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9/6/2007 2:30:12 PM
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Summary:
For sustainable survival marginal farmers have to unite under a leadership of a business manager cum dedicated community leader and improve farming practices to enhance productivity by an order of magnitude. For improving personal income, some marginal farmers have choices other than farming.
A marginal farmer is generally functionally illiterate or ignorant of modern means of improving farm productivity on his limited land holdings. He also has inadequate additional capital and knowledge to make sustainable farming. He is unprepared to adopt sound business practices. For example, during bad times to survive many marginal farmers go into debt by borrowing at usury rates from local loan sharks and risk losing land. Once the land is lost he is forced to find employment to survive.
In stead of incurring debt if he had made a sound business decision that his marginal farming business is unsustainable, he could and should have cashed in the capital as land values have now considerably appreciated to provide fixed income for his family’s sustainable survival.
Another option is using power of democracy; farmers can adopt a model developed by Mr. Popatrao Pawar of Hiwarebazar, Maharashtra. Popatrao was able to help 168 of 180 marginal farmers addicted to alcoholism, debts, etc by turning entire village in to a unified team to save the town through Shramdaan or voluntary public services and a sound business plan for welfare of entire village by effectively using available government subsidies.
Introduction:
Functional illiteracy in India’s nearly 70% rural population is widespread. Functional illiteracy is a result of the “rote and regurgitate” method of learning and consequently, most Indians in their formative years fail to develop critical thinking skills necessary for developing a knowledge society. In rural India most youth and adults dropout before completing middle or high school as they realize that the rote and regurgitate method of learning is not preparing them to be productive farmers. Statistically, literacy in India now exceeds 70% and growing at about 1.5% a year as Indian bureaucracy defines people with primary school as educated.
More than 30% of India’s population is urban middle class or better. Most of rural population with income level close to extreme poverty (less than 25%, mostly land-less laborers with spending money less than Rs. 40 per day) and poverty (40%, mostly marginal farmers with less than Rs. 80 per day) needs support in many development areas to become economically upwardly mobile. The poor and extremely poor are handicapped as they lack adequate knowledge and education to generate personal wealth. Lacking appropriate education there is an urgent need for most rural youth and adults to supplement knowledge base with a “Learning by Doing” method of education to empower school dropouts with knowledge skills to earn living wages.
In spite of impressive gains in food grain production1 (see, references) annual productivity gains in rural India stagnated to less than 3%. Problems of marginal farmers are compounded as they lack sound business skills to improve farm productivity by an order of magnitude to keep up with raising operating costs associated with installation of facilities for assured water supply, improved quality seed, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and labor. Marginal farmers need to acquire sound business skills2 (personal finance management, basic sound business practices, etc) to increase earnings by at least an order of magnitude then they are presently generating to improve their living standards and quality of life.
During sixty years of India’s independence the average farming family holdings have reduced to a few acres making them marginal farmers partly because of government regulations and partly because of subdivision of ancestral family farms among a large number of siblings. Prior to 1980 a family size of up to 8 was common and now with widespread family planning practices the average family size has reduced from 8 to 5.
Discussions:
The India’s Green Revolution started in earnest in the late 1970s. The agriculture growth before 1978 was primarily due to increases in areas under cultivation. Distribution of surplus government lands and Vinoba Bhave’s “Bhudaan” movement were primarily responsible for handout of a few acres land to landless farmers. The Green Revolution starting 1979 was a result of plant breeding, irrigation development, and financing of agrochemicals.
In six decades India’s grain production quadrupled from less than 51 mT (metric tons) to 202 mT and population tripled from 361 million to 1.1 billion. During 1980s economic growth was significantly impacted by green revolution and population growth neutralized per capita economic gains. Green revolution allowed some northern states – for example, Punjab and Hariyana – reap handsome economic rewards for twenty plus years. Benefits of green revolution were slow to proliferate to other states1.
The impressive gains in grain production hide low annual gains in farm productivity, which was less than four percent for about 40 years from 1955 to 1995 and now it has dropped to around 2%. Marginalization of farm productivity is attributable to a number of factors such as dependency on rains for farming, inadequate water harvesting facilities, mismanagement of ground water resources leading to depletion of water table, poor farming practices – improper use of fertilizers, pesticides, etc - due to inadequate understanding of agricultural sciences and of proper farming techniques and farmer’s failures to implement sound business practices to improve productivity by an order of magnitude to earn a decent living, etc.
The marginal farmers can but are reluctant or refuse to cash in the unprofitable small land holding (capital investment), which in areas adjoining urban centers have now appreciated in value to as much as Rs. 10+ lakh or more than one million rupees per acre. A business oriented farmer, if unable to make a sustainable decent living can use the proceeds of one million rupees per acre into a secure investment to generate a steady income that allows for a 4% annual distribution to meet living expenses while preserving 3+% inflation adjusted, conservatively invested capital earning up to 8% per year. With an assured steady stream of income from investments the family can generate additional revenues as day laborers at Rs. 100+ per day as supplemental income.
Farming communities need improved access to water, job-skill related education, healthcare, jobs and most of all guidance of a superior business leader to improve their economic well being and quality of life. Marginal farming is uneconomical to operate independently profitable small farms. Given leadership by a business manager they can come together in a spirit of mutually beneficial cooperation as was done at Hiwarebazar in Western Maharashtra, near Ahmednagar under the leadership of Mr. Popatrao Pawar, a management school graduate3. Popatrao changed the image of the high-crime village, prone to infighting prior to 1989 by implementing a business plan, which was voted and adopted in early 1990 by entire village for economic uplifting of all 207 families. Many families of Hiwarebazar now earn up to Rs. 30,000 per month, which is about an order of magnitude improvement in income levels prior to 1989.
