People's Democracy

AGRARIAN conditions in West Bengal when Left Front came to power in 1977 were described as an "impasse". Despite being endowed with fertile soil and substantial rainfall, West Bengal was left untouched by green revolution until then. Official committees as well as academic writings pointed out that semi-feudal relations of production and low levels of public investment created barriers to agricultural growth in rural West Bengal.

Implementation of land reforms was on the top of the agenda of the Left Front government formed in 1977. An important aspect of this agenda was the understanding that implementation of land reforms and economic development in rural West Bengal were crucially linked to decentralisation and democratisation of political power in rural West Bengal. The twin programme of implementation of land reforms and reorganisation of panchayats constituted what was later called the "policy of walking on two legs". This historic idea laid the foundations of a unique path to rural development in India, a path that led rural West Bengal out of economic stagnation and a large proportion of its rural population out of extreme forms of deprivation and poverty.

In this article I would like to briefly outline the achievements of West Bengal under the Left Front in terms of effective implementation of a programme of limited land reforms and establishment of a democratic system of local government that has been functioning for over two decades. I shall then discuss some of the outcomes of these initiatives in the area of rural development. Finally, I shall discuss why it is important to underline these achievements at this moment as the Left Front government completes its 25 years in power.

Implementation of land reforms has been one of the most important achievements of the Left Front government in West Bengal. It is because of the political will of the Left Front government that West Bengal, along with Kerala, can boast of having done the most successful implementation of land reforms in the country.

The land reforms in West Bengal had two important components: tenancy reforms and redistribution of land. The tenancy reforms in the State were implemented through a massive campaign -- popularly known as Operation Barga -- for registration of the names of bargadars (sharecroppers) in the land records. All registered tenants were provided, by enactment of an effective amendment to the land reform legislation, a permanent and heritable right to cultivate the leased in land. Operation Barga involved registration of 1.4 million bargadars, of which over 30 per cent were dalits and over 12 per cent were adivasis. Through Operation Barga, about 1.1 million acres of land was permanently brought under the control of bargadars and their right to cultivate this land was secured.

Operation Barga effectively put a stop to the eviction of sharecroppers and made the statutory terms of sharecropping contracts enforceable. Apart from these direct benefits, the registration of bargadars also provided the State an instrument to use for provision of subsidised credit in the form of barga loans to the sharecroppers.

The second component of land reform comprised acquisition of ceiling surplus land and its redistribution among the poor and the landless. Once again, Kisan Sabha played an important role in helping the government identify benami lands that the landlords had been able to transfer through fraudulent transactions during the long period of non-implementation of the land reform legislation that had been enacted half-heartedly by the Congress governments. In all, the government was able to acquire about 1.37 million acres of land under the land reform legislation. Land vested under the land reforms legislation in West Bengal, the state which accounts for only about 3.5 per cent of the total agricultural land in India, constitutes about 18 per cent of total land acquired in all states under land reform legislation. The land vested by the State through the land reform legislation was redistributed among the landless and marginal cultivator households: In all, about 1.04 million acres of land have been distributed to about 2.5 million households. The land redistributed in West Bengal under land reform constitutes about 20 per cent of the total land redistributed in India.

The redistribution of land greatly benefited the socially weaker sections of the society. About 55 per cent of the land reform beneficiaries belonged to the scheduled castes and tribes. West Bengal has also pioneered the idea of incorporating a dimension of women’s empowerment in the implementation of land reform by giving as many as 5 lakh joint land titles and 50,000 individual land titles to women. Apart from the agricultural land redistributed under the land reform, homestead lands have been given to about 5 lakh households belonging to agricultural labour, fishing and artisan households.

