Dimensions of rural poverty in Tamil Nadu

Girija Vaidyanathan, Atul Anand & R. Srinivasan
The Hindu, 19 October

In Tamil Nadu, the rural poor are the marginal and small farmers and landless agricultural labourers. A comprehensive agricultural strategy should include conferment of land ownership with increased public investment in agriculture.

Between 1993 and 2005, Tamil Nadu’s GSDP (at constant prices) grew at 5.46 per cent per annum, whereas the poverty ratio declined by 3.31 per cent per annum, with 146 lakh persons still living below poverty line. The urban poverty ratio declined sharply from 39.9 to 22.2 and the rural poverty ratio declined rather slowly from 32.9 to 22.2. The number of poor persons in rural areas is still 76.50 lakh compared to 69.13 lakh in urban areas.

Tamil Nadu is well known for consistently committing huge public expenditure on education, health care, massive nutritious meal programme for children, pregnant women and lactating mothers, and a highly subsidised public distribution system. Evidently, Tamil Nadu is ahead of many other Indian States in achieving most of the Millennium Development Goals. These efforts have contributed to substantial reduction in poverty ratio, as they enable the people, through human capital formation, to participate in the growing non-farm sector.

In the period 1993-2005, the agricultural sector was almost stagnant and the larger growth rates of secondary and tertiary sectors at 4.35 and 8.37 respectively (both in rural and urban areas) have reduced rural poverty substantially. Analysis of 50th (1993-94), 55th (1999-2000) and 61st (2004-05) Rounds of NSSO data on household consumption expenditure, employment and size of landholdings in rural Tamil Nadu shows two important aspects of rural poverty — one, the non-farm employment monotonically increases with increase in per capita consumption expenditure (possibly income) and two, the marginal and small farmers remain poor, so too a substantial portion of landless households, who are possibly still in the farm sector. This lends credence to the presumption that the reduction in rural poverty has been spurred by the growth of the non-farm sector. At the same time, there are evidences to believe that the stagnant agricultural sector has adversely affected the livelihood of marginal and small farmers and agricultural labourers.

Compared to the moderate annual compound growth rate of 5.46 of GSDP (at constant prices) during 1993-94 and 2004-05, the growth rate of agriculture and its allied activities was abysmally low at 0.42. There has been a steady decline in the gross cropped area throughout the period by about 25 per cent. The gross cropped area declines with fall in the amount of annual rainfall, but it does not increase adequately with rise in the amount of rainfall in the subsequent years. The yield has been fluctuating with a sustained increase in the latter half of the 1990s and a sustained decline since 2001. The total agricultural production has been fluctuating along with the fluctuation in yield. For instance, value addition by the agricultural sector (at constant prices) was Rs.12,872 crore in 1993-94, it declined to Rs.10,811 crore in 2003-04 and increased to Rs.12,527 crore in 2004-05, which is still less than what was achieved in 1993-94. A clear setback in the agricultural sector in this period is evident from the steady decline in area under agriculture activity, yield and agricultural production.

Agricultural production has to be increased not only through increase in yield but also through increase in area under cultivation. The increase in land under categories like cultivable waste, current and other fallows however gives scope for increasing area under cultivation in the near future. The extent of land under current fallow is stable around 10 lakh hectares; whereas the extent of land under other fallows increased by nearly 60 per cent from 10.43 lakh hectares to 16.86 lakh hectares between 1993 and 2005. Both net sown area and area sown more than once have declined and these have to be increased through better water management and agricultural technology so that the intensity of crop is increased.

The strategy for increasing agricultural production in the present conditions of frequent monsoon failures and water scarcity in the State is to increase the area under cultivation through reclamation of cultivable waste and fallow lands and use of modern irrigation and farm practices.

Distribution of wasteland

The Government of Tamil Nadu, in 2006-07, implemented a scheme, ‘Distribution of 2 acre Wasteland to Landless Poor Agricultural Labour Families.’ The major objectives of the scheme are (i) to empower landless agricultural labour households through distribution of entitlements on government wastelands to them and (ii) to develop both government and private wastelands into cultivable lands.

