It’s the little things we do

Rural development has to be based on prosperous agriculture. But that is not enough. We need clusters of agro and artisan based manufacturing, services and technological support outfits. By the end of the ’80s India was ahead of China in non-farm employment in rural areas. Now they employ 30 per cent of their rural labour force in non-farm activities; we are stuck at a quarter. We do not need another committee, pilot or bureaucratic fund. Experience from the cooperative sector shows they just add to bureaucracy which like a blotter sucks up limited resources in non-essentials.

We know enough to trigger success. Non-farm activity has succeeded in corridors in different parts of India. It is generally based on artisan skills, historically received and nurtured and linked with national and global markets. It is linked with rapidly growing and diversifying agricultural products and market towns. In Surat a million jobs were created around diamond polishing and other industries. There are districts in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka exploding with fruit, vegetables, spices. Small, sleepy towns of yore now boast of markets with turnovers more than Rs 1500 crore. Government measures have little to do with these successes. These are small enterprise, intensely competitive sectors. If you prosper, you employ a few workers. If you do badly, you work in somebody else’s business. Competition, mobility and flexibility — anathema to the babu — are the strengths of these clusters. Flexibility means reacting quickly to demand changes with new technologies and fashions.

Can governments help? Of course. First, make credit available. I am glad that noises on raising interest rates were scotched by the Reserve Bank. But for the small man the problem is that the bank does not lend. Some clever bank manager sold a lollipop to the government by convincing them collateral should be removed from loans to youngsters admitted to prestigious schools, but guarantees continued. As vice chancellor of JNU I used to struggle to find money for that daughter of a landless labourer who made the competitive test, but whose fa(mo)ther did not have collateral or guarantees. The same with the artisan. If bapu does not have money, (s)he is sunk. Loans should come with orders. Also, as Dinesh Awasthy at the Entrepreneurial Development Institute is showing, of the 112 small towns accounting for small industry and exports, many are in trouble. They need support for technologies they can develop, not government. They need market assessments for fast changing markets with short product cycles. They need to synergise with sectors like culture, tourism and IT. They need their workers and entrepreneurs to be trained faster in their own way and not in sarkari outfits. Last week I learnt of a small town in Saurashtra where young Patel women are trained in diamond polishing in a caste-based hostel; they then work there, saving money for their dowry. Maybe this is not progress, but it is better than suicides.

There is one thing government can do. My socialist conscience gets pricked (old habits die hard) when I see that many of these clusters are slums. Surat resisted the riots in 2002, but slums it has in plenty as it becomes a thriving metro. Can we link with the communities here to supply decent education, health, family services and a self-financed housing programme?