An important aspect of the Left Front government’s commitment towards implementation of land reforms is that the initiatives in this direction have been continuing even after 25 years of the government being in power. Most importantly, the initiatives for implementation of land reforms have continued despite the onslaught of neo-liberal economic reforms. While the decade of 1990s saw undoing of whatever land reform measures were undertaken in several States, West Bengal was about to acquire an additional 95,000 acres of land under the land reform and zamindari abolition legislation and redistributed about 94,000 acres. These figures account for almost all the land acquired in the country in the 1990s and over 40 per cent of the land redistributed in the country in this period.

The other most important item on the agenda of the Left Front when it came to power was establishment of democratic institutions of local government. Soon after coming to power, the Left Front government reorganised the institutions of local government into a three tier system of democratically elected bodies (gram panchayats at the anchal level, panchayat samities at the block level and zilla parishads at the district level). The elections for these bodies were held in June 1978. West Bengal holds the record of having the longest functioning democratic institutions of local government and holding regular elections to these institutions for over two decades. There have already been five elections since 1978 and the next elections are due next year.

The local bodies in West Bengal have a large representation of income-poor and socially deprived sections. Dalits and adivasis have the largest and increasing representation among all caste and social groups. Estimates of representation of landless, and marginal and small cultivators in the local bodies range from 75 to 90 per cent. Since 1995, one third of the seats and positions of chairpersons in the panchayati raj institutions have been reserved for women. It is, however, noteworthy that the actual representation of women exceeds one third as a number of women candidates also win in the general constituencies. At present, about 36 per cent of the gram panchayat members are women. Also, 7 out of 17 zilla parishads have a woman sabhadhipati and 155 out of 351 panchayat samities have a woman sabhapati.

In the late 1990s, the Panchayat Raj system in West Bengal was further strengthened by introducing gram sansads, the general councils of voters in every ward, that are required to meet twice a year with a minimum quorum of 10 per cent of voters to discuss the work done by the panchayats and utilisation of funds.

The role of panchayats in changing the rural landscape in West Bengal after the Left Front government came to power cannot be exaggerated. Left Front consciously adopted the policy of using the panchayats as a platform for fighting rural vested interests and changing the correlation of class forces in favour of the working people. Panchayats played an important role in the implementation of land reforms. The panchayats in West Bengal have been given a substantial share of resources and a range of responsibilities. The total divisible outlay meant for the districts reached 50 per cent of the State plan outlays in the 1990s. The local bodies in West Bengal perform civic duties and undertake developmental activities like construction and maintenance of hospitals, schools and libraries, promotion of agriculture, cooperatives and cottage industries, child welfare activities, etc. They play an important role in the local-level planning and implementation of government schemes. Panchayats in West Bengal have played an important role in activities like mobilising cooperation for improving agricultural production, management of local resources, and identification of beneficiaries for housing, poverty alleviation and social security programmes. This has made the panchayats a critical institution of local governance in the West Bengal countryside. It is a unique and remarkable achievement that the panchayati raj institutions in West Bengal have a large representation of the working people.

Transformation of relations of production and power in rural West Bengal through implementation of land reforms and reorganisation of panchayats unleashed the productive forces and led to a remarkable performance by the State in terms of agricultural growth. Until the 1970s, West Bengal’s record of agricultural growth had been noted for agricultural stagnation – a condition that was called an "agrarian impasse". Reports of several official committees as well as the Seventh Plan document noted the underutilisation of productive potential in rural West Bengal. The change in the correlation of class forces in the favour of working people through implementation of land reforms and reorganisation of panchayats helped the State not only in overcoming the agrarian impasse but in achieving growth rates of agricultural production as were unmatched by any other State in the country. In the post-1977 period, the foodgrain production in West Bengal grew at the rate of 6 per cent per annum, which was highest among seventeen most populous States of India. West Bengal has emerged as the largest producer of rice and second largest producer of potato in India. Cropping intensity in West Bengal has increased from about 136 per cent in 1980-81 to about 180 per cent in 2000-01, second highest in the country. The NSSO data show that as much as 66 per cent of the gross cropped area was irrigated in West Bengal by 1992. Scholarly studies have reported that high agricultural growth was characteristic of most crops and was widespread across districts.

