Abstract
One of the major weaknesses of agrarian workers has been the inability to form unions due to the heterogeneous nature and difficulties in locating them, which has delayed efforts to organize struggles against, and exert pressure on, the government. As such, agrarian workers do not qualify under the ambit of traditional unionization. Under the operating context of neoliberal restructuring, this study examines the efforts of the Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union (APVVU) in organizing the informal sector workers, mainly agricultural workers. The purpose here is to discern the specific nature and processes involved in agrarian movements by exploring the role of APVVU. The aim is to decipher the phenomenon of class mobilization of agrarian labourers/workers and capture their existential crisis in India. The study further identifies elements of both class and ideological congruity of collective community mobilization.
Introduction
Analysis of agrarian movements in India, a predominantly agrarian nation, is ignored at one’s peril. Both Marxian and non-Marxian approaches have been applied to such analysis. While the former analyze agrarian movements in terms of social relations of production, or the economic relations relating to how the poor agrarian classes are exploited, the latter have been greatly influenced by Gramscian writings, also known as ‘subaltern’. In India, the subaltern approach was popularized by Singh (2001). As a critique of classical Marxism, the subaltern school argues that the peasants have their own consciousness, leadership and other cultural traits which play a significant role, more than class.
During the early period of independence, the nature of labour struggles or peasant movements was comparatively weak and segmented based on caste and class (Brass, 1995; Omvedt, 1981, 1993). Basically, three types of identities influenced social movements in India: (a) primordial/ascriptive, (b) class/occupational and (c) political/ideological (Oommen, 1985). But by the 1990s, the discourse of farmers’ movements was redefined as ‘new social movements’, assuming a non-political form and characterized by anti-urban/anti-state/anti-capitalist ideological content (Assadi, 2002; Brass, 1995; Omvedt, 1993, 1994). Generally, labour movements in India were confined to a small section of urban labour and several trade unions that were formed under the aegis of the labour movement (Oommen, 2009). Admittedly, the study by Oommen (2009) reveals that the labour movements are essentially conditioned by three factors: (a) the core institutional order of society, (b) the principal enemy as perceived by the deprived and (c) the primary goal pursued by the society. The additional factors he identifies are dialectics between social structure (past and present) and the vision of the future.
One of the major weaknesses of agrarian workers has been the inability to form unions due to the heterogeneous nature and difficulties in locating them, which has delayed efforts to organize struggles against, and exert pressure on, the government. As such, agrarian workers do not qualify under the ambit of traditional unionization. Under the operating context of neoliberal restructuring, this study examines the efforts of the Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Vruthidarula Union (APVVU) in organizing the informal sector workers, mainly agricultural workers. The purpose is to discern the specific nature and processes involved in agrarian movements by exploring the case of APVVU. The aim here is to decipher the phenomenon of class mobilization of agrarian labourers/workers and capture their existential crisis in India. The study further identifies elements of both class and ideological congruity of collective community mobilization.
Contextualizing Agriculture Workers Under Neoliberalization
Under neoliberalism, the reconstitution of state institutions and structures evidently influenced the division of labour, social relations, welfare provisions and access to land (Harvey, 2007). After liberalization, the whole agricultural sector was redefined by the two significant changes: proletarization of rural labour and capitalist-infused development. 1 Further, studies have identified structural shifts in agricultural labour and work under state-led development pursuing neoliberal forms of economic regulation, which in turn has created crises in traditional forms of unionization (Assadi, 2002; Brass, 1995; Gulati & Bathla, 2001; Gulati & Mullen, 2003; Harris-White & Janakaranjan, 1997; Lerche, 2013; Lerche, Shah, & Harriss-White, 2013; Omvedt, 1993; Oommen, 2009; Pursell & Gulati, 1993; Sainath, 2006; Sawant, Dapatardar, & Mhatre, 2002). The study by Singh (2001) recognized the agrarian contradictions emerging from the market and capitalistic interventions in rural society.
