Adversities in the agricultural sector in Sundarbans trigger migration of the young generation in search of fixed income. Climate change and the government’s failure to provide sufficient opportunities to these farmers are affecting the future of their educated younger generation.
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ARUN Mondal’s son went to Tamil Nadu as an agricultural labourer last November despite his father owning 10 bighas (1 bigha = 0.619 acre) of land in Pakhiralay village in the Gosaba Block of Sundarbans, West Bengal. However, eight bighas of the land were leased out for ₹50,000 to other farmers, and the remaining two bighas are kept for the annual food stock for his own family.
“Jomi rekhe hobe ta ki?” (What’s the point of keeping the lands?), said Mondal. “We barely get any profit out of the crops. The climate is adverse. The expenditure is also high. Tamil Nadu is far better. My son earns a good amount at the end of the season,” he added.
The loss of hope
Since the severe cyclonic storm Aila made landfall in Sundarbans, West Bengal in May 2009, there has been a fundamental change in the agrarian economy of the region.
The influx of salt water into the fields affected the fertility of the soil and, therefore, the harvest. Once the scale of the damage started to sink in, landowning farmers began either to lease out their land or leave it fallow altogether as they themselves migrated out of the region in search of work. People who otherwise had other livelihoods, began to lease small portions of land from these often-unscrupulous landowners and take up farming, only to realise that the yield was just not going to be good enough for profits.
However, the migration from Sundarbans has spiked since the COVID pandemic in 2020 and the very severe cyclonic storm Yaas hitting the eastern coast of India in 2021. Though the exact number of outgoing migrants from the region is unknown as no government body— from the local panchayats to the Sundarbans Development Board (SDB) maintains any record— there is a common saying among the locals: “Sundarbaner ghore ghore akhon akta kore migration aachhe” (Every household in Sundarbans now has someone who has migrated).
Sundarbans farmers now go to Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in groups of 10–15, seeking work during the harvest. They earn ₹40,000–45,000 every season, which gets equally divided among the team members. But this source of fixed income makes them feel secure.
“It’s better to earn four to five thousand (rupees) by working on others’ land than getting merely two to three thousand (rupees) for four bastas (1 basta = 60 kg) of paddy after cultivating your own land. We go there twice a year. We make around ₹10,000 every year,” said Kanchan Mondal, the brother of Arun Mondal.
Back home, these farmers engage themselves either in their own lands or any small livelihood works for the rest of the year. Many of them again work as agricultural labourers in the village. Some of them also prefer to go to urban areas to work at construction sites.
The relationship between landowning farmers and landless farmers
Madhabi Sarkar used to be a prawn seed collector. But she started working as an agricultural labourer in Kumirmari, another village in Gosaba Block in 2011, two years after Aila. Her husband also started migrating for work. She seemed distressed with their paddy harvest this year.
She and her husband took two bighas of land on lease for ₹20,000 four years ago. Their contract ended in 2020. But the landlord refused to take the land back and return their money. They don’t even have any documents to stake their claim, because the lease was on the basis of a verbal agreement (agricultural land leasing is not banned in West Bengal, but it includes a complicated process which is not understandable to most of the villagers. Some of them are not even aware of it.)
“My husband resumed labouring in fields after the pandemic. We took this land on a lease. We thought cultivation is always more profitable than labour work. The prawn seeds are also not worth earning sufficiently. But the cyclones made it worse. The saline water damages the field for the next two to three years once a cyclone erupts in the region. And it happens almost every year,” Sarkar told us.
Experts say that soil salinity below 1.8–2 ppt (parts per trillion) is favourable for paddy cultivation. But this is surpassed after every cyclone (for example, it was 5.25 ppt after Aila). Once the saline water floods the land, it takes three to four years thereafter to get the land to its previous condition.
Sundarbans is the most vulnerable to the proliferating cyclones in the Bay of Bengal. The region has had at least one intense cyclone every year in the last decade. Aila (2009) and Amphan (2020) are still nightmares for the residents of Sundarbans. Additionally, rising sea levels and floods due to the cyclones and climate change cause, to some extent, permanent damage to the soil by increasing its standard salinity level.
