Book review: Anand Chakravarti,Is This ‘Azaadi’? Everyday Lives of Agricultural Labourers in a Bihar Village

This is the second book by Anand Chakravarti, the eminent sociologist, on agrarian relations in Bihar—a field of study in which he had already established his grip over the intricacies of caste oppression and class exploitation of dalit agricultural labourers by higher caste landowners through his earlier work. This book goes further and pierces through the individual lives of dalit agricultural labourers who are condemned to a life of multifaceted deprivation untouched by the promise of freedom and justice which the Indian Constitution so eloquently provides in its preamble.

This book is unique in more ways than one. It has been primarily written not only to discharge a moral debt to Dukhan Bhuyan, one of the informants, during the course of field investigation, but it is also a study driven by the call of the author’s conscience rather than the call of the discipline that his professional life would have demanded. Chakravarti was so disturbed and devastated by the sub-human living conditions and highly debilitating social mechanisms of survival during his visit to the households of the people in the settlement compared to his privileged living that, writing the book was a catharsis to relieve the pent up pain and agony and the frustration at the failure of the state to do anything to change their lives. The theme chosen for research is also distinctive in that it is neither elegant nor trendy in academia, nor is it of interest to the intelligentsia and informed citizens. This underclass is equally invisible in policy discourse and conspicuously ignored in any analysis of the agrarian crisis. It also remains on the margins of farmers’ movements.

Chakravarti should not be apologetic for not having been able to collect primary data and bringing greater intellectual and methodological rigour to his work. No degree of statistical information or sophistication in analysis, to bolster his narrative and analysis, would have conveyed the biting social reality as pithily as contained in the statement of one informant, that even insects are better than them as they are able to cater to their food requirements, or that of another, ‘we have no land, we are not human’.

Gathering facts from the agricultural labourers who are overwhelmingly dalits, and creating an enabling environment in which they can talk freely without any fear about their conditions of work, wages and living condition is not at all easy in the villages of Bihar. The higher caste landowners are very suspicious of an outsider coming to the village, and doubly so when the visitor is talking to dalit agricultural labourers in their settlement who mostly work on their farms as labourers. The visitor in such a case would be surrounded by landowners curiously listening to questions asked and replies given. No dalit in such a situation would speak the truth for fear of reprisals after the visitor has left. The author was, however, able to overcome this barrier by selecting the village Muktidih for his enquiries and was helped in this process as well as in facilitating his work by Srikant, who was then a member of the student’s wing of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) (CPI(ML)), with the help of the party. The village, located in an area of Sasaram district in Bihar, is where the CPI(ML) has been working for many years, and where it has considerable support of dalits and other poor people of the lower castes. This enabled the author’s frequent visits over a period of 7–8 years. It also enabled prolonged sittings and the easy and fearless articulation of feelings by his informants.

The strongest indictment against the state and society that comes out of the book is the stark reality that there still exists a large group of people, overwhelmingly dalits and adivasis, for whom the struggle to stave off hunger dominates their lives and determines their options of selling their labour for whatever is offered by the landowners hiring them, and the cruel choices they have to make between freedom and bondage. Still, they are unable to avoid hunger even after putting in back-breaking work and bearing abusive behaviour of employers. Perpetually underfed and undernourished, they are compelled to take loans to feed their families, becoming bonded to landowners in the process and spending their lives in paying off debts and interest and, in some cases, even passing on the bondage to the next generation. The most poignant dimension of this phenomenon is that, men mortgage their freedom just for a full meal on days when farm work is available and children barter their childhood and education for grazing the cattle of landowners just for food.

Dalit agricultural labourers have no land or any other asset to generate income to purchase food. Compounded with lack of means to access food they also lack access to public services ––health, institutions for obtaining consumption credit, and even the Public Distribution System. Children are also deprived of education due to the compulsion to work. What aggravates their situation is the non-availability of work to generate income in the local economy, except during the brief agricultural season. Lack of land is central to this helplessness. Ninety per cent among them entirely depend upon higher caste landowners for work on whatever terms offered by the latter. This makes them vulnerable to exploitation, social abuse and humiliation.

The continued deprivation and exploitation, as the author has rightly observed, is the consequence of structural conditions rooted in a caste-based hierarchical Hindu social order which places them at the lowest end of the ladder, locks them in a relationship of social subordination and denies them access to productive assets for generating income, and thus compels them to offer their labour to the higher castes for economic survival. Along with it, the agrarian structure which had its origin in the zamindari system introduced by the British during the colonial period, not only conferred economic power but also social prestige and influence on the higher castes. Even the postcolonial political order cheated them, with Bihar recording the most dismal implementation of land reforms as the caste and class combine captured political power and bureaucratic positions and effectively protected its economic interests, sabotaging any structural change. It frustrated even the delivery of poverty alleviation programmes to the dalits.

