What would actually be social justice in Bihar? | Number Theory

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The first and second part of this series explained how economic interests have shifted outside agriculture in Bihar, and how the state’s politics is essentially a competition between competing sub-castes which dominate the ranks of the rich while employing convenient rhetorics. The concluding part will try to show how both major alliances have silently buried the most important area which has the biggest potential to lift the fortunes of the majority in Bihar, namely, agriculture.

People wait for their turn to vote in Bihar.

What would actually be social justice in Bihar?

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  Bihar is a laggard when it comes to incomes of households invested in agriculture

  As was discussed in these pages in an earlier story, Bihar has among the largest shares of agricultural employment in the country. However, it lags the all-India average when it comes to incomes for households who have a minimum stake in agriculture which are defined as agricultural households in National Sample Survey Organisation’s (NSSO) Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) data. This disadvantage holds across all social sub-groups in Bihar. If Bihar were able to increase its per agricultural household incomes from crop production to match all-India level, it would translate to an additional income of ₹8,910 crore per year in 2018-19 (the latest period for which we have SAS data). This would amount to almost 15% of Bihar’s total Gross Value Added generated in the crop sector. No political party is seriously discussing the issue of Bihar’s low crop incomes. The only fad on Bihar’s agriculture seems to be around makhana (fox nut) production which is likely to be an extremely small part – neither state nor central government statistics even estimate the total value of output for it – of Bihar’s agricultural production portfolio.
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  A serious revival of agriculture in the state will require working with OBCs and upper castes

  Improving agricultural incomes requires working with the population which either owns land or cultivates it. SAS data shows that Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and the proverbial upper castes or persons who do not belong to Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and OBCs control more than 80% of Bihar’s agricultural land on both these counts. As is to be expected, OBCs own and operate much more land in Bihar than upper castes given the former’s much larger share in population than the latter. The fact that upper castes have a much larger share in ownership holdings than operational holdings shows that they are also absentee landlords to an extent and lease out their land to cultivators of other social groups.
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  Credit allocation data shows that Bihar’s richest farmers are not really interested in boosting farm incomes

  Among the most interesting statistics in the SAS data is one which talks about the use-wise distribution of outstanding credit for agricultural households. This use-based classification includes revenue or capital spending needs for agriculture and other uses. A comparison of this distribution for Bihar and all-India shows that Bihar has a much smaller share of outstanding credit going to agricultural households than at the national level. In a way, this denotes that Bihar’s farmers are not really interested in investing capital in farming, barring which realising higher incomes would continue to remain an elusive goal.
• What we understand...

  It is one thing to say that agriculture cannot be a vehicle for economic transformation of less developed societies, whether at the national or sub-national level. However, this should not be an excuse for not even trying to pursue income gains which can still be made in agriculture. For a state like Bihar, where agriculture continues to a very large employer, this is an even bigger crime at the policy level. Bihar’s agricultural backwardness, initially, was a result of entrenched feudal relations in the state. The rise of backward class assertion, which peaked with Lalu Yadav’s rise in Bihar’s politics, precipitated the upper caste versus backward class conflict without necessarily pushing egalitarian reforms. While Nitish Kumar initially toyed with redistributive reforms (he actually formed a commission to explore tenancy reforms) and then pro-market reforms (Bihar eradicated things such as Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees which is what the now withdrawn 2020 farm laws promised at the national level), agrarian fortunes continue to remain depressed in the state. The fact that nobody even talks about it now is the biggest testimony of the poverty of Bihar’s politics.