Book review: Jan Breman,The Poverty Regime in Village India: Half a Century of Work and Life at the Bottom of the Rural Economy in South Gujarat

Agrarian Change and Its Impact on Labour: The Crucial Question of ‘Patronage’

Breman tries to analyse whether or not patronage still forms an important governing framework to study agrarian relations in the four urban villages. Despite the legal restrictions on the formal system of bondage, the results show that something like halipratha ² still exists unabated in one urban village, Gandevigam, only in a different form and guise. The onus of this falls heavily on the government’s post-colonial economic approach that guided policymakers. However, Breman’s conclusions show that the abrupt demise of this system in some villages such as Chikhligam (Chapter 4) has not always worked to the advantage of the landless since they now remain doubly marred as the element of ‘obligation’ and ‘responsibility’ (on the part of the upper castes) to provide patronage is now missing and so is the ‘sense of security’ that the lower castes once claimed to have because of this. On the demand side, the switch to less labour-intensive crops and agricultural patterns and the preference for cheaper and more docile migrant labour (Chapter 6) over local ‘reserve armies of labour’ leaves plenty of surplus labour without jobs. Another reason is that, attracted to an urban lifestyle and the global standards of living which largely defy the romanticisation of rural life, the dominant castes sell their lands to dyes, chemicals or pharmaceutical industries which are not local, and settle in the neighbouring cities or go abroad. While some of the dominant Anavil Brahmins choose to stay back to find administrative or managerial-level jobs in these newly set up factories, industrialisation has severely reduced work opportunities for the unskilled halpatis. Thus, the rural underclass, who already had a hand-to-mouth existence in the pre-industrialisation era, have witnessed a drastic deterioration in the number of options available to them.

The most common type of landowners today are from the upper-caste landowning urban village group who do not sell their land in entirety and keep some as a backup option. This gives them economic privilege in the urban village in addition to the social privilege which they have already accrued by living in the city. Politically too, their power only grew with newfound urban networks resulting in the further consolidation of their monopoly over resources and information (Conclusion). They are now part of the regional elite who, while keeping their urban village-level influence intact, are vying for more. Breman’s work is an important contribution to the broader argument that this only culminates in an ever-widening socio-economic gap between the elite and the poor (Chapter 3).

The Changing Nature of Bondage

Breman argues that the major concern in rural-agrarian economies today is not unemployment but, rather, underemployment. Underemployment gives rise to two pools of ‘flexible’ labour, namely, casual labour and the ‘footloose proletariat’. ³ Both these types of labourers choose to look for other sources of employment to sustain or, on occasion, to transcend their poverty (Chapter 6). Dasgupta (1995) notes that this culminates in various degrees of unfreedom. The types of labourers range from servants to day labourers and casual labourers with increasing workplace freedom and decreasing economic security. The shift to the informal sector in urban areas has led to a ‘break with tradition’ and a virtual escape from the system of infeudation. But Breman questions if this is really so. The condition of an unattached labourer, as he found in his research, was even worse than an attached one as the traditional dominance of the landlords remained intact and continued to govern labour relations. There may, however, be an issue with this emancipatory viewpoint of agency and assertion in Breman’s argument as it might overemphasise or even exalt everyday forms of resistance and the question of agency. Although Breman puts forth a strong argument against the internalisation of oppression theory in suggesting that the choice to remain unemployed needs to be seen as a conscious choice on the part of the rural underclass, the data seems to show that it actually leaves them all the more vulnerable. The political effects or the net socio-economic effect of such resistance is minuscule, especially in the context of the mid-pandemic plight of the stranded migrant workers (Duggal et al., 2021; Jayaram & Varma, 2020; Jesline et al., 2021; Vasavi, 1999). Besides, the precariousness of non-agrarian jobs and their informalisation have later been highlighted as factors of vulnerability by Breman himself. There are several perils of the free market system such as caste-based stigma attached to labour, which renders labourers equally vulnerable in formal sectors. This is the case in Gandevigam, the first location of a longitudinal study (Chapter 2). This ensures the perpetuity of poverty and makes the poor the largest and most easily influenceable vote banks and spreaders of Hindutva politics in modern times, an argument Breman makes in Chapters 1 and 3. He notes that because the poor are always on the lookout for financial aid to survive, they can be compelled by campaigning political parties to vote for them for money and promises of food and shelter. The parties, therefore, take advantage of this.

