exclusion of the other three 8212; labour, capital and entrepreneurship. If poor people can exploit these other three better, land will become less of an obsession. And we will then accept that land markets need to be opened up and there is a long reform agenda there, too.

The writer is secretary-general, PHDCCI