The Hungry Tide

Faced with chronic unemployment, racked by poverty and hunger, families fleetheir villages in search of better prospects which, by and large, are only to befound in urban and peri-urban areas. This huge movement creates cheap labour forcity centres, but the migrant who been pushed out of his native lands findshimself in hostile conditions. The vast majority of India’s migrant labourforce is employed in the unorganised sector, preferred to local labourers sincethey are cheaper and do not develop social relations in their place ofdestination. They are deprived of housing, entitlements to basic state servicessuch as the public distribution system, and end up living in sub humanconditions. Worse, city administrations have, today, honed in on migrants as the‘culprits’ responsible for the overcrowding and the breakdown of civic orderthat most cities are facing and, in ham-handed attempts to stem the rot,formulate distressing plans to keep migrants from entering the city.

But the flow cannot be stemmed. It arises out of the changing dynamics ofrural economics, and can only be stalled or reversed by massive investment inthe rural economy, and the creation of what have been described as ‘agropolitan’districts and centres - an economy that creates employment for populations wherethey are.

Agriculture still employs over 60 per cent of India’slabour force, but its ability to productively absorb growing populations israpidly declining. Productive jobs, today, are to be found overwhelmingly in thestates that have been significantly urbanised, such as the highly developedstates of North West India (Haryana, Punjab), Coastal West India (Gujarat andMaharashtra) and the Southern states (Tamil Nadu, Karnataka). Businesses in theBIMARU states remain mainly rural, and are afflicted by very low levels oflabour productivity.

Indeed, the tide is turning steadily against rural India and, in 2000, forthe first time in the country’s history, more than half of India’s nationalincome was generated in cities and towns - though 71 per cent of the populationstill lived in its villages. More and more businesses in the vast ruralindustrial and services sector are shutting down, or moving to urban areas,attracted by better linkages and profitability, even as the rural economy isgradually strangulated by low productivity and the lack of infrastructure.

According to one study in 2001, the labour productivity of unorganisedmanufacturing units in urban areas was more than double than that of units inthe same sector in rural areas. Thus many small rural businesses are destined todie, though sectors like wholesale trade, transport, storage and warehousinghave actually employed more people in rural areas over the years.

One study on rural-urban migration noted in 2002 that the government had, "asa matter of policy", concentrated its investment and employment in cities tothe neglect of rural areas. It noted further that the little that was spent invillages is "wasted in microeconomic interventions to help individualvillagers and not the macro-economy of the village as a whole".

Further, the government has no employment generation schemes for cities; yet,there are plenty of jobs. In villages there are a variety of job creationschemes for the poor, but few jobs of any kind to be had. The reason is, "theGovernment invests in the macro-economy of cities and in villages it tacklesonly the microeconomic level. It is time the government tackled the poverty ofvillages rather than the poverty of villagers. Villagers cannot get rich so longas villages remain too poor to attract modern industry and commerce."

The 2005 Budget saw the birth of the Bharat NirmanProject, with numerous schemes to improve the infrastructure in Indian villages.A comprehensive rural upliftment programme under the Project committed Rs.18,334 crores to six key areas - irrigation, roads, water supply, ruralelectrification, housing and rural connectivity, including both roads andtelephony.

It would be heartening to see that winds of change are sweeping across ruralIndia, yet there are apprehensions that much that is being proposed under ruralinfrastructure extension would eventually benefit urban centres more, and thatit is not linked to the requirements of increasing productivity in the ruralareas, or that it will, once again, be hijacked by urban entrepreneurs reachingback into these areas.

Thus, across the sprawling landmass of northern Uttar Pradesh, land is beingsold dirt cheap and being snapped up by street-smart entrepreneurs, who proceedto claim subsidies and set up thriving high technology agricultural andfisheries projects. Village land is also being bought up across India, either tobe colonised by developers or to be used by the wealthy to set up businesses orpractice the farming of exotic varieties of produce.

The evolution of the ‘agropolitan’ economy lies atthe heart of India’s development. With over 70 per cent of the populationstill concentrated in rural areas, the country cannot be lifted out of povertyand backwardness on the shoulders of a small - through rapidly expanding - urbansector.

Hyderabad - and its hi-tech extension, ‘Cyberabad’ - developed new officeparks, academic institutions, flashy flyovers and ‘highovers’, and came tobe seen as a beacon, a model of urban development, an inspirational city, builtfor a progressive future. The then Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, was hailedand feted by the national and international media as a man of great vision,leading his state to the gold-paved road of prosperity. In the midst of allthis, thousands of farmers were committing suicide, consuming pesticides, caughtin a wrenching cycle of debt and poverty in the heartless backwaters of ruralAndhra Pradesh. Their plight was ignored even as Naidu enjoyed the unchallengedstatus as the poster boy of ‘reforms’ in the country, as the "CEO" of aState, whom The New York Times applauded as the "darling of westerngovernments and corporations."

Yet the verdict that was eventually doled out to this Chief Minister was acrushing defeat at the elections. Perhaps there is a greater lesson here of whatcomes from the neglect of the poor in a nation where poverty afflicts hundredsof millions, particularly in rural India.

The bane of India’s cities is not the impoverished migrants that areflooding in - indeed, they may well provide a safety valve, "keeping apossible revolt by the masses at bay". Investment in the rural economy couldhave far reaching impact, not only on increasing livelihood options and reducingpoverty in these areas, but accelerating national development and checking therising tide of political unrest and violence across wide areas.

Exploited by the informal sector, deprived of the benefits of ruraldevelopment, the life of the rural poor is lived on the margins, in the shadowsof national neglect. Strangely, however, it is only when their plight isaddressed and resolved, and a semblance of dignity is available to the people ofIndia’s vast rural hinterland, that urban India will actually be in a positionto develop its ‘world class’ cities.