The labour solidarities that emerged drawing inspiration from the struggle at the borders of Delhi, pose a threat to the anti-labour, anti-farmer, and pro-corporate authoritarian regime. This movement is seeing politics in command, opening realms of possibilities for new alliances, and of decentring existing axes of social and economic power.
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FOR 16 months from August 2020 to December 2021, thousands of Indian farmers and farm workers led a protest movement which was one of the longest in the recent history of India. They were protesting the sweeping neoliberal legislation passed by the government that would further impoverish farmers who have been struggling for years, as demonstrated by the huge number of on-going farmer and labour suicides.
The new laws would have removed protections and opened up Indian agriculture to global market forces.
Eventually, due to the farmers’ resolve and their militant organising, the government was forced to repeal the laws.
Also read: How the farmers who forced the repeal of three farm laws drew inspiration from the freedom struggle
The movement, and the way in which it was organised, marked a stunning success in the resistance to neoliberalism and the corporatisation of Indian agriculture. By forging new solidarities across class, caste, gender and religion, the farmers’ unions and their leadership attempted to build resistance not only to neoliberalism but also to divisive right-wing authoritarian politics. Most importantly, the farmers’ mobilisation not only drew attention to the hardships farmers were enduring, it also made visible the plight of rural agriculture labour.
By forging new solidarities across class, caste, gender and religion, the farmers’ unions and their leadership attempted to build resistance not only to neoliberalism but also to divisive right-wing authoritarian politics.
The story of farm unions is well known but behind their strength that the nation witnessed, also lie the struggles and solidarities of farm labour. This piece is a tribute to Punjab’s farm labourers on this May Day, and to express solidarity with their struggles.
It is observed in some literature, that farm labourers who have a high stake in food price stability and have interests at variance with labour reforms that are already assaulting their work conditions and safety, hardly figured in the farmers’ protest. But the reality is more complex than it appears.
As for physical presence at the morcha, foregoing daily labour to be present, was not an option for farm labourers. They survive on their daily labour— the sale of labour power for daily reproduction. However, they kept coming to the protest sites and the farm labour unions pushed the agenda of labour within the movement. Farm labour unions in Punjab and other places issued statements in solidarity with the protesting farmers, and the farmers’ unions adopted the salutation “mazdoor-kisan ekta, zindabad!” (Long live the unity of labour and farmers).
As they came on to the protest stage, and received a platform and an opportunity which allowed all the oppressed to talk about their experience of being bled by corporate greed, of livelihoods destroyed, and lives made miserable through the communal agenda of the right-wing majoritarian regime, the agricultural labourers— women and men— opened up the agrarian crisis writ large on their lives from a new location.
Plight of farm labour
The agrarian crisis is not killing just farmers but also agricultural labour, and perhaps more fiercely, more cruelly.
The last census of India in 2011 returned 144 million rural agricultural workers, which represented an increase of almost 38 million from 2001, and is nearly double the figure from 1991. The number of women agricultural workers increased from 27.2 million in 1991 to a whopping 61.6 million in 2011.
As agriculture became more and more mechanised, labour got increasingly marginalised and unorganised, and it became clear that there were no gains in real wages. The increase in the real value of wages was much smaller than the growth rate of output.
On the other hand, the Labour Bureau estimates for real wages from 2014–15 to 2021–22 for agriculture labour showed the real wages growth rate in this period as below 1 percent (0.9 percent, precisely). (That of construction workers is 0.2 percent, and non-agriculture workers, 0.3 percent). The Labour Bureau data also suggests that for seven activities specific to agriculture, wages received by women were, on average, 35.8 percent lower than wages received by men (for the period between 1998–2015). Tamil Nadu (75.2 percent) had the highest wage gap, followed by Karnataka (54.8 percent) and Maharashtra (48.9 percent) among all states.
The 2021 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data on suicides, which provides disaggregated information, reveals that the share of daily wagers among those who die by suicide in the country has increased steadily and makes for more than a quarter of such deaths. One in four of the recorded 1,64,033 suicide victims during 2021 was a daily wage earner. The number of these daily wage earners’ suicides rose from 32,563 in 2019, to 37,666 in 2020— which is when the COVID-induced national lockdown was imposed— to 42,004 in 2021. During the first lockdown, lakhs of migrant daily wage labourers were left unemployed overnight and had to make their way back to their villages on foot.
The plight of the migrant daily wage earners is firmly linked to the plight of the agricultural labour whose simple reproduction is now increasingly fragmented and dispersed. The NCRB figures for the previous three years for which disaggregated data is available, show that agricultural labour suicide numbers are steadily increasing and surpass the number of farmer suicides.
Also read: The Price of Opposing Farm Laws: More Than Two Deaths a Day
The Green Revolution technology adversely impacted the condition of agricultural labour. Wage employment initially went up as a result of double cropping patterns, and monetary wages also increased. But as agriculture became more and more mechanised, labour got increasingly marginalised and unorganised, and it became clear that there were no gains in real wages. The increase in the real value of wages was much smaller than the growth rate of output.
