The role of collective mobilization in the divergent performance of the rural economies of China and India (1950–2005)

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that the divergent performance of the rural economies of China and India after 1950 was a product of the different capabilities of the Chinese and Indian governments to mobilize the labor force and financial resources of the rural population. By mobilizing unpaid labor and the financial resources of the villagers through mediation by the collectives (before 1984) and local administrations (from 1984 to the abolition of agricultural taxation and compulsory rural labor mobilization in 2006), the Chinese state developed rural infrastructure and the quality of the labor force at a pace and geographical scope that was far beyond its limited fiscal capacity. Efforts by the Indian state to establish rural organizations with similar mobilization capabilities failed due to the effective opposition of well-entrenched political and economic interests in the countryside. Unable to mobilize the labor and financial resources of the villagers, the Indian government relied primarily on its limited fiscal resources, which produced a much slower development of physical infrastructure and labor force quality. These are the primary reasons why China’s rural economy developed much more rapidly than India’s, which contributed significantly to the divergence of their national economies in the post-1950 era.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• India
• rural development
• collectivization
• labor mobilization
• taxation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the four anonymous reviewers for JPS for their helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. I also thank Alper Şükrü Gençer, Zeynel Gül and Erdem Yörük for their help in revising the paper. Special thanks go to Joel Andreas for his intellectual mentorship and strong support of my doctoral research that this paper is built on. The Department of Sociology and East Asian Studies Program at The Johns Hopkins University supported earlier stages of this research, and the Koç-Harvard Visiting Scholar Program supported the final stage.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Burak Gürel is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Koç University. He holds a PhD in sociology from The Johns Hopkins University. His scholarly interests include political economy, historical sociology, rural development, social movements and welfare politics, with a focus on China, India and Turkey. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 According to International Monetary Fund and United Nations data, the gap between the growth rates of GDP per capita of the two countries after 1950 was greater than these estimates (see Nayyar 2008, 4; Popov 2014, 79–81).

2 The author’s calculations are based on Chadha (2008, 346) and Sivasubramonian (2000, 640–41).

3 These figures are based on the statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Since the FAO’s database starts with the year 1961, comparative data is only available for the post-1961 period. Chinese agriculture was at its lowest level in 1961 as a result of the collapse of the Great Leap Forward campaign. Therefore, this data might at first seem to exaggerate China’s overall performance. However, the decadal breakdown provided by Fan and Chan-Kang (2005, 139) shows that China’s agricultural performance was consistently higher than India’s between 1965 (when Chinese agriculture fully recovered) and the early 2000s.

4 Author’s calculation based on Bhalla (2003, 7).

5 Some mainstream scholars acknowledge the infrastructural and labor force quality gains of the pre-reform rural China, but they insist on denying the economic achievements of the period. For instance, Huang, Rozelle, and Otsuka (2004, 12) claim that although these ‘positive aspects … should not be ignored’, ‘it is mostly correct to say that China’s agricultural development was mostly a failure as of the 1970s’. Although both field surveys (Bramall 1995; Huang 1990, 222–51; Putterman 1989, 1993) and quantitative analyses (Xu 2012, 2017) show no significant productivity difference between household and collective farms between 1978 and 1984, Huang, Lin, and Rozelle (2000, 5) claim that productivity increase in that period ‘was primarily a result of institutional innovations, particularly the rural household responsibility system’.

6 The author’s calculations are based on ZXQNJGNBW (1998, 2001).

7 More importantly, some of the measures limiting capital mobility actually supported rural industry. For example, by discouraging large-scale textile manufacturing through production quotas, high taxes and low prices, the government encouraged the small-scale manufacturing of textiles in the small towns and villages (Kohli 2004, 269; Saith 2000, 32).

8 For statistics of rural–urban and rural–rural migration between 1971 and 2001 see Mishra (2016, 9–10).

9 As Jack Gray (2006, 668) notes, ‘the parallel between Nurkse and Mao in this respect is so close, even in detail, that one must wonder if Mao or someone close to him knew Nurkse’s work’. Nurkse’s impact on Indian development thinking seems indirect but more easily traceable. Nehru ‘considered, apart from efforts to give greater vitality to community development and to make the peasants self-reliant, the adoption of Gunnar Myrdal’s suggestion of compulsory social service for young men and women’ (Gopal 1984, 109). The close relationship between Nurkse’s and Myrdal’s works is well known. For a review of discussions on the mobilization of surplus labor for rural development in India inspired by Nurkse’s work see Tiwari (1990, 18–26).

10 For a critical review of the literature see Patnaik (1998).

11 A significant body of literature demonstrates that the degree of success in agricultural taxation (through direct taxation and manipulation of the terms of trade) was an important factor behind the different industrialization performance of Third World countries in the second half of the twentieth century (Byres 1979, 1996, 2012; Kay 2002; Mitra 1977).

12 On the transition from land reform to collective rural economy see Chen and Buckwell (1991, 36); Li (2009, 24); Yan (2007, 61); Zhang (2005, 52).

13 On the historical trajectory of the work point system see Li (2009); Potter and Potter (1990).

14 For detailed analysis of the GLF’s disastrous failure see Kueh (1995); Wemheuer (2014).

15 On the political conflicts over the cooperative farming scheme see Democratic Research Center (1959); Frankel (2005, 167–68, 207–09); Gill (1959, 223–28); Gupta (1959, 933–36); Singh (1959). Another cooperative farming initiative came from the Bhoodan-Gramdan (‘land gift and village-in-gift’) movement. The movement emerged in 1951 with the modest goal of calling on big landowners to donate land to landless peasants. In 1952 it adopted the program of cooperative farming with collective landownership. The movement tried to coordinate with the cooperative farming advocates inside the INC and implemented many pilot schemes. However, it failed to expand cooperative farming (Oommen 1972, 28, 86–90).

16 The author’s calculations are based on Nickum (1978, 280); SSB (1983, 120).

17 For a reconfirmation of these rules a decade after the State Council’s decision, see Renmin Ribao (2001).

18 Since early attempts to socialize household labor, such as cooking and childcare, ended with the collapse of the Great Leap Forward campaign, increases in female labor participation actually resulted in a double burden for women (reproductive work inside the household and productive work outside of it).

19 The author’s calculations are based on SSB (1983, 210).

20 The author’s calculations are based on Li (1992) for 1985–1989 and Aubert and Li (2002, 166) for 1990–2000.

21 The author’s calculations are based on Kong and He (2009, 7).

22 It should be noted that in the 1990s and early 2000s people working outside the village paid fees corresponding to the estimated monetary value of the compulsory labor and labor accumulation work demanded by the local governments (Deng 2003).

23 The author’s calculations are based on the following sources: GOI-MOIP (1972, 69); GOI-MOAFW (2010).