Further, a study by Oommen (2009) revealed that, under liberalization, labour activism has assumed a new orientation due to the minimal role of the state, in relation to the enlarged role of civil society, which has intervened in the social transformation while giving precedence to the market economy and consumer identity over citizenship rights. Similarly, both Omvedt and Brass (1995) identified the contemporary farmers’ movements as ‘new social movements’, seeing them as a response of a mass-based, commodity-producing peasantry against the state whose control affected rich and poor peasants alike. Thus, the problematic of structural change in agrarian work becomes significant in relation to the existing social hierarchy and class mobilization at micro level.
The category of agricultural workers comprises the entire gamut of workers engaged in different occupations related to agriculture, including cultivators, agricultural labourers, those engaged in production, farmworkers engaged in livestock and forestry and plantation workers, among others. In 2011–2012, total agricultural workers constituted 467 million people (FICCI, 2015). One of the distinguishable features of unorganized labour is that a large proportion of women workers are employed in the agricultural sector. As per the 2011 Census, agricultural labourers constituted a major proportion, or 55.21 per cent of total workers, and out of total agricultural workers, 29.96 per cent were female agricultural labour (Labour Bureau, 2014). 2 Especially in Andhra Pradesh (AP), total agricultural workers constitute 43.04 per cent, out of which women constitute 58 per cent (ibid.). Despite agricultural reforms, the extent of informal employment exceeds more than 90 per cent in AP (Srija & Shirke, 2014). As per the 2011 Census, the percentage of women agricultural workers has been consistently increasing from 6.46 in 1981 to 41.1 per cent in 2011.
Major impacts of the global economic crisis and liberalization of agriculture in India have been visible in the changes in the structure of rural labour (Brass, 1995; Gulati & Mullen, 2003; Lerche, 2013; Lerche et al., 2013; Oommen, 2009; Posani, 2009; Pursell & Gulati, 1993; Rao & Suri, 2006; Sahay, n.d.; Sainath, 2006). Division of labour, lack of irregular jobs, non-implementation of minimum wages, deplorable working conditions (welfare provisions), seasonable distress and lack of social security benefits are all dimensions of the livelihood challenges of agricultural workers (FICCI, 2015; IRRCJ & MC, 2013; Karan & Selvaraj, 2008; NCF, 2006b; Posani, 2009; Sahay, n.d.) which eventually lead to dispossession of peasantry (Vakulabharanam, 2010). These poor conditions have inevitably contributed to the reduction in the size of the workforce in agriculture by around 30.57 million between 2004–2005 and 2011–2012. Recent studies clearly point out that in India, the percentage of people employed in agriculture has been consistently declining from around 60 per cent in 1999–2000 to 49 per cent in 2011–2012 (FICCI, 2015). The share of informal agricultural employment also decreased from 58.50 per cent in 2004–2005 to 48.90 per cent in 2011–2012 (Srija & Shirke, 2014).
Further, liberalization has aggravated agrarian distress and led to an increasing number of farmer suicides, particularly in the last decade. 3 Between 2012 and 2013 alone, five states—Maharashtra, Telangana, Karnataka, AP and Kerala—accounted for 3,301 incidents of farmer suicides (The Hindu, 2015). Four states accounted for over half of the farm suicides in 2014, Maharastra (4,004), AP (632), Telangana (1,347) and Madhya Pradesh (1,198) (Bera, 2015; NCRB, 2014). Agrarian distress has been precipitated by mounting crises associated with ecological degradation, crop failure, debt, hypercommercialization, declining public sector investment, exploding input costs, inefficient water-use patterns and severe price shocks and price volatility, which are primarily driven by ineffective state policies (Bera, 2015; Gulati & Bathla, 2001; Gulati & Mullen, 2003; Pursell & Gulati, 1993; Rao & Suri, 2006; Sahay, n.d.; Sainath, 2015; Sawant et al., 2002; Suri, 2006).
