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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | In Punjab, migrant paddy workers reap unlikely harvest -Aman Sethi

In Punjab, migrant paddy workers reap unlikely harvest -Aman Sethi

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published Published on Jun 23, 2014   modified Modified on Jun 23, 2014
-The Business Standard
 

How a law to conserve groundwater led to a better paid and better organised migrant workforce

Ludhiana: For some years now, Punjab's fields have lain fallow through the searing dry heat of May; but come June's steamy humidity, small bands of lithe, slender men from Bihar fan out across the waterlogged paddy fields, transplanting rice saplings with fluid efficiency.

Bihar's paddy planters have frequented Punjab since the 1960s when rice was first introduced to this land of wheat. But, the Biharis - who once worked long hours for modest sums as paid helpers for Punjabi farmers - have organised themselves into teams that have struck contracts to transplant hundreds of acres of farmland across Punjab.

Punjab 

The impetus for this change, workers and farmers believe, is an unintended consequence of an environmental law that was designed to protect Punjab's fast-depleting groundwater reservoirs; but became a significant factor in increasing agricultural wages as well.

"Earlier farmers would plant in May, when the crop experiences least rain and most evaporative losses," said S S Johl, chancellor, Central University of Punjab, pointing out that most of Punjab's irrigation is fed by groundwater. "It takes 4,000 litres of water to grow one kg of rice in Punjab."

Then in 2009, the Punjab Preservation of Sub-Soil Water Act was introduced to prevent farmers from transplanting paddy before the first week of June - when rains are more likely and evaporative losses lower.

That year, nominal daily wages for transplanting paddy in Punjab increased by 46 per cent over the previous year, as the shortened planting season created a sudden and significant labour shortage. Real wages that had fallen 20 per cent from 2003-04 to 2007-08, rose 25 per cent (see box).

There is considerable academic debate over the factors behind the drop in real wages for agricultural work in the first half of the 2000s, followed by a recovery in the second half. Some studies surmise that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) could have set a floor on farm wages; others suggest that competing demand from sectors like construction (which grew at nine per cent from 2001 to 2010) could have raised farm wages.

Yet, both sides agree that wage-behaviour varies from state to state, sector to sector and season to season. A 2013 CAG audit of the MGNREGA in Bihar, for instance, noted that from 2007 to 2012 the state, on an average, provided only 26 days of employment each year under the scheme - indicating that implementation was not widespread. In Punjab, farmers and workers believe, the shortened planting season is a prime reason for rising wages.

"This year, Punjab will plant almost 28,00,000 hectares of paddy, 90 per cent of which shall be planted by migrant workers in a much shorter time than earlier," said M S Sidhu, head of the Department of Sociology and Economics, at the Punjab Agricultural College in Ludhiana. In 2007, Sidhu's department estimated that four lakh seasonal workers visit Punjab during the paddy season every year.

"With the shorter planting season, the Punjabi farmers are willing to pay much more to get the work done in time," said Mallu Rishi, a rice transplanter from Bihar, who came to Ludhiana in 2001 as a solitary 18-year-old in search of work, and now heads a team of 20 workers from Purnia.

"Earlier, labour would arrive at railway stations and wait for someone to offer work," he continued, "Now everything is decided in advance over the phone. The sardarji sends us an advance to pay for our trip, we SMS him the train number and he picks us up at the station."

Rishi - who calls himself Joginder when in Punjab - arrived in mid-May this year with contracts to plant 250 acres of paddy fixed in advance, with the possibility of an additional 50 acres in Rajasthan. "If we plant the late Basmati crop in Punjab, I'll stay till mid-July, else I'll press on to Rajasthan," he said, "After the planting season, I'll move to Delhi to work in the construction business."

"I paid Rishi's team Rs 2,200 per acre to plant my four-acre field," said Saudagar Singh, a small farmer in Ghudani Kalan, an hour's drive from Ludhiana, "He sent 10 men who took about an hour-and-a-half to plant each acre."

Singh said farmers either pay a daily wage - which is expected to vary between Rs 300 and Rs 350 this year, and is usually taken up by local Punjabi labour - or a per acre rate, which is preferred by the Bihari workforce.

Per acre rates tend to be higher than daily wages, but daily wage work -which includes building small earthen embankments to partition the fields - is more regularly available.

A recent study on incomes of short-term migrants by Punjab Agricultural University estimated that a third of their respondents earned betweenRs 40,000 and 50,000 per season and a fifth earned more than Rs 50,000.

Nearly 62 per cent of farmers said they hired migrant workers only for paddy plantation and preferred local labour for all other tasks.

Punjabi women, more than men, tend to transplant rice, but are paid lower wages. They also find it harder to work the same hours, as the migrant force as they must also look after their homes and children.

"Paddy planting is a highly specialised job, so no one wants to take a risk," said Rishi, "Biharis have a faster technique: we hold the seedling differently, and keep aligning ourselves with the direction of the wind."

"Most of the work in our village is with the Biharis," said Amarjeet Kaur, a Punjabi woman worker in Bhendra village in Sangrur district, "We sometimes get work at Rs 2,000 per acre, but it takes 12 of us a whole day to do two acres."

Unlike the local workforce, migrant workers are also paid in kind. Cash apart, Rishi charges the farmer five kg wheat, five kg rice, mustard oil, onions and potatoes per acre planted. The provisions are delivered to Kashi Rishidev, his cook.

The Business Standard, 23 June, 2014, http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/in-punjab-migrant-paddy-workers-reap-unlikely-harvest-114062300006_1.html


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