CHAPTER 5
aware that they belong to BPL (Below Poverty Line) family, which entitles them to subsidised food. In recent times, almost everyone, even in the remotest part of India, knows that the government should provide schools, build roads, provide free housing. These people have imbibed the state's biopolitical discourse, which attempts to gain legitimacy via its war on poverty and backwardness.
In the following section, with ethnographic information from the field, we attempt to examine the 'how' the state works and how 'it' is seen in an enclosed setting like a tea garden. The chapter has three primary objectives. Firstly, we understand how different groups of marginalised people see or interact with the state daily. Secondly, we look deeper into how the state has changed its nature to 'enclose' the poor along with its plan to seek their development, empowerment and, at times, their erasure. Thirdly, it is essential to understand how the marginalised communities in India form their view regarding the nature of the state through their interaction with local government officials and their encounter with various state policies that bring the state closer to them.
Several recent studies (Fuller and Benei, 2001; Coleridge et al., 2005; Hansen and Steputtat, 2001) have pointed out the well-established 'elite' understanding of state, which policymakers have long considered, has been challenged. It has been vernacularised to suit the need of local and lower-level bureaucracy. Local officials' understanding of the state seems to have little respect for notions of 'fairness' and 'justice' or state obligation towards people.
In this chapter, we focus on poor people's livelihood and social networks in our study area.
The primary objective is to examine how a 'micro' state operates and how this operation is understood, moulded, and challenged by ordinary people. In this part, the works draw on the fieldwork conducted between November 2018 and March 2020.
5.1. Experiencing Poverty: Livelihoods, inequality, and social networks
Most inhabitants of rural India describe their living conditions in the language of categories provided by the state- as belonging to SC or ST, or BPL family. However, their description of their 'life-worlds cannot just be limited to government categories, nor are their experience of hardships and sufferings a product of state alone. The changing patterns of structural inequalities shape the life-world of most people in rural India regarding access to land or fluidity in caste structure and mobility in terms of livelihood opportunities. The patterns of inequality vary from place to place and are accentuated by the social network of accumulation-caste, gender, religion and ethnicity.
5.1.1 Income, Poverty and Livelihood
The consumption expenditure has been used to calculate the poverty line in India. Income levels have not been considered due to difficulties in assessing incomes of self-employed people and daily wage labourers because of significant fluctuations in income due to seasonal factors. Also, a data collection difficulty in India’s largely rural and informal economy makes it nearly impossible to estimate poverty in terms of income. The Planning Commission estimates the incidence of poverty based on the extensive sample surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on household consumer expenditure on a quinquennial basis. The NSSO regularly conducts surveys on household consumer expenditure, in which households are asked about their consumption for the last 30 days and is taken as the representative of general consumption. It was considered better data to estimate the incidence of poverty at national and sub-national levels by adjusting for inter-state and inter-region differences in price changes over time. In July 2013, based on the estimation of the Tendulkar poverty line, Planning Commission released poverty data
for 2011-12. The number of poor in the country was pegged at 269.8 million, or 21.9% of the population. After this, no official poverty estimates in India have been released.
The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), in its 'Nutrition intake in India' report of the 68th round, 2011-12, has provided a list of prevailing calorie intake for rural and urban dwellers of the different Indian states. The figure below presents the per capita calorie intake of 10 Indian states.
Figure 5.1. Daily Per Capita Calorie Intake (in Kcal)
Source: NSSO 68th Round (2011-12).
Poverty is a recurrent feature of the tea garden labourers all over the state.
Instead of relying on the official definition of poverty, the present study emphasises the people's description of their circumstances, i.e. an attempt has been made to follow the subjective understanding of poverty as a 'life condition'. However, a working definition of poverty is worked out, which considers a household with unskilled labour as its only source of income, full employment, and a favourable ratio of earners to dependents (Coleridge et al.). Poverty cannot be truly measured by taking into account only the consumption values.
Poverty has a multi-dimensional character. It ought to include several factors like health,
Andhra
Pradesh Assam Bihar Chattisg
arh Gujarat Jharkha nd
Karnata
ka Kerala Madhya Pradesh
West
Bengal All India Urban 2281 2110 2170 2205 2154 2175 2245 2198 2209 2130 2206 Rural 2365 2170 2242 2162 2024 2138 2164 2162 2204 2199 2203 1800
1900 2000 2100 2200 2300 2400
Daily Per Capita Calorie Intake
Urban Rural
education, shelter, recreation. These factors are not considered while deciding the Below Poverty Line status of a household. Given the low wage of the unskilled workers (Rs. 169 per day), almost all families can be considered poor.
Poverty, to a large extent, is responsible for giving a sense of powerlessness.
Wealth or richness is often associated with a sense of security and entitlement. The low wage that prevails in the garden and seasonal employment variations push more people into distress. Often, poverty for the garden workers is not just a question of filling the stomach and the pocket but also an important marker of social distinction. It is apparent in their interaction with the world outside the garden where they are treated as 'outcastes'.
Even within the garden, the management shares a demeaning attitude towards the workers.
The markers of poverty are pretty visible- their shabby dress, the smell of sweat, their depilating dwellings all indicates their inability to live a decent life. These divisions are not just indications of economic disparity but also deep and entrenched social divisions.
Another vital aspect is gender relations which is highly unequal. For women, poverty is more severe as they are subjected to marginalisation both within and outside.
Naturally, we find in the study that in the majority of female-headed households’
occurrence of poverty is higher. Women of the household are often the ones whose basic needs like food intake would be reduced at times of scarcity. The interesting point is that in the 'Adivasi communities, women, unlike most women of upper-caste communities, are at liberty and face no restriction to work in the garden. However, they are often subject to harassment and abuse, both within and outside the family, which again pushes them into a life of distress.
Consumption pattern and calorie intake, to a large extent, depends on the size of the household. To understand the prevalence of poverty, we need to look into the family size and earning member's number.
Figure 5.2: Household size (Khumtai Tea Estate)
Source: Fieldwork and Office of Garden Welfare Officer.
The above figure indicates the large size of households in the gardens. A large number of households (67%) have 3 to 6 members in their family. It is followed by 15% of the household where we find 1 to 3 members. The share of households with 7 to 9 members is 12%. We observe that the percentage of households declines as the household size increases. However, merely looking into the household size is not enough to understand the prevalence of poverty in the garden. We also need to look into the number of employed members as earning members of the family.
Figure 5.3 below shows that a majority of the household (78%) have 4 to 6 members as working members. However, not all of them are permanent workers. In most joint families, all adult populations are engaged in some or other work.
15%
69%
12%4%