Labour legislation pertaining to agricultural work is rarely implemented due to institutional bottlenecks. The basic distinction between organized and unorganized sector pertains to the social protection extended to the workers through different legislations and policy pronouncements. There are a number of key legislative acts for the protection of agricultural workers. 4 In addition, some of the generic labour legislations are also applicable to unorganized agricultural work. 5 Most of the labour regulations are in favour of economic development, while labour movements of all forms are diffused in India (Hensman, 2011). The implementation of the legal framework is thus not effective. One of the redefining moments for Indian contract labour has been the Supreme Court verdict of November 2016, in support of equal pay for temporary/contract workers and permanent workers (Sampath, 2016). The verdict is certainly expected to improve the bargaining power of informal workers; yet, agricultural labourers/workers are ostensibly outside the purview of this legal framework posing threat to their livelihood and unionization. As a result, agrarian labourers and workers are not under the radar of either legal or legislative protection. Further, the scattered and dispersed nature of their employment and lack of infrastructure has skewed union activities.
By and large, traditional union activities in India are mostly aimed at organizing the organized workers (formal workers) rather than their unorganized counterparts or informal workers. There is an ample literature which examines the issues affecting the unorganized sector of agrarian workers as a separate class (Agarwala, 2014; Assadi, 2002; Datt, 2007; Khan, 2013; Lerche et al., 2013; Mishra, 2007; NCF, 2006a, 2006b; Omvedt, 1981; Oommen, 2009; Patnaik, 1985; Ponnusamy et al., 2014; Posani, 2009; Rao & Suri, 2006; Srija & Shirke, 2014; Suri, 2006; Wilson, 2001), and the inability of these workers to organize themselves into a union, leading to severe hardships, which Patnaik (1985) refers to as ‘immiseration’, thereby jeopardizing their livelihood and survival.
Agrarian Scenario in Andhra Pradesh and the Emergence of APVVU
The state of AP is the fifth largest of Indian states, both in terms of geographical area and population (Menon, 2006). The share of agriculture in truncated AP’s GDP has increased from 22.96 per cent in 2014 to 27.59 per cent in 2015 (Business Standard, 2015). The genesis of APVVU in AP can be traced back to the 1980s, a period that was still dominated by feudal and patriarchal relationships in agriculture. A large number of factors contributed to the emergence of APVVU as a catalyst for organizing farmers and to a concerted struggle waged by the rural exploited class which was shaped by multiple identities and the interrelated questions of class, caste and gender and their political ideology/affiliation.
The most common social phenomena in AP included the prevalence of ascriptive identities and class hierarchy associated with landlordism; bonded labour; absentee landlordism; the payment of poor and unequal wages; long hours of work; lack of policies for addressing harassment, sexual abuse and assaults against women; low awareness of government programmes; lack of access to basic amenities; lack of hereditary and tenancy rights (landlessness); and the absence of specific rights affecting women (Menon, 2006; Rao & Suri, 2006). 6 In addition, the rural population, especially landless agricultural workers, has been subjected to social exclusion in many ways, such as caste discrimination, untouchability, perpetration of atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis, 7 demand for dowry, lack of education and low levels of skills. Social exclusion has led to the prevalence of bonded labour and, overall, has disempowered agricultural workers considerably. These conditions have been ripe for labour discontent, yet agricultural labour has been helpless due to the difficulties of unionization which has impacted on their capacity to resist.
Despite two rounds of land reform legislation in India, the surplus land acquired and distributed among the rural poor has been less than 2 per cent. The state of AP stands in second place among all other states in India in terms of the failure to implement land reforms. At the same time, lack of institutional support has adversely affected agricultural workers in AP, with the state’s retreat from social welfare/redistributive policies aggravating farmers’ suicides. The AP government has focused on capital-intensive and high-tech agri-business (Menon, 2006; Rao & Suri, 2006; Suri, 2006). Since the 1990s, the AP government has emphasized the development of urban infrastructure and information technology, seeking to transform AP into a ‘knowledge society’ (Suri, 2006).The situation is evident from the fact that, in 2014–2015, the state of Telangana (formerly part of AP state) recorded negative growth of 21.3 per cent due to the decline of agriculture. 8
Although many local-level social action groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and trade unions have, from time to time, been engaged in a wide variety of organized struggles and campaigns to address these unfavourable conditions, it was during the period 1987–1996 that a conglomeration of social action groups, NGOs and advocates, known as the Andhra Pradesh Vyavasaya Committee (APVC) Samakhya, eventually coalesced to form an organization. APVVU came into existence in 1991 and became a full-fledged federation at the state level in 1998. 9 Initially, APVVU was more like a block-level trade union, operating from three AP districts, namely, Rangareddy, Chittoor and Mahbubnagar (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011). Today, APVVU is a state-level federation of trade unions of 448 mandal (block)-level unions of agricultural workers, marginal farmers, fisher folk, indigenous people, shepherds and rural artisans, spread across 15 districts of AP.