For dalit agricultural labourers, therefore, the only resource for earning livelihood continues to be their labour power, which they provide to whosoever hires them and on terms imposed by the employer. The other option, though limited, is to take land on tenancy from higher caste landowners who loath doing physical labour involved in farming, or have shifted to more comfortable, lucrative and prestige-carrying employments in the government and economy. But the tenancy option is no superior alternative as the possibility of getting it is uncertain and the oral contract carries most exploitative terms, which makes it insecure and risky. In share tenancy, the tenant has to take a loan to provide inputs for cultivation, and in the case of cash tenancy, to pay cash in advance. In both cases, he has to bear the entire risk of crop failure. Even without a crop failure, the tenant is left with too little produce to provide food to the family for even a quarter of the year. Rearing animals such as buffaloes, goats, pigs on tenancy basis does not provide regular income to purchase food and is also fraught with problems due to lack of access to fodder and veterinary services. The option of taking up non-farm employment is virtually non-existent in the local economy and labourers have to seek it outside the state in distant places. This option too is uncertain and, when availed, involves living and working in sub-human conditions and leaves little savings after meeting the cost of food, housing and transport.

A lack of access to health services accentuates their hardship because serious illness requires cash for treatment for which again a loan on harsh terms has to be taken. Social customs also compel them to incur huge expenditure on marriage and other rituals, which can only be met by borrowing. Thus, the whole life of an agricultural labourer is spent in taking loans and paying off debts, a situation from which they are unable to extricate themselves.

This cycle of indebtedness, exploitation and bondage goes on undisturbed, notwithstanding a plethora of laws and programmes to render social and economic justice. This is because, as the author correctly diagnoses, the entire apparatus of power––state, society and politics has organic links with the caste and class combine which sustains this iniquitous structure to benefit from it. It fails to implement labour and social welfare laws and neutralise resistance to them and to deliver development and welfare programmes. It has no commitment to usher in social change. It is complicit in not bringing to centrestage the issues of dalits and adivasi agricultural labourers in politics and governance. Worse, it is hostile to protest, mobilisation and assertion by dalits when demanding their rights and entitlements. Dalits, though represented in the legislature by virtue of reservation, are as powerless in politics as they are in society and state. Their representation is tokenistic and does not translate into sharing of power. The mixed population constituencies militate against dalit ministers and legislators, effectively raising issues of their communities dependent as they are on the votes of other communities which are also numerically large in their constituencies. In the party structure too, they are overwhelmed by higher caste dominance and issues that are of interest to them.

The lack of interest of the state to address their miserable condition is compounded by violence shown by the state and societal groups when caste and class interests are challenged, which is manifested in police excesses, false cases, torture, collective reprisals and social boycott. Democracy too holds out no hope for them as no political party is committed to the agenda of radical transformation of this entrenched oppressive structure. Hindutva politics has increased their suffering enormously as it has led to an aggressive enforcement of degrading caste norms and violent reprisals when resisted by the youth, and even affected the opportunities to earn a livelihood at the lower end of livestock trade. This then is the general picture of this underclass across the country.

Dalit agricultural labourers, therefore, see no light at the end of the tunnel, faced as they are with these formidable odds. They are a numerical minority preoccupied with day-to-day survival. Radical political parties have a limited spread and reach and an equally limited agenda of mobilisation. Access to education for expanding employment options and moving away from exploitation and degrading employment is frustrated by the poor quality of education in government schools, lack of resources in accessing better quality education in private schools and discrimination in educational institutions at all levels. Azaadi (freedom) in these circumstances, as the author has correctly concluded, is a mirage. This is a vicious circle that the dalit youth is trying to break by their courageous assertion and defiance, notwithstanding the violence they face in the process. This is the only instrument available to them for forcing social change. They need effective support from socially conscious citizens.

Surprisingly, in the statements of informants there is no reference to the indignities usually heaped on dalit agricultural labouers by higher castes, including enforcing caste-based social norms, sexual exploitation of women and begaar (free labour). This may be because this village has been relatively liberated from the worst forms of social oppression. No labourer mentions the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which is the only non-farm employment available throughout the country where the government has to provide work on demand. It seems that, like any other programme, this too has bypassed them.

The book effectively brings out some of these facets of the lives of agricultural labourers in Bihar, not by quoting statistics or citing intellectuals from their writings, but feelings and views expressed by informants. It has given them a say and share of space and centrality of focus in a manner which very few studies have done, and therefore deserves to be read and discussed by all those who are committed to changing the existing social reality.

I am not sure if decision-makers and those who implement policy would be interested in reading it, though they are the ones to whom this ethnographic account of dalit agricultural labourers is most relevant—to shake them up from their indifference.

That being said, this labour of love would be incomplete until Chakravarti brings out a Hindi version of this work, even if it is a brief one, so that Dukhan Bhuyan and his fellow caste men and women can read and discuss it. Well-produced and edited by Tulika, the appealing cover has an extremely expressive drawing of what a deprived, emaciated, scantily clad dalit labour couple look like.