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Regional Dependence and Rural Development in Central India: The Pivotal Role of Migrant Labour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Crispin N. Bates
Crispin N. Bates
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Extract

The problem of regional underdevelopment, particularly in tribal India, has long been recognized and more than one political party has campaigned on this issue. The Indian constitution and state and central government development plans have included special clauses aimed at assisting those groups, the tribals or adivasis, who are most affected by the problem. Reports have been commissioned and investigations conducted, but rarely have these ended in constructive or relevant action. The work of anthropologists over a number of generations since the 1920s has perhaps done most to tell us of the real depth of the problem as it has affected central India. Foremost amongst them was W. V. Grigson, the aboriginal tribes enquiry officer of the government of the Central Provinces and Berar, whose 1944 report stands as the most comprehensive study available of the condition of the tribal peoples of this region at the end of the colonial period.

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Articles
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Modern Asian Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 1985 , pp. 573 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Bardhan, A. B., The Tribal Problem in India (Communist Party of India, 1976).Google Scholar The ‘Jharkhand’ movement in Bihar takes up the same issues, though the current Assam agitation seems increasingly to be developing along communal lines.

2 A critical review of State development planning is undertaken in Jones, Steve, ‘Tribal Underdevelopment in India’, Development and Change, (SAGE, London and Beverly Hills), vol. 9 (1978), pp. 41–70.Google Scholar For details of the post-independence situation in central India, see the Government of Madhya Pradesh's An Appraisal Report of Economic Problems in the Tribal Areas (Indore, 1961)Google Scholar, and the various reports and bulletins of the Institute of Tribal Research, and the Directorate of Tribal Area Development and Planning, Bhopal, and of the Agro-Economic Research Centre for Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur.

3 Grigson, W. V., The Aboriginal Problem in the C.P. and Berar (Nagpur, 1944) (Ameliorative legislation of the colonial period is summarized in appendix R)Google Scholar. Reference ought also be made to the pioneering work of Symington, D., Report on the Aboriginal and Hill Tribes of the Partially Excluded Areas in the Bombay Presidency (Bombay 1938)Google Scholar, and the anthropological studies of V. Elwin, S. Fuchs and C. Von Furer-Haimendorf.

4 Jones, Steve, ‘Tribal Underdevelopment’, pp. 44–5.Google Scholar

5 For example, Edgar Hyde, the district commissioner for Mandla in 1940, concluded that ‘there seems to have been a more-or-less complete breakdown in tribal authorities over the greater part of this district’, and Verrier Elwin commented of the Baiga village of Binjhwar in Balaghat: ‘The souls of the people are soiled and grimy with the dust of passing motor-buses. In the village, you are in the midst not of a living community, but of a collection of isolated units’. E. S. Hyde to W. V. Grigson, Mandla, 23 11 1940, Hyde Papers, South Asian Study Centre, Cambridge, Box II enclosure 18; Elwin, Verrier, The Baiga (London, 1939), p. 513.Google Scholar

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9 For details of labour hired-in on farms of the cotton zone in the late 1930s see Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, Report on the Cost of Production of Crops in the Principal Cotton and Sugarcane Tracts of India (Delhi, 1938–1939), vol. VIIGoogle Scholar, appendix V. Typically, 11.24 man days and 17.74 woman days were hired per acre in the Berar plains, compared with a deployment of 3.88 man days and 1.42 woman days of family labour per acre.

10 Royal Commission on Agriculture in India (London, 1927), vol. VI, p. 5.Google Scholar

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20 This was described as a veritable tide in 1870s–see Berar Gazetteer, p. 219.Google Scholar

21 Census of India, 1931, vol. XII, pt 1, p. 101.Google Scholar

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23 C.P.P.B.E.C.R., vol. 4, pp. 910–11.Google Scholar

24 This skewed structure of demand for labour in the rice zone was one of the factors which also made groundnut an unwelcome addition, despite the efforts of the C.P. agriculture department, and linseed so popular, easily fitting, as it did, into the slack season of the year. Census of India, 1921, vol. XI, pt 1, p. 26.Google ScholarWardha D.G., p. 137.