Female agricultural labourers especially worse off
During the period from 1961 to 1977, for example, output went up to more than two and half times its level in 1961, but real wages at best registered an increase of 15 percent. As for wages of women agricultural labourers, analysis of real wages in 1979 showed that between 1961 and 1977, the real wages of women farm workers increased somewhat till 1967, but declined drastically afterwards and never reached the 1967 levels again. In cotton picking, where there was the highest concentration of women workers, real wages were lower in 1977 than they were in the early sixties.
Control over village commons not only enhanced landowners’ returns, but it also simultaneously increased the vulnerability of the landless as they become more dependent on landowners for employment, fodder for their cattle, land for homesteads and even for the use of fields for defecation.
Since the Green Revolution took off, rural labour has been written out of policy. They have experienced complete neglect and total stagnation in their employment and wages. In Green Revolution areas, mechanised farming has made it hard for agricultural wage labour to find work in all seasons, and for women, work is even scarcer. In Punjab, for instance, women are almost entirely out of operations associated with the wheat crop; they find rice planting at times for a few days, and it is only in cotton picking, which is not yet mechanised, that they find some paid work. The vegetable and citrus growing belt generates additional days of wage work, but the entire work put together does not exceed 150 days in a year, and this includes work under the government’s rural employment guarantee scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA).
The nature of the work in rural areas has also changed. My field work in Punjab shows that the work is overwhelmingly contract work, at piece rate, which is given to the man, who engages his wife and children in these operations. Rates are calculated per hectare of rice planted, quintal of cotton picked, hectare of hay baled, and so on. The daily wage rates on vegetable and fruit farms, where women are concentrated, are almost one-third lower than the stipulated minimum wage.
When men migrate to nearby cities and towns, both as skilled labourers and as unskilled workers on construction sites and other odd jobs, women stay behind to look after the children and desperately seek opportunities for wage work. If agricultural work is scarce, non-farm work is even scarcer. The women are landless and asset-less, representing the most marginalised section of agricultural wage workers.
Agrarian crisis brought to light by the movement
The farmers’ movement of 2020–21 was successful in bringing the focus back on the agrarian crisis in the public imagination. In the overall environment of heightened political consciousness about the processes of differentiation and dispossession in rural India, as the farmers’ movement grew, rural labour unions started mobilising labour and the landless in states on their specific demands.
In Punjab, seven rural labour unions came together in mid-2021 to form a united front, the Sanjha Mazdoor Morcha (United Labour Front) on the lines of the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM) around the specific demands of rural labour and landless farm workers.
Just like the farmers’ unions, the farm labour unions in Punjab have a rich history which goes back to anti-colonial struggles, and the peasant and labour struggles of the late 1950s, such as the one against the anti-betterment levy, fought jointly. From fighting jointly with peasants to mobilising and organising independently on labour demands from the 1990s onwards, these unions of farm labour have been building up in different parts of Punjab, fighting the agrarian crisis and the social and economic power which emerged in rural Punjab as a result of the Green Revolution.
Over the last two decades, farmer unions mobilised farm workers— women and men— and fought long-drawn and difficult struggles for their right over panchayat land, against land acquisition, for land pattas for homestead, the waiver of non-institutional debt, compensation for suicides, and wage losses due to crop failure.
Over the years, following the Green Revolution, land became a highly precious resource. The big Jat landowners increased their control over land, and lower caste landless labourers’ rights over commons slowly slipped away. The upper caste landowners with social, political and economic clout leveraged their position to gain control over the village commons. This control not only enhanced landowners’ returns, but it also simultaneously increased the vulnerability of the landless as they became more dependent on landowners for employment, fodder for their cattle, land for homesteads and even for the use of fields for defecation.
In addition, the changes in land use for development projects further marginalised the landless as not only did their employment shrink, with land being diverted from cultivation to development projects, they also lost homes and the right to live in the villages where they and their ancestors had always lived.
These changes and the land acquisition policies are increasingly reducing agricultural labour to perennial casual labour, forcing the men to go out to towns and cities to seek casual employment, leaving women to fend for the families by themselves. But there is an acute lack of earning options for women, and they remain stuck in extremely low paying, back-breaking odd jobs in the village.
Dairy remains an important income-generating activity, which is why a place to tie cows and collect fodder is so critical. Livelihoods, a life of dignity, and freedom from tyranny rest on being able to obtain control over some land.
From the 1990s, a number of labour unions were formed which mounted resistance to the village social and economic power, and fought the State apathy towards farm labour. The Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union, the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha, the Pendu Mazdoor Union, the Krantikari Pendu Mazdoor Union, the Zameen Prapti Sangharsh Committee, and the Dehati Mazdoor Union have come up in this context in the last two decades or so.
Over these years, these unions mobilised farm workers— women and men— and fought long drawn and difficult struggles for their right over panchayat land, against land acquisition, for land pattas for homestead, the waiver of non-institutional debt, compensation for suicides, and wage losses due to crop failure. As people on the lowest rung of the social and economic ladder, all odds were stacked against them, yet the labour unions kept the battle for justice going.
When farmers, led by unions from Punjab, marched to Delhi in November 2020, the farm labour unions supported the farmers demands and formed the joint agricultural labour front.