Breman explains neo-bondage by showing from empirical research that the labourers are terribly overworked and undercompensated for their labour. Since this is too low for them to meet even their basic needs, they are forced to rely on other employers for advance payment (like loans) which they attempt to work off. The cycle continues since they work ‘under obligation of debt and for future credit’ for their upper-caste employers (Breman, 1974). Unlike the old system of halipratha, neo-bondage (Chapter 5) can also take a variety of forms, ranging from annual contract to seasonal casual labour. This translates to consistently lower wages or a prolonged period of employment for such labourers, as opposed to contractual or unattached labourers. Breman brings out these harsh and hidden realities by mapping the transition of a labourer from occasional to permanent work according to gender and age. He also uses life histories to support his arguments. Even though their numbers have seemed to decline over the years, Breman looks at government records with a keen and sceptical eye, because they give very little attention to the social context of poverty, and their macro-methods and statistical econometric models only pay lip service to policy-initiated poverty alleviation. Thus, they do not do justice to the ‘multifaceted nature of poverty’ (Introduction). He focuses on the classic amalgamation of political motives and sociocultural factors that keep the poor in poverty.

Analysing the Multiple Dimensions of Poverty and the Informal Sector

Breman has used several important markers and indicators to measure poverty in rural South Gujarat and the levels of underdevelopment such as change in spatial mobility with demographic changes; conditions of labour workforce and their participation in processes of development; occupational classification (agricultural/land-related and otherwise) of the labourers; monthly income and gender ratio in labourer households; and labour colonies and their infrastructures. He also takes into account several non-economic factors and qualitative aspects of poverty, which is especially relevant in a country like India, which has a unique socio-economic cultural system. Breman’s study, thus, builds a strong case against the existing caste–class dichotomy and argues for an inevitable overlap between the two. Several instances from his fieldwork show how the landless labourers or the rural underclass exclusively belong to the lowest castes or tribes. A longitudinal analysis in his study supports other empirical findings in the area that this does not happen per chance—the ones at the bottom of the social hierarchy are essentially made to remain at the bottom of the economic hierarchy as well (Introduction). Situating his research within the normative framework of caste society, Breman thus lays emphasis on the social relations of production and the prevailing structures of dependency and/or exploitation, which the previous economic studies have seemed to ignore. This is argued in the Introduction, wherein Breman showcases the relevance of his arguments by offering a sharp critique of The Great Indian Poverty Debate (Deaton, 2005), which argues that poverty has decreased substantially in the 1990s and that liberalisation was effective in achieving these ends, based on ‘non-political, statistical’ quantitative research design. In an attempt to fill the gaps left by these economists, Breman analyses the manner in which these inherited structures of power helped produce and reproduce relations of domination.

In the economic realm, the neoliberal approach, with its focus on free market and unrelenting emphasis on the informalisation of labour, has had adverse impacts on the rural underclass. Breman argues that politics joined hands with religious extremism and casteism to safeguard the interests of the upper-caste Hindus and to further exacerbate poverty levels, especially with the rise of far-right political extremism in the more recent decades. The process of internal colonisation ⁴ happened through various means: direct and indirect, intentional and unintentional. The three major resources—land, capital and labour—continue to remain in the hands of the rural elite or the dominant castes while they continue to accrue cheap labour. In Atulgam, despite the arrival of industrial employment, the expectations of class mobility never resulted in the mitigation of caste identities, as was expected by several sociologists. This manifests most overtly in the spatial segregation of the urban village colonies. In the context of Atulgam, Breman also talks about the grey area, the vast reserve of labour who are neither agriculture nor factory workers (Chapter 10). The overlapping nature of work done by this drifting pool of labour is something which has been ignored by most social scientists, including Indian Marxists. Development in this village was heavily lopsided in the favour of upper-caste Anavil Brahmins who got employed as administrative and skilled workers in factories, while the lower-caste poor remained casual labourers.

An important observation made in Chikhligam (Chapter 4) was that the upper castes have been moving away from agrarian activities but not agriculture. Breman looked at urban village property records to analyse landholding and land usage patterns. This served as scant information and had to be fleshed out with insider interviews from all sections of the urban village society for well-rounded findings. He also used the triangulation method to bring out hidden structures of fragmentation which have rendered only micro-ownership to the so-called landed poor. Repeated interviews and active presence in the field helped him gain the confidence of the respondents and build a rapport with them. Their responses suggested deep prejudice in a seemingly progressive and modern urban village society where the quality of land afforded was caste-based. Besides, there was scarcely any reinvestment by the urban village elite in the agricultural land. Breman’s unique conclusions on the ‘unevenness of development’ take into account the intermediate caste’s rise into local-level power dynamics with effective exploitation of available opportunities. The Kolis (previous Scheduled Castes who have now been classified as Other Backward Classes in Gujarat) have increasingly become dominant and important actors in structuring and shaping the socio-economic agrarian realm of South Gujarat, Breman argues. The traditionally upper-caste Patidars ⁵ passed on to them some of their historically held hegemony and monopoly over resources and information in the rural-agrarian society. The Kolis are featured throughout the second section of the book, so that crucial changes and continuities in the lower castes’ positions are acknowledged. These changes have considerably reformatted the balance of power in changing caste societies. While analysing mobility and assertion among the landless, Breman highlights inter-caste discrimination to describe the plight of whom he calls the excluded from the Dhodia tribal castes (Scheduled Tribes). Of late, however, the Dhodias have come to benefit from the state policy of positive discrimination and are increasingly realising the importance of education. Class distinctions exist within castes and such conjugal identities play important roles in the lives of the ascending landless poor in Chikhligam. This somewhat answers a question about the title of the book: Why is poverty a ‘regime’? Breman argues that poverty in India today is sustained and chronic because it has been thus institutionalised over the generations. He also connects this to the situation of religious minorities such as Muslims in this argument. In creating a hierarchy of the causal factors, Breman argues that we have to bear in mind that the political economy angle is centrally and indispensably related to the whole debate around poverty. However, a major limitation of Breman’s study is that even though he points to the absence of radical movements while discussing the possible solutions to the issue of poverty (Chapter 9 and Conclusion), he limits himself to recommending better organisation, community consciousness and mobilisation, collective action and solidarity amongst the poor as the most important means of bringing about change. He fails to recognise that this change cannot happen in a vacuum since the government and civil society are essential in alleviating poverty. Breman could have added that it was at their end that repeated marginalisation led to the systematic exclusion of the poor.