Organizational Structure, Network and Social Composition
The core component of APVVU’s work was to form state-level unions and eventually develop collective bargaining power in relation to both the state and the landlords. APVVU emerged as a non-party or apolitical movement, with a strong record of unionizing agrarian workers regardless of differences of class, caste, religion and political affiliation. In 2014, the total membership of all the 448 federated mandal-level unions was 577,850 with 56 per cent of its members, including those at the leadership level, being women. APVVU is basically a membership-based organization (MBO) across the 15 districts of AP. Dalits and Adivasis constitute 92 per cent of the membership along with the other underprivileged groups, the backward classes (BCs) and other backward classes (OBCs). Although APVVU began as a trade union federation, by 2007 it had grown into a prominent force among struggles against neoliberalism in AP, broadening its interventions to encompass small and marginal farmers, fisher folk, forest workers, rural artisans and shepherds. 10 Although it began as a class organization, it could not sustain itself on class lines, eventually growing into a union incorporating class, caste and gender perspectives. Subsequently, three major categories of mobilization became visible, including agrarian labourers/workers, women and workers from other trades.
The APVVU has strived to build a culture of collective and grassroots leadership through a decentralized decision-making process. At present, the union has five state secretaries to coordinate different thematic areas of struggle, supported by the national secretary and 26 district secretaries. Further, each mandal-level union acts as an independent unit, consisting of seven elected executive committee members, of which three are office bearers. APVVU has a strong gender outlook: more than 50 per cent of its representation consists of women at all levels, from the village to the mandal, as well as at the state secretary levels; 13 of the 26 district secretaries are women.
At the bottom of the organizational structure is the village level unit, consisting of 20 members who select a unit leader for the mandal-level committees. The mandal secretaries (387) are elected on a full-time basis for the union. Two members (equally male and female) from the mandal level are sent to the district committees. All district secretaries form the state working committee. Five state secretaries are elected to represent each of the agricultural and allied workers. At the top is the post of the secretary for national coordination, who is nominated from the general body as a full-timer (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011).
Mobilization Ideology and Strategy 11
As mentioned earlier, the changing nature of politics in the wake of liberalization which has led to the deconstruction of the formal sector and deregulation of the labour market has hindered the formation of trade unions (Gulati & Bathla, 2001; Gulati & Mullen, 2003; Menon, 2006; Oommen, 2009; Rao & Suri, 2006; Suri, 2006). In this context, and against the odds of caste, class and gender hierarchies, this section highlights the various mobilizing strategies of APVVU in the interest of empowering the agricultural workers and promoting union solidarity. Agricultural labourers are not a homogenous unit, such that the use of diverse organizing and mobilizing methods and strategies is a step towards articulating and addressing the varied political, socioeconomic, cultural, developmental, welfare and legal rights of the unorganized agricultural workers. APVVU’s relentless efforts are based on the idea that ‘organizing’ the unorganized is an entry point for the implementation of a minimum wage, social security and worker protection legislation with the aim to uphold both individual and community rights.
The APVVU has emphasized collective mobilization and introduced multiple non-violent, bottom-up and decentralized strategies with regard to diverse issues (refer Figure 1), as well sought to build strong membership and cadres within its organizational framework. Great emphasis has been placed on decentralized and collective community mobilization through education, awareness programmes, registration of members and skills training. Once unionized, the members leverage their voice and representation by networking with local, national and global agencies through bipartite and tripartite dialogues. Law or judicial decisions are used as tools to mobilize disadvantaged groups, like women, children, Dalits and Adivasis and to address effectively the pitfalls in the implementation of criminal procedures. At Chintalapalli Mandal, APVVU has been identifying and training youth volunteers from the surrounding villages (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011), with the objective of promoting working class consciousness and solidarity, particularly among youth and women. A similar successful exercise of organizing youth was undertaken in Kurnool district (ibid.).
