Grain of truth

Grain of truth
Yoginder K Alagh

Markets don't match them

Walking in dry villages in Gujarat and Maharashtra is a favourite pastime. This time it was not very far from the area where the Narmada Bachao Andolan was showing its own irrelevance. Dattatreya Kailashnath Magar and his brother have a joint family of six girls and three boys. The two brothers, their wives and their father Dattatreya have therefore fourteen people who live off seven acres of land. Fifteen years ago this was a family living precariously. They had only four and a half acres of land and some sheep.

When Dattatreya took over the reigns he bought another two and a half acres of dry land, after selling the sheep and borrowing some money. Bajra yields were low in this rainshadow area and in two years out of five, the rains would fail. They family members would search for nonexisting work. They would get close to the hunger line.

Around twelve years ago, lady luck smiled. Surplus water from a canal was lifted to the area. Dattatreya lived in by the karkhana,one of the better run coops. When I walked in there was electricity and a television.

Existence is not no longer precarious. But I have yet to meet a farmer who will say he is happy. Water is still scarce and has to be used wisely even with percolation and a pump. The karkhana charges a fair rate for providing water from the lift. But he only has enough to put in around two and a half acres under cane. There is a deeper reason. This is the fixed high income source. They get advance as soon as the cane is delivered to the karkhana, while the final settlement takes ti-me. Dattatreya doesn't know it, but he is applying the first lesson of economics.

You make your fixed income and then optimise at the margin. So with the rest of his land, Dattatreya tries to make as much ca-sh as he can. In around an acre he grows lucerne. Th-ey have five crossbred cows, three calves and two bullocks. The earlier local cows have been replaced and a lot of the families' labour is used to look after the fragile crossbreds.They sell milk. In the kharif in one acre they grow bajra and rabi wheat,. In the rest, vegetables, some fruit trees or leave it fallow.

Dattatreya should be happy. He says life is treating him badly. He is particularly bitter about pesticide prices. I tell him to stop being funny, because he is obviously doing well. What he is worried about is really not a fall in prices, but the great fluctuation in them. The milk coop doesn't pay anymore. The private trade can pay between six and nine rupees on the same day, in different locations, for a litre of milk. He is const-antly wondering why some of them don't go to work on other people's fa-rms, rather than lo-ok after the cows.

Dattatreya is not worse off than fifteen years ago. But life is certainly mo-re uncertain for him. My colleague who is translating from Marathi tells me that liberalisation has failed and we must work out a new economic system for him. I try to convince him that Dattatreya doesn't have to solve complex economic systems and that heis probably managing fairly well under the circumstances and we would probably botch up things more by interfering in the market.

Before I leave, it turns out that the muglis are not studying beyond class ten. I ask him why? He says he is a Hindu. I tell him so am I, but I worked hard to send my mugli to college in America and that life is changing very fast. He agrees, but says, we are like that. Incidentally, Dattatreya is completely indifferent to using public or private sector services for vet, fertiliser, seeds or credit. Alternative distribution channels are working and prices are not very different. He does however want the uncertainty in his life to be reduced by the government and yearns for the good old days. I tell him its not going to happen and he will have to learn to play the market.

Ramesh Gade has a four-acre farm in the same area. But water is not being lifted there. In two and a half acres he is growing soya and in the remaining land, drumsticks intercropped with guava trees. In thewinter he plants an acre with wheat. He is far more dependent on the rains. Last year he got yield of fifteen quintals a hectare from the soya. This year he is getting seven, because the rains failed. He is again like Dattatreya, very bitter about the market. Why didn't you fellows complain? It was election time and they wouldn't listen to us. But next year, we will get it from them. He is proud of his wife because she is a good farmer and makes some fairly desperate suggestions to get water.

There is overflow on the other side of the ridge in a canal and that could be piped to us. Also an old percolation tank can be repaired. I tell him we will get it looked into. On the other side of the ridge, they are wasting water, he says. I tell him he is probably correct, but it is difficult to withdraw water. He ruefully agrees.

It is silly to think that we can do better than the market. But we haven't prepared Dattatreya and Gade for the cold shower and neither are we making markets better for them.