Indian Institute of Advanced Study

(28-29 January, 2011, ICSSR Complex, Panjab University, Chandigarh)

1. Scheduled Castes: One-third of the total rural population of Punjab is constituted of Scheduled Castes and they are almost landless. The situation of SCs in the neighbouring state of Haryana does not seem to be any better. In both the states –heartland of Green Revolution – the gains of agricultural development have not percolated down to the agricultural labourers hailing largely from the ranks of SCs. It is worth pointing out here that the land ownership in rural areas not only provides economic security, it is also a symbol of social status and empowerment. Lack of educational opportunities, absence of functional health care system and rampant unemployment have added to the woes of the SCs in rural area. A small proportion of them have migrated to places of alternative employment but largely they look for employment in non-agricultural sector while holding back in rural areas.
3. Migrants: Green Revolution also opened up new pattern of labour employment in rural areas. Nearly half a million migrant labour from other parts of the country visit rural Punjab, particularly during the peak periods of labour demand. A few of them stay back and work as attached labour or on other menial jobs. Employment of migrant labour in rural Haryana is also witnessed though to a lesser extent. In urban Punjab and Haryana the migrants are the main source of supply of labour. The local labour is employed in relatively better paid jobs. Certainly the attitude of local labour towards migrant labour is not a welcome one. Even the employers, paradoxically, criticise migrant labour for the ‘pollution of local culture’ but they love to use them as source of cheap labour power.
4. Poor and marginal agricultural workers: The abundant supply of migrant labour and commercialisation of agriculture together have transformed traditional subsistence peasants to farmers, what we call as entrepreneurs. The contribution of family labour to agricultural production has become nominal and, in the absence of alternative sources of better employment, the surplus peasant hands, particularly the younger ones among them, have no avenues of productive engagement. ‘Semi-literate’ unemployed youth, in the absence of productive work, is prone to various types of drug addictions/ intoxicants.
5. Workers from informal sector: A large number of workers are now working in the informal sector of all the three sectors of the economy. Insecure and irregular employment, poor wages/ remuneration, and absence of social security are the hallmarks of workers from the informal sector. Scattered nature of employment, often under the ghost employers, weakens the scope of collective resistance. Poverty breeds further poverty. The vulnerable economic and working conditions push this mass of workers into the vicious circle of poor quality of life. The uneven growth of economy, sans distributive justice, adds to their precarious living.
6. Women and child workers: Many of the vulnerable families, hailing from the above mentioned categories of labour employment, are so hard-pressed for two square meals that they have to engage their children for productive work. Poor educational opportunities and unemployment are culprits for forcing parents to send their children to work rather than to school. Women are doubly burdened as they too have to engage in productive work besides looking after children and working in household chores.

1. Empowerment of the subaltern by making provision for
2. Education: The most important step towards empowerment is to make elaborate arrangement for the provision of quality education for each and everyone. It has gained added significance in the light of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.
3. Housing: Due to the demographic pressure on land in rural areas land for housing poor is most urgently needed. The land could be made available to the rural poor out of village common lands or out of the surplus land assessed under the renewed limited land reforms. Housing security would also act as empowerment in the social and political milieu of rural economy.
4. Health facilities: There are no good health facilities functional in the hinterlands. Poor people, who are relatively more prone to diseases due to poor health, cannot afford to buy health care facilities from the private sector. A single serious sickness can lead to financial bankruptcy of the whole family.
5. Employment: The economic growth has to be linked with employment generation. The development of the past four decades has resulted into the massive displacement of manual labour. Mechanisation and automation has to be balanced with the generation of employment.
6. People friendly governance: At present a large number of people still feel that there is no law in the country. Out of desperation they end up expressing their nostalgia for the British rule. Alienation of the people from the state is becoming a major challenge. Toning up of the grass root level institutions (PRIs, Social organisations, etc.), devolution of power and planning, and inclusive development are some of the urgent strategies to be implemented.
7. Participative development: The state sponsored programmes are generally targeted and end up generating good statistics rather than meeting the real purpose. People are often objects of state sponsored development. The real challenge is to make them active participant in the decision making of the development strategies.
8. Eco-friendly sustainable development: The current trajectory of development is exclusionary, market friendly, and is neither human nor nature friendly. It is not sustainable and is always vulnerable to collapse under its own weight.

1. Radical reorientation in the structure of governance: Though there is always a limited possibility of reorientation of the institutional structure of governance under democratic set up but the forces of marginalisation and exclusion are far too entrenched to pre-empt such a possibility. The administrative mechanisms have to acquire a pro-people, participative character.
2. Culture of protests: If the current processes of exclusive development continue to operate without necessary correctives, the possibility of protests, both spontaneous and organized cannot be ruled out. Various forms of protests are witnessed as a response to the malfunctioning of the system of deliverance. Broadly they are of two types: Protests orchestrated by the political parties: These are often tame protests and are either rooted in respective political ideologies or appropriated by vested political groups. Spontaneous protests: They may take violent form in the shape of caste, linguistic, ethnic or communal conflicts or they may be in the shape of throwing up alternative system of ideas, institutions and frame of social change.