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Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between the state and India's rural informal sector by focusing on the collective mobilizations of middle-sized agricultural producers in Western Uttar Pradesh. These cultivators are involved in an economic sector which is at the same time capitalist, largely informal but also, to some extent, state-regulated. Through their mobilizations organized by the Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU), they have attempted to influence state regulation of agricultural markets, obtaining increased input subsidies and better procurement prices for their produce, and thus an increase in the rates of return and profitability of their farming activity. The paper conceptualizes the modality of production of these farmers as ‘subsidized capitalism’, alluding to the self-employed and self-funded producers with holdings large enough to support a pair of bullocks defined as ‘bullock capitalists’ by Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph (1987), while denoting the crucial role of public subsidies in preserving this faction of informal agrarian capitalism. The paper also points to the ambivalent relationship between the ‘subsidized capitalists’ of Western Uttar Pradesh and the state: although they seek protection from the central government in the context of globalization, they confront and contest local state institutions by deploying collective strategies to distort local regulations of agricultural markets.
Notes
1. Which is associated with little regulation, for example with the absence (or non-enforcement) of regulations pertaining to the working conditions (e.g. in terms of wage, length of work, safety at work) of the people involved in the economic activity of the farmers (including themselves).
2. The Kenya mission's report identified this sector in terms of the following characteristics: ease of entry, reliance on indigenous resources, the family ownership of enterprises, small scale of operation, labour-intensive and adapted technology, skill acquired outside the formal school system, and unregulated and competitive markets (Sanyal Citation2007, p. 200–201)
3. See also Gordon (Citation1991, pp. 1–49).
4. We can recall Indira Gandhi's slogan of the 1974 elections: Garibi Hatao, meaning ‘let's fight against poverty’. See also Corbridge and Harriss (Citation2000).
5. M.S. Tikait acts as the leader of the BKU in UP as at the all-India level. In fact, the BKU is also well established in Punjab and Haryana, albeit with autonomous organizations and a specific leadership.
6. See in particular Varshney (Citation1995).
7. At the end of the 1980s, at the momentum of the mobilizations, almost 80% of the bills remained unpaid; in 1998, the rate decreased to 35%. See Gupta (1997) and Lindberg and Madsen (2003).
8. On the BKU's achievements in getting higher procurement prices and lower electricity charges, see in particular Gupta (1997).
9. In the literature on social movements, while Marxian analysis has focused on collective action as a response to class conflict and solidarity, the new social movements theories draw on post-marxism, showing that identities other than class underly these mobilizations. On new social movements, see Omvedt (1994). Yet, in the case of the BKU, it seems that relationships with women, tribal people and also landless peasants and agricultural labourers have hardly developed. For example, among the peasants who participate in the movements, those who hire labourers often refuse to provide higher wages and better working conditions.
10. In the third GATT round of multilateral negotiations, taking place from 1986 to 1994, the states participating sought to provide precise commitments in order to reduce trade tariffs and trade barriers as well as to facilitate market access. More broadly, the objective was to promote exchanges by harmonizing the principles governing world trade. The Uruguay Round included agriculture for the first time as a domain of negotiations. In this context, when India, one of the 117 GATT contracting parties, was participating in the negotiations, Indian peasants were demonstrating massively in Delhi, opposing the ‘Dunkel Draft’, a document prepared by the then director-general of the GATT, Arthur Dunkel, which served as a basis for negotiations and provided for: the reduction of tariffs and the conversion of non-tariff barriers into equivalent tariff systems in order to favour transparency; the commitment to minimum levels of imports of agricultural commodities; the reduction of domestic support; the reduction in exports subsidies and the institution of intellectual property rights in the agricultural sector.
11. The KRRS organized in Bangalore on 3 October 1993 a Congress on the Third World Peasantry, with the support of peasants’ organizations from nine Indian states. The Congress was attended by thousands of peasant leaders from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Brazil, South Korea and Thailand (Assadi 1997).
12. The demonstration takes place two months before the WTO Ministerial Meeting organized in Hong Kong in December 2005.
13. The mandis are the markets where transactions in agricultural commodities take place.
14. Document of the BKU.
15. See Bayly (Citation1999) and Jaffrelot (Citation2003).
16. This village (whose name has been changed) has been studied by G. Etienne since 1963. See in particular Etienne (Citation1995). I have carried out my fieldwork there between 2004 and 2010; the interviews reported here refer to my 2005 visit.
17. The system is currently being reformed, as the central government has decided to replace SMPs by Fair and Remunerative Prices (FRP).