Book Review:

Democracy, Development and the Countryside- Urban Rural struggles in India By: Ashutosh Varshaney
Submitted by: Arvind Dahiya M.A. IR Semester (1)

A new specter of peasant power is likely to haunt India in coming years this quote from an editorial in Times of India talked about the rise of rural power or the rise of the countryside in the democratic Indian state in the 1970s. Not much work has been done on the countryside, its power and issues of welfare in a democratic state. The book under review Democracy, Development & the Countryside, by Ashutosh Varshaney has been an extraordinary effort in assessing the political power of the Countryside since Indias Independence, and how over time it evolved from being restricted to the local bodies to the national level, bringing up pressure on the successive governments to come up with pro-agriculture policies. Varshaney argues about the unique trajectory followed by Indias rural sector which rose in its power and strength despite of its large size defying the historical trends of the developed world. What makes it defy these trends is the precedence of democracy before industrialization has taken place which ultimately led to the empowerment of the rural sector in the Indian polity. The book has been written well with ideas presented in a simple coherent way supported by many facts and statistical graphs which develops the interest of the reader to the particular arguments. The book broadly tries to answer two questions: (i) (ii) Why and how rural India has become so powerful? and Is the rural power self limiting or what are the constraints to the rural power?

In the initial chapters, it talks about the situation of Indian agriculture at the time of Independence, showing a dark picture of Indian agriculture and how the institutional approach (which tried to change the agrarian structure) adopted in the Nehruvian era led to further stagnation of the agriculture. By drawing comparisons between the period of Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri , Indira Gandhi, Charan Singh and a few other leaders, Ashutosh Varshaney tries to come up with a comparison of the policies adopted by them and their respective impacts and on the countryside. Nehru looking at the widespread inequalities in land ownership, tenancy patterns went ahead with institutional reforms. He argued about the community values of the Indian society and ignored the price incentives. However, he gave due attention to the research and development processes and a number of research institutions came up during his period. But Nehru and his planners were reluctant to push in resources for farm machinery and fertilizers. So by 1960s his agricultural strategies were in disarray. There was no rise in the agricultural production during all these years, thus the years following Nehrus death saw a transition of the agricultural policies from institutional strategies of changing agrarian structure to raising the production through price incentives and technical change. The planners accepted that the slow growth in

the agricultural production was due to the lack of price incentives and thus a policy change was brought up. C. Subramaniam was the architect of this policy change. His agrarian model can be divided into three components: economic, technological and organizational. His economic view was that price incentive will make farmers increase the production, technology will increase the yields per acre and the organizations will make both of them work. The new approach stressed that only a few well irrigated areas would be chosen for a concentrated application which was against the Nehrus plan to develop backward areas. The result of all these efforts was the Green revolution. By 1970s Indias agricultural production reached a new high of 108.4 million tons. But what was the role of the countryside in this policy formulation? Myron Weiner studied the landlords, small peasants and the landless and concluded that none of them had a direct or indirect role in the policy formulations. Though, the landlords influenced the implementation of the policy. The battle for policy was fought within the state institutions by political leaders who had different visions of the agrarian economy and the unorganized countryside of the 1960s had no role to play in it. The 1970s were termed as a turning point for rural India with the emergence of a new agrarian force in the Indian politics. Chaudhary Charan Singh a powerful leader of the peasants brought the rural India to the uppermost strata of the power structure. Rural Political mobilization was taking roots. Varshaney draws the distinction between the Nehru era and this period by showing that agricultural prices replaced the land reforms as the major element in the agrarian unrest. The rural India was gearing up for battle with its urban counterparts. Also a leftward shift in the national politics was seen in the beginning of 1970s which pressed for Nationalization of food grains trade in 1973-74. This policy was a watershed in the evolution of State- Countryside relationship. It failed to achieve its objectives because of the sale of food grains in the open market and black marketing. The writer quotes the speech of cabinet minister Dhar and writes This was the last public speech given by a cabinet minister, or a major political leader, in India in favor of extracting surpluses from agriculture for financing development. After Dhar, no politician had the courage to argue that industrialization required a transfer of resources from agriculture. This shows the power that the rural India has captured in the Indian politics by that time whereas in the Nehru era most of the ministers talked about such surplus transfers from agriculture to industries. A comparison between the ideology of National Leaders Nehru and Singh and their ideological impacts on the agricultural policies has also been drawn. Nehru on one hand emphasized upon heavy industries, whereas Singh argued: Political power lies in the hands of urbanites to whom urban interests naturally come first." "To the town dweller," he added, "the farmer was a mere grist in the mill of economic progress on whose bones the structure of heavy industry was to be reared. Charan Singh organized a landmark peasant rally in 1978 in which 1 million peasants from throughout the country participated , which marked a shift from the unorganized rural sector of the 1950-60s to a strong and organized rural sector. The rally had two impacts (i)

Impact on the national media of the new peasant power. (ii) Restoration of Charan Singh to power.Consequently with the rise of Charan Singh to power, large scale fertilizer subsidies were introduced and Kahlon was appointed as the head of APC, who worked on the basis of a microperspective ignoring the impact of food prices on income distribution, budgetary subsidies and general price level in the economy. A distinction from Nehru era is again drawn when a macro perspective on food prices dominated the political and economic landscape. Another comparison between Subramaniam and Singh has been carved out. Subramaniam changed the agricultural policy but did not mobilize the rural India whereas Charan Singh mobilized the rural India and brought them up as a strong organized power at the national level. After Charan Singh, all political parties realized peasant power and accommodated them in their party agendas and strategies. Charan Singhs defeat at the end of 1970s was accompanied with the coming of a wave of agitations which demanded for higher agricultural prices, loan waivers and more resources for the countryside. Consequently, rural pressure began to accumulate in both party and non-party politics. Varshaney here argues that the new peasant mobilization has the support of all sections of the landed peasantry and in some cases of the landless ones also. He also presents his arguments and proves that the demand for higher agricultural prices is in the benefit of the whole farming community in the long run rather than being confined to only the upper class farmers. In the end debate has been turned towards the constraints on rural power. Varshaney says The rising political power of the countryside has run up against three countervailing factors: differential rhythms of technical change, income distribution in society, and the mounting fiscal burden of agricultural subsidies. So the next question that arises is why the growing and strong rural power is unable to overcome the forces that obstruct it? The answer to this could be :Rising rural power in the party and non party has not been equally matched by their representation in the state institutions. Also the rural power though looks united but is divided internally on various grounds of caste, religion or their personal selfish interests. When voting for a particular candidate, all these differences overpower their economic interests. The book ends on a normative note. The challenge before the farmers movements is that they should try to consolidate their strengths towards a single goal of their economic well being instead of being driven by narrow differences among themselves. And if the state wants the food grains production to be a positive sum, it should spend more on technology than on subsidies. Greater attention needs to be paid to the less advanced areas by supplying them with water and inputs so that they could grow the traditional crops and spending on R & D for the advanced regions should be increased, so that they can shift to other crops which can get them a comparatively higher price. To sum it up, the book retains its interest throughout its chapters and is an appreciable work.