2.3.2.1 Small Landlords
This group of small landlords is characterized by the fact
that they own more land than they can cultivate with just
their family labour, To do the agricultural work, they employ,
on the basis of varying labour and lease conditions, people
who do not belong to their family. Their property is often
not much larger than that of a family farms. Today, the majority
of them is likely to own 25 to 150 acres of irrigated land.
Due to the agrarian reforms, the units of landed property
exceeding this size are few.
The people concerned belong to the rural upper class who
enjoy a high social status and possess wealth, economic, anal
political power. Their outstanding position is based on landed
property. In contrast to the former large landlords, they
mostly live in villages and are interested in the cultivation
of their land which, traditionally, was leased to sharecroppers.
Their relationship to the sharecroppers was of a patriarchal,
but quite personal, nature owing to their living and working
together their whole life. They are often good farmers who
reinvest large shares of their profits, e.g., for improving
irrigation, levelling fields, etc. They and their children
have often received school education; especially the young
generation has quite often attended secondary schools. Many
civil servants and officers are likewise recruited among the
members of this group.
They quickly accepted the new seed that was the basis of
the Green Revolution. Trey possessed the necessary information,
had access to farm inputs (which were scare in the beginning),
and, whenever necessary, to loans, and could also shoulder
the risk of innovating. Their prompt participation turned
out to be profitable. They experienced large production increases
and thus increases in their income, and came into the full
enjoyment of the government subsidies.
The experience that agriculture can be a lucrative enterprise
brought about a basic change in their attitude, and soon made
of a way of life a business. Water very soon constituted a
bottleneck, since without it the new seed could not be used.
In order not to have to depend on the insufficient and unreliable
canal irrigation, they began to invest their yields on a large
scale and constructed tube wells with pumps operated by electricity
or diesel. Controlled irrigation allowed a change in the cropping
system and an increase in the cropping intensity. The new
bottleneck which now stood in the way was the limited draught
power. Oxen were slow and were only capable of working a few
hours a day. Tnis problem was solved by purchasing tractors.
Within a few years, this group completely dropped land cultivation
employing oxen for mechanized agriculture. The government
encouraged this by means of financial incentives, e.g., duty
free importation of tractors and subvention of fuel. For a
while, tractors in India and Pakistan were the cheapest in
the world.
Such transformations brought about a basic change in the
production factor ratios. The landlords observed that farming
under the traditional conditions of sharecropping at a 50
: 50 ratio had become very expensive since, considering the
new high yields, 50% represented more than twice the payment
which had been usual until only a short time before. Moreover,
one of the main tasks of the sharecroppers, the keeping of
a pair of draughtoxen, had became superfluous because of the
tractors. The landlords tried to change the ratio since they
now wanted only human labour from the tenants and not draught
animals. This led to unrest and strikes during the harvest.
It was not long before the landlords basically changed their
labour organization.The tenants were dismissed and some of
them reemployed as agricultural labourers. The rest of them
were offered work only at harvest time. Some of the landlords
even tried not to be dependent on this and purchased combine
harvesters. However, their importation was soon prohibited.
Thus, the trend that arose through the agrarian reform to
change from tenant to owner cultivation continued to assert
itself. The number of tenants decreased rapidly. Since the
increase in the agricultural labourers' wages in the early
years was minimal, the landlords benefitted even more from
the higher yields. Agriculture had became such a profitable
business that even members of the urban upper stratum began
to invest in land. The land market came into motion. The landowners
tried to purchase or rent additional land to carry out their
lucrative business on still larger areas.
The group of small landlords therefore drew considerable
benefits from the Green Revolution and could decisively improve
their economic situation, Those who were already wealthy formerly
became still richer and the gap between the poor and the rich
became wider. But the change in their attitude was even more
important. A downright hankering after earning money developed,
and some of the people took to marked commercialism. The earlier
paternalism, the obligation towards the labourers to care
for them, was given up and the little security which the labourers
and tentants had enjoyed was thus lost. There was, however,
a limitation. Irrigated land was not the only condition for
participating in the Green Revolution. It had to be combined
with dynamism and intelligence. This applied especially to
many of the younger landlords. But a gap arose between the
landlords. Quite a number did not succeed in effecting the
change from landlords to commercial farmers and hardly had
a share in the increased income. The majority, however, improved
their economic situation and their political power. They occupied
the influential positions in the parliaments at the district
and state levels and saw to it that the agrarian policy which
was profitable to them was pursued. Under the economic and
political aspects, the small landlords are the main beneficiaries
of the Green Revolution.
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