As Figure 1 shows, the APVVU’s agrarian mobilization has constituted a shift away from a party-political focus towards capturing overall issues affecting its membership at individual, family, community and sectoral levels. From this perspective, the APVVU has promoted organizational development through networking with state institutions. For instance, a strong representation of union members is found at village-level panchayats and among the ward committees. Similarly, in West Godavari, there are two active sarpanches (Village Council Heads) from Jangareddypalyam and Seetaigudu (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011). APVVU has, in fact, expanded its horizon to address contentious issues affecting the mental and physical health of its agrarian members, to demonstrate their willingness to be a part of the effort. 12 Therefore, the APVVU’s primary emphasis is on holistic individual growth. Hence, at the individual level, APVVU addressed cultural and lifestyle-related issues and habits and social taboos, whereas, at the community level, it concentrated on promoting collective mobilization while simultaneously addressing several other issues.
Building a Workers’ Movement: Network and Alliances of APVVU 13
The struggles of agricultural labourers are guided by the idea that building a wider labour movement and forging alliances is almost always vital in shifting the balance of power (Wilson, 2001). Alliances and networks forged by APVVU have not been confined to any one region but transcend location by various bipartite and tripartite alliances at the local, state, national and global levels. Such networks are promoted for the building of solidarity in terms of sharing programmes and objectives, as well as seeking funding. Such alliances have been forged with common strategies at different levels. Networking is also pursued to enable people to reach out to the huge base of agricultural workers. APVVU collaborates with national-level NGOs such as the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), the National Centre for Labour (NCL) (an apex body of unorganized workers’ movements in India), the National Agricultural Workers Forum (NAWF) and the National Alliance of Social Security (NASS). At the global level, APVVU is actively engaged with the Coalition of Agricultural Workers’ International, the Asian Peasants Coalition. the People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty and members of Our World is Not For Sale (OWINFS) network.
At the local and national levels, APVVU has collaborated with like-minded NGOs and other social movements to build as well as uphold peasants’ rights at a wider level and to protect the biodiversity of agriculture. APVVU has been consistently promoting campaigns against the WTO, World Bank and IMF, both within India and Asia. Further, the APVVU seeks to join national as well as global mass movements to strengthen the rights of unorganized labour, particularly the vulnerable farmer communities, as its membership of NAPM and NCL demonstrate.
Although APVVU initially emerged as a local union, it has gradually transformed itself by adopting a national agenda and joining like-minded national bodies such as the National Fish Workers Forum Coalition of Agricultural Workers International (CAWI), the Asian Peasants’ Coalition (APC) and People’s Coalition of Food Sovereignty (PCFS). Being a member of the OWINFS campaign and part of an alliance comprising other eminent international organizations, APVVU has been instrumental in building the peasant movement against the WTO in India, which also led to the derailment of the latter’s Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting in December 2005.
Unionization and Its Achievements
Studies have shown that under neoliberalism, social movements do not conform to archetypical labour movements and are also regionally specific assuming differing positions on many issues affecting them (Brass, 1995; Oommen, 2009). Given the situation of common deprivation and the context of crisis under neoliberalism, three major agrarian classes participated in the APVVU’s mobilization—agrarian proletariat, middle class peasantry and women—while their politics came to be focused on diverse issues. Social problems have been identified and discussed to support and undertake the protection of rights of women, Dalits, Adivasis and children from the perspective of both constitutional and human rights. Some of the specific achievements have concerned caste and gender rights, workers’ rights and land reform.