Agricultural wages have gone up substantially in the period the Left Front government has been in power. In the 1980s, the growth of agricultural wages in West Bengal was highest among all States of India. This has been a direct result of the struggle for implementation of minimum wages. The high agricultural growth in the post-1977 period also led to an increase in employment of rural workers. Rise in wages and expansion of employment have substantially improved the economic conditions of agricultural workers in West Bengal.

The economic development of rural West Bengal can also be seen in several other indicators on which West Bengal has scored a distinction. West Bengal had the highest growth of per capita net State domestic product in the 1990s among all States in the country. Between 1977-78 and 1997, the proportion of people below poverty line declined in rural West Bengal by 36 percentage points; the decline in poverty in rural West Bengal was more than in any other State. Data show that the per capita calorie intake in rural West Bengal increased by 184 kilocalories between 1987-88 and 1993-94; in the same period, the per capita calorie intake in rural India as a whole declined by 38 kilocalories. West Bengal was the only State where monthly per capita cereal consumption increased between 1972-73 and 1993-94.

The most important achievement of the Left Front government in West Bengal has been to successfully change the correlation of class forces in the favour of working people and to sustain this balance of class forces for 25 years. Implementation of land reforms and establishment of democratic institutions of local government have been two most important instruments for this achievement. These two initiatives have contributed to improving the conditions of life and work of the rural people in a significant way.

Agricultural transformation in most parts of India was based on a technological revolution based on provision of public investment and formal credit. West Bengal was practically left untouched by the first phase of Green Revolution. It was clear that the burden of zamindari system in West Bengal made it impossible to have such a technological revolution without first having a minimum institutional reform aimed at changing the agrarian structure. It is important to underline that it was only under the leader of the Left that such a change could have come about.

Another important reason why we must understand the importance of land reforms and democratisation of local government in West Bengal is because the future sustainability of these achievements is threatened by two significant counter-reform tendencies. The first of these is the continuing class tension in the countryside. The most visible example of this tension was seen in the form of violence that was unleashed during the last elections to the panchayats and the State assembly by the political formations that are opposed to land reforms and to the political dominance of the working people in the State. The second major counter reform tendency is in the form of pressures for liberalisation in the agricultural sector and penetration of global capital in the form of captive farming in the State. There have already been demands for relaxation of land ceiling laws to enable the multinationals to engage in such activities. It is noteworthy in this context that several State governments actually took steps to relax or completely withdraw the land ceiling provisions in the decade of 1990s.

There are also other important ways in which economic reforms have tended to undermine the development achievements of rural West Bengal. The economic reforms in the financial sector have led to a withdrawal of rural banking all over the country. Rural West Bengal has been one of its worst victims. As the commercial banks diverted the deposits they mobilised from rural West Bengal to other parts of the country, the credit deposit ratio in rural West Bengal fell to a dismal 24 per cent in 1999-2000. Commercial banks, in fact, closed down several rural branches. Between 1994-95 and 1999-2000, the number of rural bank branches in West Bengal declined by over 2500. The non-availability of formal credit has created a severe resource crunch in the rural economy and forced cultivators to borrow from informal sources at high rates of interest. The other important issue is the lack of adequate price support in rural West Bengal. Both rice and potato have seen large fluctuations in prices in the recent years. In several years, the prices fell to levels that made cultivation unremunerative. This year, the prices of paddy were so low that an average cultivator made a loss on every acre of rice cultivated in the boro (summer) season. This problem of unremunerative prices is essentially a fall out of the mess economic liberalisation has made of the food economy of the country in the recent years.

Implementation of land reforms and establishment of democracy in local government have been two great achievements of the Left Front in West Bengal. The struggles on the agrarian front, however, are far from over. As the State gears to tackle several problems that are arising because of the economic reforms, it will be important to take political steps to preserve the balance of class forces in the favour of the working people. It is in this context that we must realise the importance of land reforms and panchayats in the State.