The entitlements on government poramboke wastelands will be distributed to landless agricultural labour households. The entitlements on government poramboke wastelands, under encroachment by farmers, will be accorded to the existing occupants. Private patta wastelands of small and marginal farmers will be developed and made suitable for cultivation and this shall be done either as individual fields or as a cluster of fields.

The scheme is implemented by the Tamil Nadu Watershed Development Agency (TAWDEVA), dovetailing various schemes for development of land, irrigation facilities and agricultural production in the departments of Agriculture, Horticulture, Agricultural Engineering, Rural Development, TNEB and TAWDEVA. Soil and water tests are conducted in each field and Soil Health Cards are prepared and distributed free of cost to the farmers.

The Horticulture Department recommends the annual crops or tree crops that can be grown in the land and also indicates the cost of cultivation. The land is developed by the Agricultural Engineering department or beneficiary/user group or any other agency identified by the District Collector. The agricultural inputs will be supplied free of cost to the farmers. The farmers are also given a week’s training in techniques of cultivation by the Agriculture Department.

Cluster approach

Generally, the lands owned by marginal and small farmers are left fallow for want of water resources and other inputs at affordable prices. Development of these lands requires critical level of investment for land development, institution of farming technology and creation of proper irrigation systems. As creation of modern water-saving irrigation systems and use of technology cannot be carried out economically in smaller pieces of land, the farmers are encouraged to form clusters to derive benefits from these schemes as well as from economies of scale in agricultural production. Small and marginal farmers can come together, pool their lands and form a cluster, provided they do not have any viable irrigation source and are cultivating rain fed crops. The owners of lands in a cluster form a Lift Irrigation Society for joint ownership and management of common infrastructure.

The Agricultural Engineering Department conducts geo-physical survey to ascertain the quantity and quality of ground water availability and also designs the system of irrigation to be created for cultivation in the cluster. The entire cost of materials and labour for sinking a bore well, establishing micro/drip irrigation, installing an electric pump and obtaining electricity connection is borne by the State Government. Wherever tree crops are planted, which may take more than a year to give yield, intercropping with vegetables, pulses, oilseeds, etc., will be undertaken without disturbing the drip irrigation system.

Implementation of the scheme

Though some initial land development activities are carried out before the distribution of land, most of the other activities are carried out after the legal documents are handed over to the beneficiaries. The lands are distributed once in three months. So far, 1,01,623.25 acres of lands have been distributed in 28 districts (except Chennai and Nilgiris) to 91,576 beneficiaries in four phases. The reclamation of wasteland is complete for the lands distributed in Phase I and Phase II and the proportion of reclamation works completed in the lands distributed in Phases III and IV are 46.94 per cent and 42.19 per cent respectively.

Altogether, 88 per cent of wastelands have been reclaimed. Soil Health Cards have been given to 34,210 farmers who own lands to the extent of 27,238.10 acre. Farm inputs have been distributed to 4,626 farmers with lands to the extent of 4,733.18 acre. The total amount spent on various developmental activities for non-cluster lands is Rs.421.04 lakh.

In the lands that have been distributed so far, 154 clusters have been formed, in a total area of 2,646.34 acres and Rs.618.23 crore has been spent on these clusters. Therefore, formation of clusters by farmers is essential to leverage public investments on land and irrigation. In an era where public-private partnerships are advocated for leveraging private investments, the reverse process for promoting cooperative agriculture is a welcome step.

All told, this scheme has various innovative features that can effectively combat rural poverty. Besides the direct investment of government on land development and creation of irrigation sources, it is expected that conferment of title will encourage farmers to invest in the land and carry out ‘value added agriculture’. Bringing together farmers in a cluster will also have favourable effect on the collective bargaining during marketing. The short and long term effects of this programme may have to be studied to assess its effects on the rural economy.

(Girija Vaidyanathan, IAS, is Member Secretary, State Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu. Atul Anand, IAS, is Executive Director, TAWDEVA, Government of Tamil Nadu. R. Srinivasan is Full Time Member, State Planning Commission, Government of Tamil Nadu.)