In the Budget, black is the new pink for women farmers

The Economic Survey 2017-18 should have been black in colour if it wanted to represent women, and not pink. The feminization of agriculture, which the government wants to mainstream, has been preceded by the ‘feminisation’ of agricultural distress. As neither the causes nor the remedies of the crisis might be unknown to the government, women farmers appear to be an after-thought who serve as a gender-friendly marker for the urban voter.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech had stated that the government took decisions ‘without weighing political costs.’ However, the Survey’s pink populism belies the FM’s assertion and represents the ability of elected governments in India to garner urban-centric validation for addressing long-standing problems. There are several examples of how this government, like others before it, had seen the brewing crisis but had never viewed it from a gendered perspective.

First, the Survey 2017-18 in its chapter on climate change predicts - using district-level data on temperature, rainfall and crop production - that agriculture ‘continues to be vulnerable to the vagaries of weather’ as 52 percent or 73.2 million hectares net sown area is rainfed. Compared to 1960s, the irrigated land is in mid-40s, and even then, a fully irrigated Indian agriculture will be the ‘defining challenge for the future.’ Farm incomes are expected to fall up to 18 per cent on an average and up to 25 per cent for unirrigated areas, which translates into ‘more than Rs 3,600 per year for the median farm household.’ Anticipating ‘stark’ policy implications, more resource allocation is sought in drip irrigation and sprinkler technologies, a suggestion pending for over a decade, most notably made by the Swaminathan committee report of 2006.

Farm income loss has direct implication for women farmers, who find special mention in a ‘pink’ box, but whose future is under-analysed. The Survey revisits the issue of declining percentage of women in the workforce, from a little over 36 per cent in 2005-06 to 24 percent in 2015-16. Research is quoted to show that the increase in the income of men let Indian women withdraw from the labour force, ‘thereby avoiding the stigma of working.’ Also, higher education allowed women to ‘pursue leisure and other non-work activities.’ Further, the mechanization of farming led to ‘lower demand for female agricultural labourers.’ Women want regular or part-time jobs that were not always available, according to the Survey, ‘which provide steady incomes and allow women to reconcile household duties with work.’ Social norms, along with safety concerns and care for children and elderly, ‘militates against women’s mobility and participation in paid work.’

In a nutshell, the Indian woman has her job already decided for her by the state and the society. And such jobs have little to do with her educational qualifications and depend on her household responsibilities. It is not surprising, then, that women in rural areas have been unable to convert their educational qualifications into meaningful employment. The Census 2011 records a literacy rate of 57.93 per cent among rural women, which was an increase of 24 per cent in the last decade. However, this has not resulted in jobs for rural women, 59.3 per cent of whom are self-employed, according to the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), 2011-12. Unable to cope with economic hardships, women are forced to take up any available work, and often find employment as farm labour. A glimpse of this trend is the increase in women participation in MGNREGA from 40 to 56 per cent, mentioned in Economic Survey, 2016-17.

Further, the Survey 2017-18 finds that women work on fields which they do not own. Out of the total women workforce in Census 2011, 55 per cent are agricultural labourers and 24 percent are cultivators, while they own only 12.8 per cent of the operational holdings. This reflects ‘the gender disparity’ of agricultural land holdings, the Survey stated, which is an indicator of the presence of an uncharted distress in the rural areas. Finally noting this established trend, the Survey 2017-18 calls for women to have greater access to land, water, credit, technology and training, and more budget allocation to further this agenda through activities and schemes. If this is not too late, it is definitely too little to help that lost generation of women, who are invisible even today to the state and society.

The Survey 2017-18 states that the urban migration of men left the women in rural areas to play multiple roles as cultivators, entrepreneurs and labourers. However, none of these roles empower the women, as they remain dependent on their families as they struggle against the severe odds of agriculture. This is also evident in the increasing trend of migration among women, as evident from the Census of 1991, 2001 and 2011. When comparing 2001 to 2011 in Survey 2016-17, migrants who moved due to economic reasons saw a growth of 7.5 per cent among women as a compared to men at 4 per cent. This is a steep rise from the comparison between 1991 to 2001 Census, when the rate of growth of migrants among women was only 0.4 per cent, as compared to men at 2.7 per cent. Women farmers, whom the government has eventually discovered, seem to be following the men to the cities.

That leaves the question of what happens if the farm incomes, already unable to support farmer families, fall by a whopping 25 per cent as expected by the Survey. Analysis shows that the dependence on farming has remained constant through the decades in rural India. The NSSO for 2002-2003 reveals that 46 per cent of farm income was earned through cultivation while in 2012-2013, it was 47 per cent. There appears, therefore, no option for women and men farmers but to depend on agriculture.

The future remains bleak for agriculture, as the measures of the government seem more for assisting the transition of farmers from agriculture to other sectors, rather than help them sustain it. In a country where pink populism can easily replace tangible solutions, that does not bode well for women farmers.

Kota Neelima is an author and research scholar. Her new book is ‘Widows of Vidarbha, Making of Shadows,’ Oxford University Press, 2018.