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Indian Tenancy, Moral Reasoning and the Social Structures of Accumulation

Indian Tenancy, Moral Reasoning and the Social Structures of Accumulation. An Empirical Study with a Political Economy Interpretation. The Purpose of this Essay. My argument is about the foothills and mountains of moral reasoning about issues related to tenancy.

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Indian Tenancy, Moral Reasoning and the Social Structures of Accumulation

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  1. Indian Tenancy, Moral Reasoning and the Social Structures of Accumulation An Empirical Study with a Political Economy Interpretation

  2. The Purpose of this Essay • My argument is about the foothills and mountains of moral reasoning about issues related to tenancy. • In part 2 I give an empirical grounding and methodology. • In part 3 I explore the complex moral reasoning used in the tenancy literature. • In part 4, I give empirical findings using SSA with NVIVO case-material.

  3. Shepherds vie with the bus, bike and motorbike on a rural road. A man is watering cows in precious water. This source serves at least 800 households i.e. 4000 people. Visitor Wendy is welcomed to the post office by local dalit people and friends for a discussion.

  4. Firewood collected from the nearby “jungle” (as old maps call it) is sorted carefully. It uses up newish treelimbs and fallen logs.

  5. Indian Tenancy, A Microcosm of the Gender, Caste and Class Relations in Rural India • Class of tenant is not necessarily far from that of the landlord. However, in general in my study villages, sharecropping is still frequent and covers the tillage of a good chunk of the arable irrigated land. • Gendered work relations are hidden and masked by household quasi-masculinity, but work is highly feminised on the rented land. • Stereotypical domination of particular tasks by men causes the men to earn high daily wages but low annual agricultural earnings.

  6. 2. Methodology for this Paper • Triangulation of data from local questionnaires, local interviews in two villages, and revisit to families who were surveyed in 1995 • An awareness of the depth of people’s commitments and their interpenetrating existence as members of household, of couple, of a class, of a caste and sub-caste • A sense of agency for those who engage in tenancy: they ‘try’ to best set up the institution

  7. Initial hypotheses to explore • 1. do people ‘choose’ their tenancy relations and the decisions within that setting? • 2. do ‘constraints’ bind people and, if so, is that an adequate analysis of social class and caste factors? • 3. what strategies and decision processes actually happen?

  8. Caste Relations • The name ‘reddy’ is used for many landowners and refers to a cluster of sub-castes. Some are vegetarian and some are not; these two rarely inter-marry each other. • The landlords are frequently reddies but the tenants are rarely so. • Fieldwork is ongoing; 1995 caste of tenants is shown below.

  9. Caste of the Tenant Households • 14% Muslim, a local minority group • (vs. 1% of non-tenants are muslim) • 22% Dalit, who are 28% of the population • 36% ‘backward’ castes, who form just 28% of the local population. • 13 tenant households are from ‘forward’ other castes, out of 41 tenant households.

  10. Caste of the Landlord Households • 94% of all supervisor/ landlord class households are from the ‘forward’ other castes, such as Reddy and Vaishya (landlord and merchant) • 15 of the ‘forward’ other households rented land out. There are only 25 such households among 120 sampled hhs! • No Muslims, one Dalit, and one BC hhs rented land out – in other words, no reverse tenancy here.

  11. Methodological Note • Random sampling was used to get 60 households from each of 2 villages 5 km apart. One village is more developed than the other in a number of ways. • Each has 30% mala, madiga • Muslims (15%) • But both villages have a wide range of other castes including reddies, a few brahmins, plenty of merchants, valmikis and potters.

  12. Update Study in 2006 • From the 1995 respondents, all tenants and some other households are being chased up. • Some have migrated out. The water situation is very difficult. Both rain and paid daily wage labour are erratic at best. • Firewood is being cut at ½” diameters. • Terrible poverty, but joy over microfinance loans, with which some women buy cows.

  13. Free codes to examine the a priori themes Choice, constraint worked well Bargaining didn’t; it seems to refer to underlying real resources about which people don’t talk much. Tree nodes for class, caste, and gender structures Ex post inductive nodes for what I learned from the interviews (ongoing) Interesting forms of agency! Use of NVIVO Software

  14. Part 3: Complex Moral Reasoning • Complex moral reasoning uses counterfactuals to argue that situation X would be better than current situation N. Or that situation Y in China is better than situation N here now. The counterfactuals cover only part of the whole complex reality of the social world. So this whole narrative is constructed as a partial view.

  15. Complex Moral Reasoning – Six Main Approaches: • Pareto Optimality, Pareto Dominance Reasoning • Development-Through-Growth Reasoning • Human Capabilities Reasoning

  16. Three more examples • Transformative reasoning: • Kalpagam’s theory for India • Ramana’s theory, integrating environmental degradation with the social concern about commodification • Political economy of poverty as revealing modes of exploitation which need to be changed • (Better to know your devil than not know it)

  17. Finally, • 5) Redistributive reasoning • Income compression through tax • Asset compression through redistribution • Asset compression through policies making it easier for the poor to rent land, hence to access it. • 6) Social equality reasoning.