Tracing Changes and Continuities in the Forms and Nature of Exploitation

Poverty changed its nature and form in the second half of the twentieth century in India, with rapid privatisation, industrialisation, urbanisation and economic growth in Nehru’s era. Nevertheless, it has continued to exist. Changing patterns of land usage due to land and social reforms such as the imposition of the Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling Act, 1960 and the intensifying demographic pressure immensely impacted the agrarian base of South Gujarat villages. There was another, more central angle to poverty which remained largely ignored by economists who took only empirical data derived from macro-studies into account. This was the inequality inherent in traditionally sanctioned practices of extreme inhumanity and discrimination in Indian society. Thus, poverty and inequality remain at the core of the issue of underdevelopment. After his extensive qualitative analysis, Breman concluded that the driving force of the agrarian social structure was not just the market or production for profit, but also the articulation of domination and subordination. This vicious cycle binds several generations into a structure of unwanted dependence. The main victims of the system are the poorest of the poor, who remain scapegoats at the hands of changing governments. In Bardoligam, for instance, the migrant poor labourers from the neighbouring state of Maharashtra have been reported saying that their condition is far worse than that of dogs (Chapter 8). Breman sees a solution in the decentralised devolution of political power, empowering local-level institutions. But he fails to analyse or even list the dangers that democratisation without representation or un-democratised development may involve.

Methodological Debates in Poverty Studies and the Inevitability of Breman’s Interdisciplinary Study

Breman’s concluding observation is that the formalisation of labour after the Bonded Labour (Abolition) Act, 1976 against bonded labour (and, hence, patronage) resulted in micro-level changes in agrarian work and in the social relations of the rural poor. While economists have empirically demonstrated and tested the nature and extent of poverty in India, its context is lacking in their macro-analyses. The complex realities of social relations in India and the larger value frames within which the poor live and struggle for survival are crucial to study poverty. In this regard, this exceptional work by Breman serves as a reminder for economists, anthropologists as well as policymakers that the urban reality is far more complex than internal micro-realities or external macro-stats. Rather than being two different approaches in social science research, both are needed to establish a constant dialogue and capture the hidden realities of marginalisation which are obvious but not always apparent. Breman’s pluralistic data collection methods and in-depth analysis show how capitalism chooses its beneficiaries and how the poor and the underclass always remain deprived of any form of capital (even cultural). The longitudinal and cross-sectional research design has helped capture the hidden realities of black-collar jobs in the informal sector. This has enabled Breman to show the similarities and differences between areas and the changes within a particular area over a period of time. He uses lived experiences, in-depth interviews and a bottom-up approach to capture the myriad of field realities. His prolonged and recurring visits to the sites have helped him gain an exceptional insight while interpreting empirical observations. These comparisons have helped him mark changes and continuities in the agrarian sector. The lives of upper and lower castes are also compared and contrasted to understand locational and contextual realities. This shows the other side of the picture of Indian development during the post-liberalisation era and shows the emptiness of the promises of growth rates since for this segment of the population, the globalising Indian economy has only resulted in further debilitation, discrimination and exclusion.

By linking the question of development to morality and to his own personal experiences and locational reality, Breman points out that the poor need empathy, not sympathy. Thus, he rejects value neutrality (Introduction). Through the frameworks of historical materialism and political economy, he successfully brings to the fore ‘contradictions of development’ that arise with the coalition of the state and the market (or, the ‘regime of poverty’). The work could have brought out the viewpoints of the local leaders, bureaucrats, politicians and the larger civil society on how to tackle the issue of poverty (from a policy perspective), instead of just exploring the system of poverty from the employers’ and the labourers’ standpoints. Most importantly, however, the work remains a sharp critique of the formal sector (of the economy) research methods to study the starkly different and unique informal economy in India.