For example, Gosaba’s (which is one of the most vulnerable among the 19 blocks of Sundarbans due to its lower elevation, of only 6 metres) average soil salinity reached 2–2.6 ppt post-monsoon in the last decade, while it was only an average of 1.4–1.6 ppt earlier in the pre-monsoon time.
Cultivating salinity-tolerant species of rice is also not a solution for farmers as those varieties of paddy fail to fetch a potent demand .
Scientists predict that good agricultural conditions might never return to the Sundarbans region anymore.
Despite all these adversities, Sundarbans farmers like to keep a small piece of land because, as per Sarkar, “land is always land. It is the prestige of the farmers. Moreover, we get our annual rice stock with the crops we produce on our land. That’s all we want. The market price of rice is unaffordable. But the cyclones don’t want us to get even that.”
She managed to harvest only four bastas this year when a bigha is supposed to, on an average, yield 10 bastas as excessive salinity damaged the fertility of the land.
Both the landlords and landless farmers want to keep only a small area of land. The landlord who holds a big area wants to lease it out instead of keeping it fallow. But they also keep one or two bighas for producing their own food stock. The landless farmer also wants the same.
Land leasing is not a new business in Sundarbans. It started when the mouza system in West Bengal during the 1970s recognised the land rights of the people who came from Kolkata and neighbouring districts (mostly the urban poor) and became landlords overnight by seizing the abandoned lands of the British immediately after independence in 1947.
The people whom we recognise as landless farmers today are majorly the descendants of the people who migrated to the region much later in search of income after failing to cope with the expensive urban set-up. Though they managed to build a small house on a small area of land, no huge portion of land was left for them to cultivate. These people largely engaged themselves in forest works, fishery, and other small livelihood works, and some of them rarely used to take the lands on lease for cultivation.
However, the large number of landless farmers today in Sundarbans is the outcome of Aila. If you speak to them, most of them will say that they took the land on lease within the last five to eight years.
According to the Sundarbans Field Supervisor of the Nature Environment and Wildlife Society, a conservation non-governmental organisation, Provash Mondal, Aila was a turning point for the entire farmers’ community. They lost all their hope in agriculture; thereafter, landowning farmers started leasing out the major portions of their land holdings based on verbal contracts.
They refuse to take the lands back as they earn more out of leasing. They get a big amount at one go once they lease the land out. They can also enjoy all the government’s beneficial schemes for farmers because only the landowners are eligible for those schemes.
Landless farmers are not only excluded from all government benefits, but are also forced to sell their paddy to the local dealers at a price of ₹900-950 per basta, whereas the government’s Minimum Support Price is around ₹1,850 per basta. The absence of a mandi on any Sundarbans island enables these dealers to take advantage of the landless farmers.
Landless farmers use the land mainly for some additional profit (at least they will be able to produce their own food instead of buying it at a high price from the market). But they always want to return it once they realise the uncertainty of agriculture in Sundarbans due to climate change and the combined trap of local dealers and landlords.
“My husband is not well. I don’t have money. How would I return [it]?” said Pratima Mondal, Sarkar’s landlord, and also an agricultural labourer cum daily wage worker in Kumirmari, when we asked her whether she wanted to return the money.
Provash Mondal explained, “It’s true that none of the landowning and landless farmers have money. They discover various ways to earn money. But everything fails. Therefore, both of them are keeping a small land for their food stock and migrating to other places to work as agricultural labourers. The job of agricultural labourers ensures some secured income for both of them. They can do it either in the village or in different states.”
Trapped population
Arpan Naskar, a higher secondary student in the Kumirmari village in Gosaba, has already asked his father to engage him in paddy fields. “I will earn more as an agricultural labourer. It is fixed income at least. I will go to Andhra Pradesh during the off-season (August–November) here. It is also difficult and uncertain to get a job.”