After 25 years of declaring the Fifth Schedule, the AP cabinet ministry passed the resolution in 1976 to incorporate 805 uncovered Adivasi villages within the scheduled area. This was made possible precisely by the APVVU’s relentless campaign for the expansion of the Fifth Schedule. 14 In addition, to overcome the obstacles that have deprived women of the opportunity to contribute in the labour movement, women in the APVVU were accorded strong representation at all levels, as discussed earlier, which has meant the inclusion of women from the union’s predominantly Dalit and Adivasi membership. In this regard, various social issues have been addressed so as to mobilize women, including the promotion of girls’ education, women’s health and hygiene, the protection of women’s rights, gender equity and the need to prevent anti-women actions such as child marriages and female infanticide.
Further, the Right to Information Act (RTI) was successfully used for demanding a revision of the Minimum Wage Act of 1948. In 2006, the union set up a committee, delivered orientations and imparted legal training to the tribal youth. By being a part of the National Campaign for Labour, the union has thus been instrumental in lobbying and promoting advocacy for a strong Unorganised Workers’ Social Security and Welfare Bill, which was finally passed in 2008 (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011). 15 With the assistance of APVVU, 6.7 lakh rural workers were enrolled into the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the state of AP. Moreover, the APVVU has been involved in social audits and in exposing corruption in the NREGA programme. 16 Also, awareness campaigns in relation to HIV have been conducted together with surveys and cultural programmes, which have led to increased reporting of HIV cases in these areas.
Finally, by the relentless struggle waged by APVVU for land reforms, the union has, to some extent, been successful in distributing 184,500 acres of government land, 34,240 acres of ceiling surplus land and 3,470 acres of Bhudan land among agricultural workers in AP. The union has also been actively involved in the rehabilitation of people displaced by the Peddere and Tarakarama dams, as well as the restoration of fishing rights in the Tarakarama region (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011). Further, it has been influenced by NAPM members like Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) to take up issues of displacement of labour due to the construction of various dams including the Madduvalasa Dam, Polavaram Dam and the Jerrikona Dam, as also expansion of the Krishnapatnam port. It has consistently campaigned for forest and Adivasis rights as part of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD).
As such, in the context of neoliberal reforms, the APVVU has mobilized agrarian labour by providing an all-embracing platform in class/occupational terms against the hierarchies of class, caste and gender. In other words, a common identity has been forged and reproduced in the context of competing contestations and contradictions.
Impediments in Organizing the Agricultural Workers 17
Agrarian workers from AP share a common social and political position in terms of lifestyle, deprivation, struggle and anti-neoliberal ideology. Yet, the task of unionizing informal sector workers, particularly agrarian labourers at the state, national and international levels, is fraught with numerous challenges. The APVVU has been engaging with numerous internal and external issues such as, on the one hand, ascriptive social hierarchy, economic exploitation and political subjugation, and on the other hand, dwindling membership and fragmentation, fragile level of financial self-reliance, low degree of publicity, lack of necessary infrastructure, political manipulation and difficulty in retaining youth, all of which impact on unionization.
Internal Barriers
As Oommen (2009) rightly points out that mobilizing agrarian labour is not simple but has to overcome the barriers of class/occupational attributes. The vexatious problem of correlation between caste, class and ideology, as well as gender intersects with the common set of deprivation induced by global capital, which make for an extremely complex task before APVVU’s unionization efforts. Indeed, organizing agricultural workers in AP, particularly agrarian labourers and marginalized communities like Dalits and Adivasis, has been a daunting task. Existing agricultural workers are mostly physically scattered and the poorest of the poor, living below the subsistence. Besides, the diffused mobilization strategy of APVVU across labour and women from other trades has certainly distracted its focus from agricultural labour issues.
Most often, agricultural workers are mainly drawn from those subjected to traditional caste and patriarchal practices like Dalits, Adivasis and women. At the field level, these multiple identities have purportedly delayed the creation of a unified class consciousness and collective action, thereby impacting on the organizing efforts of the organization. Additionally, the economic deprivation that anchors their class status poses a serious dilemma to the APVVU’s efforts to mobilize, which is further impacted by the horizontal shifts in the secondary and tertiary sectors and out-migration of labour to other states and cities.