25 Amraoti D.G., p. 359.Google ScholarL.R.S. Nagpur 1890–95, p. 21.Google ScholarMrBaput, L. Balkrishna, Deputy Educational Inspector, commented: ‘As proof of the gradually increasing demand for labour for agricultural purposes, one may easily observe clusters of little houses which during the last fifteen years or so, have grown up on the outskirts of every village in the mofussil. These are the habitations of immigrant labourers who once came seeking labour for a season, but who, finding enough of what they sought for, and, probably, on better terms, have permanently settled in the provinces. In some cases a hundred families of such immigrants have thus been added to the labouring population of a village’. (Dufferin) Enquiry into the Condition of the Agricultural Classes of India (Calcutta, 1888), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

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27 Balaghat D.G., pp. 192–4Google Scholar; Betul D.G., p. 152Google Scholar; Chhindwara D.G., p. 124.Google Scholar

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31 Amraoti D.G., pp. 234–5.Google Scholar

32 The preference for female labour was also unchanged since the American Civil War–see Berar Gazetteer, p. 68.Google Scholar

33 Amraoti D.G., pp. 234–5.Google Scholar

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35 C.P.R.D. Comps, Mr Riddell, Acting Dist. Engineer G.I.P. Co. to J. B. Fuller, Comm. Sett, and Agric., 20 June 1888, and J. B. Barton, Resident Engineer … Harda, to J. B. Fuller, 18 June 1888.Google Scholar

36 C.P.P.B.E.C.R., vol. I, p. 135.Google ScholarCensus of India, 1931, vol XII, pt 1, pp. 16–17 and pp. 61–2.Google ScholarCensus of India, 1921, vol. XI, pt 1, pp. 7–9.Google Scholar

37 Report on the Famine in the C.P. in 1899–1900 (Nagpur, 1901), p. 24.Google Scholar

38 British famine reports, being designed to prove that the administration was not responsible for deaths by starvation (indeed, that these deaths never actually occurred), often disguise more than they reveal. For a good first-hand impression of the reality of famine in underdeveloped parts of central India, see the earlier reports of F.H.S. Merewether in A Tour Through the Famine Districts of India (London, 1898).Google Scholar For a summary of the census statistics on the impact of the famines on the labouring population as a whole (as nearly as this could be estimated) see L.R.S. Saugor, 1887–1897, p. 38.Google Scholar

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40 R.A.C. Procs., 3 February 1900, no. 5, pp. 40–1, R. H. Craddock to Sec. to G. of I. During these years of distress migration to Assam also greatly increased, 28.2% of recruits for Assam coming from the CP, in 1896, 37.7% in 1900 and 39.2% in 1901–this compares with only 5.6% in 1894, (children are excluded from these totals).Google Scholar See Annual Reports on Inland Emigration and Annual Reports on Labour Immigration into Assam (Calcutta)Google Scholar, and Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India (London, 1931) (P.P. 1930–1921, XI, p. 571, Cmnd. 3883).Google Scholar

41 Census of India, 1931, vol. XII, pt 1, p. 39.Google Scholar R.A.C. Procs., Jan.-April 1900, no. 5, p. 41, R. H. Craddock to Sec. to G. of I., 3 February 1900.

42 Census of India, 1931, vol. XII, pt 1, pp. 43–4.Google Scholar

43 Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, Report on the Cost of Production of Crops in the Principal Sugarcane and Cotton Tracts in India (Delhi, 1938–1939), vol. VII.Google Scholarndex Numbers Showing the Changes in the Cost of Living of Industrial Workers at Nagpur and Jubbulpore, C.P. Dept. of Industries (Nagpur, 1929 to 1952).Google Scholar Further confirmation is available from the survey conducted by the C.P.P.B.E.C.R. in 1929, which found the average wage in cash and grain of a family of farm servants and agricultural labourers was only Rs 151. This sum would typically have to feed five members of the family for 365 days of the year—C.P.P.B.E.C.R., vol. I, p. 89.Google Scholar The income and condition of an evidently fairly well-to-do Chaithara of the Seoni district is described in vol. 2., p. 643. Details of the off-farm earnings of a Betul smallholder are given on p. 691.