  18. Tenancy Policy Literature • Strand 1) redistributive counterfactuals, growth scenarios, and advocacy of commodification – dominant strand. • Strand 2) social equality scenarios, specificity of each locale [anthropology] • Strand 3) a recognition of the semantics and tensions of struggle over land/water

  19. 4: Findings (Using NVIVO Case Material) • Each case lies in 1995 and 2006/7 data • Both households and people are ‘cases’ • For people, we have 10 interviews so far • These are coded by a priori and ex post coding nodes, such as ‘choice’, ‘felt constraints’ …’flexibility’, ‘threats’ and ‘rewards’. • Then quotes can be re-visited (“Browsed”)

  20. The importance of ‘proper behaviour’ of workers: Q- …do you do regular unpaid work for the landlord?:Eswaramma:- …Bringing grass for their cow, watering the animal, watching their fields ,watering their gardens. After the harvest we take the fodder. But the landlord ask us to provide fodder to his cow then we oblige and give fodder to his cow ….cut coconuts from the tree …We do not clean his house and wash dishes.Q2: Why do you do this work?Eswaramma: Out of obligation and some kind of fear we accept the work and sometimes they give us money …R:-If we refuse to do [this] work he may not give out his land for koruku for us. We are doing cultivation in his land and sharing half and half harvest. So we do the work.Eswaramma, a landless woman in the more developed village of Yetavaakili

  21. The Same Woman Also Said:‘Yes some times we do not go to [kuulie] work to a person who ill treats us.Q:-Please explain clearly Eswaramma:- I go for kuulie to a particular person. That landlady never allows us to take rest even for ten minutes. She calls for work at 8.30am. Actually we go for kuulie work at 9.00am. She even does not put sufficient curry in our lunch. We keep all these things in mind and if the same person calls for work next time we do not say NO directly. We simply say that we have another work to attend . So we do not come. On that day we go and fetch fodder for our cattle. If they are generous and kind towards us we shall go and do kuulie work for them whole-heartedly.’(Illustrates manipulation of employers other than the landlord)

  22. There is subtle manipulation of landlords by this worker, too:Q- At times your decision [about crop] may be correct and the landlord’s decision is incorrect; in this situation what would you like to say? Eswaramma: In that case we simply keep quiet. After some time he realizes his mistake and gives values to our decision.Q:- Did it happen at any time?E:- Yes it happened. Because we are taking decision depending on the vast experience in the cultivation. So our decisions are valuable.Q- I mean your landlord respects your decision also?E:- Oh, Yes. We also respect his decisions.

  23. My research adds to this: • Choice is not ever-present, nor exhausts the modes of reasoning used, • Nor does resource-use efficiency, although this logic is present. • Multiple aims of actors are audible. • Agrarian output growth is not simply a desirable, feasible, sole long-term objective. The blanket advocacy of commodification is a foothill of moral reasoning. • The quality of relationships is valued in itself.

  24. Advantages of SSA Here • India moved into a new era in 1991. However, choice is not present as free-choice in these villages, so ‘liberalised India’ is an exaggeration • ‘Constraint’ is also not a sufficient way to treat class/caste relations. • The dynamics of caste involve agents and these are agents of change. Some stay and some leave the village. • Those left in rural areas have complex strategies for achieving self-respect. This is a form of substantive agency.

  25. Does SSA Ignore Workers’ Agency? • The agency of workers has created a number of new opportunities in the villages • Some are not feasible (Sayer suggests that change-proposals need to be assessed for feasibility, whether from the Right [more cows] or the Left [less class exploitation] • Some are feasible • Protection from drought is essential

  26. Final hypotheses generated • 1. ‘Choice’ among tenants is valued in itself and is thought to reflect valued practices of friendship with trust. (punishment is used) • 2. ‘Constraints’ do bind people but social class and caste factors are augmented by social agency (attempts in context) • One factor for poor people is an inability to critique the rich, but it seems to be common today in the villages to be quite critical of others’ behaviour and ‘standards’ • 3. The strategies include maintaining flexibility in a semi-arid climate; maintaining strong family responsibility which shapes decisions; maintaining ‘proper’ relations • Buzz words used here are affection, values, respect, ‘adjust’

  27. Micro moral economy • These modes of agency reflect the values intrinsic to specific practices • (MacIntyre, 1985 and 1990) • Balihar Sanghera and Fergus Lyon are also working on trust and respect

  28. Concluding Remarks • The export of capital out of villages contributes to the current rural crisis • Hard to prove this but for example, local landlords hold stocks and shares, bonds and other assets on Bombay stock exchange, houses and property in Bangalore, etc. • This driving force of capitalism is outside of workers’ direct control. • Raising consciousness is worthy but is not a ‘complex’ enough moral reasoning for rural areas. • This echoes Sayer’s critique of Critical Soc.Science • Criticising water over-use invokes complex moral reasoning. (cf. assumptions about growth)

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