Under neoliberalism, the APVVU’s efforts at unionizing have been adversely affected by political obstacles in bringing about comprehensive legislation for ensuring the effective implementation of minimum wages and social security benefits and the regulation of working conditions for the informal sector, which include agricultural workers. The state has exhibited increasing insensitivity towards the APVVU’s non-violent struggle for improving the working conditions of its members and protecting labour rights. This has a negative impact on working class consciousness and solidarity among agricultural workers. Consequently, the youth are increasingly drifting towards criminal and political activities, posing a serious challenge to the APVVU’s capacity to retain its youth membership base.
APVVU has, in fact, failed to emerge as a strong organizational weapon and alternate forum for agrarian movements in India for many reasons. Paradoxically, the diverse membership of APVVU has helped to build a strong foundation for the organization, but it has also often led to contrasting demands and viewpoints that threaten the spirit of camaraderie within the union (Menon & Ramaswamy, 2011). 18 For instance, the contradictory positions and agendas of the tribal communities, on one hand, and the non-tribals, on the other, could prove to be a hurdle in the union’s sustenance in the long run. Another bone of contention is the division of members along political lines, which has been detrimental to the larger interests of workers and their capacity to bargain. Intra-union conflicts, therefore, create long-term problems in terms of organizing the unorganized workers, particularly in the agricultural sector.
Lack of a comprehensive vision and a uniform organizing approach at APVVU has prevented effective mobilization. The pursuit of multiple agendas under diverse categories has led to differences in the patterns of mobilization and organization, generating heterogeneous responses within the union. One important challenge is to look beyond NREGA as an employment scheme, given that after the lapse of the scheme, the APVVU’s membership dwindled further. In addition, the current fragile financial position of APVVU also threatens both the organization’s sustainability and its efforts at unionizing. There is also a need to appoint a nodal person within the organization for coordinating and networking amicably with other organizations in the region. The lack of issue-wise working committees for discussion, representation of workers and monitoring the progress of the campaign has negatively impacted the APVVU.
External Barriers
The neoliberal restructuring underway since the 1990s has steadily eroded the basis for unifying agricultural labour under the aegis of APVVU. The structural adjustment programmes have been followed by rapid urbanization and informalization of labour, which has entailed the restructuring of cities as part of a grand entrepreneurial schema, giving priority to huge infrastructure and developmental projects. These have drastically overhauled the agricultural sector and adversely impacted the unionization of workers (Bhuvaneswari, 2017; Oommen, 2009; RoyChowdhury, 2003; Smitha, 2017; Sudhira, 2017).
Meanwhile, in its efforts to support industrial and economic growth in AP, the state has also rigorously implemented land acquisition and land-grab policies in favour of corporate capital. Such a move has hugely impacted the agricultural communities by jeopardizing the survival of agricultural workers, especially the landless who lack the necessary education and skills to enable them to find future employment. Similarly, the vast expansion of industries under the stewardship of multilateral organizations in AP, especially in the state’s rural areas, has fostered unfettered capitalist development, leading to large-scale displacement and spatially divided the local populations through projects such as the creation of special economic zones (SEZs) in the coastal region, forests, and agricultural fields. In addition to depriving local farmers of their livelihoods, these projects have led to rising pollution levels in environmentally sensitive areas of the state. The pursuit of modern agricultural practices has also led to a lot of health hazards and the risk of accidents for agricultural workers, especially women workers, who are exposed to toxic pesticides, weedicides and chemical fertilizers in the course of their work. In the context of all these challenges, bringing together the defused class of agrarian labour under the integrated umbrella of a union has become increasingly difficult.
Since the union is apolitical in its approach to political parties, retaining membership and leadership in the event of manipulation by political parties poses another challenge. During and after elections, political parties have always resorted to strategies to divide the workers, hampering the unionization process. The state has, in fact, internalized the concept that agricultural workers are ‘beneficiaries’ rather than ‘workers’, further weakening the latter’s bargaining power. At the same time, a favourable Social Security Act for the workers is lacking. Finally, the division of the erstwhile state of AP into two states, namely, Telangana and the new AP, has drastically impacted the organizational mobility of the workers.