Professor of the oceanography department at Jadavpur University and a project leader of the Deltas, Vulnerability And Climate Change: Migration And Adaptation (DECCMA) project, Tuhin Ghosh said, “Students like Arpan are part of the ‘trapped population’. They increase the number of agricultural labourers in Sundarbans every year.”
They are not skilled in cultivation because no farmer in Sundarbans today wants to engage their children in agriculture. But they also don’t get any formal sector jobs due to the poor quality of education and growing unemployment in the region. The only option for them is to work as agricultural labourers, since the labour market also always demands young agricultural labourers. Hence, the number of agricultural labourers in Sundarbans in the last two decades has rapidly increased, mostly constituting this young ‘trapped population’ according to research by the DECCMA.
District Census Handbook for South 24 Parganas and North 24 Parganas 2011, there are now 2.8 lakh main cultivators (landowning farmers) against 6.96 lakh agricultural labourers in the 19 blocks of Sundarbans spreading over South and North 24 Parganas. In contrast, it was 3.06 lakh of main cultivators and 4.09 lakh of agricultural labourers in 2001. However, the census defines a main cultivator as one who owns the land. The landless farmers (who take the land on lease) are identified as agricultural labourers in the census. It doesn’t provide any separate data on them.
How the farmers are turning into labourers in the Sundarbans
Source: District Census HandbooksHowever, migration is the most prominent trend among Sundarbans farmers. Ghosh explained that both the number of main cultivators and agricultural labourers will decline in Sundarbans if we exclude the landless farmers from the number of agricultural labourers.
A labour-based economy is gradually replacing Sundarbans’ farm-based economy but those labourers (majorly agricultural labourers) are not working in Sundarbans, only returning there with the income they earned in a different state. The census only counts the jobs, not the location of those jobs.
Disguised unemployment
No profession, including agriculture, is ever sustainable in Sundarbans. The cyclones, erratic rainfall, and poor market linkage with the government has made the region even more vulnerable in the last few years. Any long-term alternative vocational training project by the government has also never been conducted in the region. Small initiatives by NGOs in the region also struggle to make a difference without any government support.
The attitude of government officials in the region is often apathetic. The Joint Project Director of the Sundarbans Development Board, Arunangshu Chattaraj said, “What training will you give them? Such a programme in a vulnerable zone like Sundarbans is difficult to conduct. The migration helps the Sundarbans’ economy to be stable. It is good for Sundarbans people also.”
However, Swapan Mondal also decided to send his 16-year-old son to Tamil Nadu with his uncle to labour in the fields as he can’t afford his education anymore. But he also doesn’t want him to continue cultivation in the Sundarbans.
Arnab Mridha is a 26-year-old political science graduate who has appeared for several public service examinations in the last three years. Now he is going to Kolkata in search of a job at any construction site. He also labours in some fields in the Sundarbans where they have to share their earnings with seven to eight other boys similar to their age.
Seven people for three to four bighas might not be necessary but it only refers to the decreasing demand for agricultural labourers due to the rapid decline of the landowning farmers.
The Head of the Department of Agriculture Economics at the Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (a leading agriculture university in West Bengal), Hazrat Ali said, “Landless farmers usually avoid employing labourers in their small lands to save money. But the landowning farmers now also don’t want to employ labourers in their fields as they have only a small portion of holdings after leasing most of them out. Therefore, these labourers crowd at one field and claim their share of the earning in the amount, which remains the same every time irrespective of the number of labourers working in the field. We call it ‘disguised unemployment’.”
According to Ali, it pushes the young generation in Sundarbans to migrate to different states and get engaged in the informal sectors. The disguised unemployment never reflects in the economy of a region. Hence, the government believes it is stable and Sundarbans’ economy cannot be developed anyway.
Yet, Mridha wants to take preparation for public sector employment examinations at a leading coaching centre. Swapan Mondal also dreams of his son joining the government service. “Ashay bache chasha” (hope keeps the farmers alive) he said
