Consider Ganjam district. Ganjam derives from the Persian for ‘granary of the world’. At independence, the district began with the advantages of the ryotwari system of land tenure, rather than the burdens of zamindari. But today, agriculture is so poor here that the majority of farmers get just one rain-fed paddy crop and a meagre second crop of dal. The failure to expand irrigation — and to preserve the abundance of existing tanks and local canals — is to blame. Equally to blame is the utter neglect of efforts to modernise agriculture through diversifying crops, boosting yields, or storage and marketing.
The primary means for survival for Ganjam’s people has been migration. For the past three decades, boys (as young as 12) and men have migrated to western India for work, particularly to Surat’s textile mills. The scale is such that roughly 2 of every 3 males between the ages of 15 and 50+ now works year-round in western India — returning to Ganjam for just a few weeks.
Employment of the kind found by Ganjam’s migrants is no solution to their poverty. Indeed, it is another shade of exploited poverty. Their hard labour of 12 hours a day earns them just Rs 75-175 (per day), but with no health care, housing, paid day off, job security or even minimal pension. They live dozen or more to a slum room. Prolonged illness or old age often lead to destitution.
... contd.
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Siddharth Dube