Many books have appeared describing crisis in rural development and plight of farmers. Mira Kamdar 4 has documented many case studies related to cotton farmers committing suicides, water supply crisis due to neglect of water table management, ever increasing high operating costs of farming, deleterious effects of environmental factors including global warming, pesticide poisoning, and improvement being adopted for second green revolution to happen.
The annual economic growth rate of India since 2000 has accelerated to 9+% due the successes of India’s knowledge based software industry, pharmaceuticals, autos and other manufacturing segments employing about 7% of nearly 1.1 billion Indians. Rural India accounts for less than 25% of GDP. Just as the information technology and manufacturing sectors create wealth for personal growth using specialized knowledge base, rural India can and needs to adopt a knowledge based model of wealth generation. The stagnation of economic growth is man-made as proliferation of knowledge needed for substantial productivity gains in rural India is associated with a lack of implementation of sound business practices.
Man-made problems require man-made solutions. Indian farmer’s problems - suicide, alcoholism, gender-religion-caste based discriminations, water shortages, (both safe drinking and for watering farms), poor healthcare and inadequate education, etc – are man-made and they need man-made solutions. Man-made problems have knowledge based solutions rooted in education, scientific facts and sound business practices.
References:
1. Good News India story: From Famine to Plenty, From Humiliation to Dignity,” GoodNewsIndia.com
2. Chetna Gala Sinha, a Yale University graduate has organized Mann Vikas Samajik Sanstha, an NGO and designed the Udyogini Business School as a hands-on training program for women with little or no formal education. Sinha is also trying for a student exchange program with Yale and the University of Michigan. Students from these American schools would hold classes for Udyogini’s students and in turn learn about rural India. A business school for marginal farmers should be organized using basic curriculum for the “Rural B-School Empowers Indian Women,” bisinessweek.com
3. Three notable references are:
• Nikhil Anand, “Hiware Bazaar (Maharashtra), Community Stewardship of Water Resources,” http://www.icrindia.org/?page_id=50
• Priya Sangameswaran, “Equity in Watershed Development – A Case Study in Western Maharashtra” Economic and Political Weekly, XLI (21), p. 2157-2165, May 27 - June 2, 2006 and
• “Role of NRI’s in India’s Rural Development.” The article informs interested NRI’s on status of rural development and how they can and should participating in it
4. Mira Kamdar, Planet India, Scribner , New York, London, Toronto, Sydney (2007).
Recommendation:
India Development Coalition of America (www.idc-america.org) is devoted to engaging NRI for rural development. For field development, we not only have to identify "generals" like Mr. Popatrao Pawar of Hiwarebazar among NGOs but also foot soldiers from rural youth, mostly high school dropout by exposing them to learning by doing programs such as the Y4D (Youth for Development) at VILD (Viveka Institute of Leadership Development, Mysore), IBT (Introduction to Basic Rural Technology) at VA (Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, near Pune) and a program at Shanti Bhavan (George Foundation, Tamil Nadu) or what the Sehgal and other such Foundations (ASHA, Ashok, etc) have set up. The IDC-America meet (Chicago , Oct 5-6) can and should formulate a strategy to empower NRI guided NGO movement in India for accelerated implementation of a rural development plan modeled after successful Hiwarebazar.
Appendix: (Supplementary Information)
India has 28 states and 770 districts. An estimated 120 million farming families live in 600,000+ Indian villages. In addition to wide spread poverty in rural India, up to 60% of urban population is slum dwellers. The urban slum dwellers are migrants from villages. Lacking adequate income or education for a well paying job or a job that offer living wages they settle in slums in any unoccupied urban land duplicating the dilapidated village environment they were used to.
Each state is divided into 25 to 30 districts and each district has up to 500 villages. Based on the geographic proximity and size of the village, 3 to 5 villages make one panchayat, the lowest governing body. Villages are populated by about 1000 to 5000 people or 200 to 1000 families. Less than half of villagers generally own land and as a result 50% of rural population is day laborers.
In 1980s parallel to growth in the agricultural sector, socialistic ideology guided India experienced poor economic results in manufacturing, services and other sectors and early in 1990s India was forced to switch gear from a public sector dominated socialistic to a private enterprise guided free market driven economic growth model to accelerated annual GDP growth rates from less than 6% in late 1980s to 8+% during past five years. The GDP growth for 2007 - 2008 is estimated to be 9+%.
Many NRIs are now retired and/or reaching retirement age. Some comfortably retired NRIs are engaged in identifying suitable solutions for rural populations to solve their community problems. Many NRIs including I are products of generous financial contributions by unidentified donors to schools and colleges they attended during their formative years. Some grateful retired NRI are making generous contributions called “Guru Dakshina” to the schools they attended and others are trying hard to raise funds using innovative methods to help rural communities. They should know that money helps but charity no matter how generous doesn’t necessarily solve rural community’s development problems.
Most NRIs know or should know that knowledge is/was the basis for whatever wealth they have acquired through hard work outside India. They should know from personal experiences that throwing money at the problem of rural poverty is not a viable sustainable solution.
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