In August 2021, the united labour front gave a call for a three-day protest sit-in in Patiala, Punjab, to press for their long-pending demands. A joint demand charter of the front was presented at a mammoth meeting of the rural poor and landless labour, which included a significant presence of women labourers. It demanded the repeal of the three farm laws and the new labour codes, three of which were also passed in the same session of the Parliament in September 2020.
Also read: Basic labour rights under new labour codes
The United Labour Front demanded that the debt waiver scheme of the State must include non-institutional and small cooperative societies’ loans which the landless and the rural labourers accessed but had still been kept outside the ambit of debt waiver schemes. They asked for land for landless labourers for farming and for building houses.
The Labour Front leaders emphatically declared that a broad united movement was the only answer to the unequal division of land, for the economic and social security of rural labour, and for ensuring a life of dignity.
Further, drawing attention to the fact that the agrarian crisis is not limited to farmers and the burden is equally borne by the landless, they asked for compensation and jobs for the families of landless farm labourers who committed suicide due to farm distress.
The front also demanded that MNREGA work be expanded to provide employment for a full year for all members of the family, the MGNREGA daily wage be increased, and the Public Distribution System be strengthened to ensure food and nutritional security of the rural poor.
They demanded one-third of the panchayat land be given on long-term lease to Dalits, following the Punjab Village Common Lands (Regulation) Act, 1961 to ensure security of livelihoods and dignity of the landless. According to the 1961 Act, panchayats lease village common land annually to the highest bidder on the condition that a third is reserved for the Scheduled Castes and auctioned separately.
Yet, for years now, the big Jat-Sikh landowners have been subverting the process by bidding for reserved lands in the name of Dalits or through proxy candidates. They raised a voice against caste oppression of Dalits, sexual oppression of Dalit women, and for enhancing social security for those workers who are unable to work due to old age.
Also read: Farm Laws: Farming towards an Executive Overreach of the Judiciary
Forging of a broad coalition
In a unique act of building a new class solidarity among all those who have been pushed to the margins through the processes of socio-economic differentiation, the landless labour unions, while demanding redistribution of land to the Dalit landless, also demanded land for the Jat farmers who became landless due to the crisis of rising costs and falling agriculture incomes. It was clear to see the convergence of interests of all those— irrespective of their caste— who face employment and land squeeze as the State facilitates the land sales market and enables the entry of transnational, agribusiness corporations into the fields.
The Labour Front leaders emphatically declared that a broad united movement was the only answer to the unequal division of land, for the economic and social security of rural labour, and for ensuring a life of dignity. Resolutions were also passed for the withdrawal of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and other preventive detention laws, and the release of all the intellectuals arrested under these laws.
The front received the support of several unions of farmers, industrial workers, Pepsico workers and MGNREGA workers. The front was a significant development and an important articulation in the new socio-economic reality of rural India, where rural labour is written out of policy and reduced to a welfare category in development discourse.
Suggestions made to AAP government in Punjab
Recently, the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab announced that it will release its Agriculture Policy by mid-May. The unions associated with the front drafted an agriculture policy paper from farm labour’s perspective, released it to the cadres and submitted it to the government.
The paper identified major impediments in the development of the agricultural sector in Punjab, and the destruction of the life and livelihoods of the farm workers. They identified high rent seeking by big landlords, the high interest rates which the moneylender extorted as banks withdrew credit facilities for the poor, and the transnational corporations’ control over agricultural inputs, as the major factors holding back the development of the agrarian economy.
They argued that the farm labourers are the biggest victims of this rent seeking and corporate loot. Their labour is the backbone for agriculture produce, but their share is meagre because they are neither the owners of land, nor the owners of agricultural implements, nor have access to credit. Farm labourers are forced to endure a slave-like situation in the agricultural sector which, under the Green Revolution technology package, and unnecessary and expensive mechanisation, severely reduced the work opportunities in agriculture for farm labourers, they argued.
They demanded that Punjab’s agriculture policy should give a central place to the concerns of poor farmers and farm labourers, and work for self-reliance in the country’s food production, an increase in employment opportunities, the conservation of soil and water resources, environmental protection and chemical-free crop production.
Importance of the movement
These are the most significant issues for this country which workers are raising and building their actions around. The labour solidarities that emerged drawing inspiration from the struggle at the borders of Delhi, pose a threat to the anti-labour and farmer, and pro-corporate authoritarian regime. This movement is seeing politics in command, opening realms of possibilities for new alliances, and of decentring existing axes of social and economic power.
It is this realm of possibilities which needs to be explored, supported and consolidated. Now is the time to do this, to build up, and to contribute to strengthening the emerging possibilities.
Also read: Farmers’ protest – an ode to people’s movements in democracies
The movement of labour is addressing the agrarian crisis from a location which is seldom articulated. It is throwing open the prospects for a progressive politics, primarily from the perspective of labour but these sites of struggle also open up opportunities for many more alliances across class, gender, caste and religion.
These movements are a ray of hope for this country plunging into darkness. As labourers cultivate progressive futures for a just society through their struggles and alliances, on this May Day, we must resolve to stand in solidarity with their struggles.