Roadmap for Future Expansion
The APVVU intends to continue its struggle for the protection of workers’ rights and social security for expanding its membership base in the future. The APVVU strongly believes that continuing its efforts to organize agricultural workers based on class would enable it not only to strengthen the union’s agenda but also to address key issues like timely payment of minimum wages, future employment prospects, social security and access to land and other resources for the workers. APVVU also intends to take the caste and gender perspectives into account in its future plans by making efforts to integrate the subaltern communities and women workers and promote solidarity among the workers by forging a common front. For ensuring the accountability of leadership and better bargaining power, APVVU restricts its operations to an administrative division in a limited geographical area such as a block or a mandal. APVVU also supports the concept of developing collective leadership through a decentralized and democratic decision-making process.
The union federates at the state level in order to build solidarity and promote wider reach among its members. For instance, one of its common agendas for promoting unity is to struggle for wage revision every three years. This enhances unity in diversity while also fostering a bottom-up approach. 19 Further, realising that caste and class identity also play a significant role in the growth of the union, APVVU has been making attempts to promote equity in resource sharing and a proportionate share in leadership among the most vulnerable groups in the union, especially women.
In fulfilment of its objective to put forth the key issues concerning it at the state and national levels, APVVU is sometimes compelled to compromise its professed apolitical stand by extending support to, or establishing an affiliation with, certain political parties. For instance, APVVU was part of the ‘Anti-Arrack Movement’ in AP, in association with other like-minded agricultural workers’ unions and Left parties. Grassroots mobilization has also been a strong component of unionization of APVVU. Its emphasis on the philosophy of ‘think locally and act globally’ has aided it in setting up linkages with local agencies to ensure both a national as well as a global impact. Hence, the strategy of localization is an important element in strengthening the APVVU’s ideology, perceptions and responses to workers’ issues. The localized struggles of APVVU also lay an emphasis on the protection of the workers’ constitutional rights as well as human rights, particularly for the marginalized and vulnerable sections including women, children, Dalits and Adivasis.
Conclusion
From the aforementioned analysis, it is clear that there are a number of factors that have eroded the legitimacy and institutionalization efforts of unions organizing informal sector workers, such as the agricultural workers in AP. The dichotomous relationship between the class nature of many agricultural workers’ movements or struggles, on the one hand, and global capital and the institutions representing them, on the other hand, is highly problematic. The confrontation between workers and global capital has marginalized the struggles of agricultural workers in India and elsewhere.
The advent of neoliberalism and new production processes have reshaped and redefined the structure of labour. It has resulted in the fragmentation of Indian labour and the emergence of new forms of employment and new methods of extracting surpluses from labourers, leading especially to the feminization of agriculture, growth of contract labour and increase in migration, both rural–rural and rural–urban. It has also threatened the very process of unionization. Urbanization has in fact made it even more difficult to organize migrant labourers, while the gender composition of agricultural workers continues to pose serious challenges for unionization.
The near invisibility of struggles of organizations such as the APVVU within the anti-globalization discourse has led to the perception that such struggles are primarily ‘internal struggles’ within the rural communities, of little global or even national significance. This perception is enhanced by the fact that such struggles are frequently articulated in terms of a ‘community versus corporation’ dichotomy, ignoring the contradictions of class and gender and perpetuating the status quo rather than ensuring better living and working conditions for labour.
The pertinent question is how the unionizing efforts and struggle by the APVVU will enable to establish an alternative political discourse against the onslaught of globalization and global capital. So far, the unequal contestation between those who control all the resources and the underprivileged agricultural workers has led to a massive repressive response by the state against the agricultural workers. As it often happens in such situations, the struggle waged by agricultural workers is portrayed as a struggle for access to basic amenities or an expression of their distress emanating from poor working and living conditions. In such a context, unionizing the informal workers, such as agricultural workers, and sustaining the struggle is a challenging exercise for organizations like the APVVU in AP.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authorThis study was part of research report declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Acknowledgement
I would like extend my appreciation and thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their critical insights and comments to improvise this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was part of research report entitled ‘Organizing the Informal Sector: A Case Study of Andhra Pradesh Vyvasasaya Vruthidarula Union (APVVU)’ (2014) funded by the National Alliance for Social Security (NASS), New Delhi.