JAC-paper-rr

306 R. Ramakumar

© 2006 The Author.Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres.Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 6 No. 3, July 2006, pp. 306–345.

Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 4 No. 1 and 2, January and April 2004, pp. 00–00.Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 6 No. 3, July 2006, pp. 306–345.

© 2006 The Author.Journal compilation © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres.

Public Action, Agrarian Change and theStandard of Living of Agricultural Workers:

A Study of a Village in Kerala

R. RAMAKUMAR

This article describes and analyses the ways in which public action in theState of Kerala in India helped to transform the standard of living of hiredworkers in agriculture. Specifically, the article analyses the extent of land andasset ownership, access to credit, access to social security schemes and fooddistribution systems and the conditions of housing and sanitation of householdsparticipating in agricultural wage work. The article is based as a case study ofMorazha desam in the Malabar region of Kerala, which had one of the mostoppressive agrarian systems in India before 1956–57. In 1955, another eco-nomist had studied Morazha desam; this study was conducted before one of themost important interventions through public action – land reform – took placein Malabar. The 1955 study had characterized the conditions of life of agri-cultural workers as ‘wretched in the extreme’. The present article documentsthe significant transformation in the quality of life that took place in Morazhaafter 1955, through a weakening of the factors that led to ‘wretched’ conditionsof life in the earlier period. The destruction of traditional agrarian power bythe state through land reform was the most critical step in this process.

Keywords: Kerala, agricultural workers, land reforms, public action,standard of living

INTRODUCTION

The development experience of the State of Kerala in India is widely docu-mented in the literature (Centre for Development Studies 1975; Ramachandran1996). The key feature of the development experience of Kerala is the achieve-ment of high levels of social indicators even while per capita incomes were low.1

R. Ramakumar is Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Deonar, Mumbai – 400 088,India. e-mail: [email protected]

The present article is drawn from the author’s PhD thesis submitted to the Indian StatisticalInstitute, Kolkata. The author is grateful to V. K. Ramachandran, Madhura Swaminathan, TerenceJ. Byres and Pallavi Chavan for their comments on earlier drafts of the article.1 Kerala’s life expectancy at birth is 70.4 years for women, the infant mortality rate is 14 per 1000live births and the literacy rate among women above the age of seven is 88 per cent (GoK 2004).Respectively, the corresponding figures for India as a whole are 61 years, 66 per 1000 live births and52 per cent (GoI 2004). The median number of years of schooling of rural men and women in Keralawas 7.8 and 7.4 respectively in 1999, while the corresponding figures for India were 4.6 and 0(Chandrasekhar et al. 2001).

Public Action, Agrarian Change and Agricultural Workers 307


The most important lesson that development economists have drawn fromKerala’s development experience is that the attainment of high levels of socialindicators need not wait till an economy generates adequate resources througheconomic growth to finance programmes for social development (Sen 1990).Kerala’s development achievements were mainly the result of public actionover many years (Ramachandran 1996). This article describes and analyses, at thelevel of one village in Kerala, the ways in which public action helped to raise thestandard of living of one of the most economically vulnerable sections in ruralareas – hired workers in agriculture.

Agriculture constitutes the largest informal sector in the Indian economy.Rural workers in agriculture constitute the largest segment of India’s work force.In the absence of any significant land reform measures, a large section of therural work force is landless and asset-poor; extreme concentration of land owner-ship and use persists. Illiteracy, lack of schooling, poor conditions of health andsanitation and malnourishment continue to be important problems in Indianvillages. Agricultural workers have insufficient and uncertain number of days ofemployment. Nearly half of the members of agricultural labour households inIndia were below the official income-poverty line in 1999–2000. Informal creditis the dominant source of credit in rural India; agricultural workers pay unrea-sonably high rates of interest for consumption loans from the informal sector. Insum, the standard of living of agricultural workers has remained very backward,and deprivation and economic vulnerability mark their lives.2 Even after 50 yearsof independence, the Indian state has failed to institute a credible social securitysystem to help rural workers tide over crises of livelihood.

The significantly backward standards of living of agricultural workers in Indiareflect the inadequate efforts to address the basic socio-economic problems ofclass-, caste- and gender-based exploitation in rural areas. At the same time, inKerala, public action was largely successful in weakening the barriers of class,caste and gender in the early stages of development itself.3 From the latenineteenth and the early twentieth century, social reform movements startedquestioning the relevance of traditional values and attitudes with respect to caste,

2 There is a host of literature in India on these topics. Mohan Rao concluded in a review article that‘without radical changes in the distribution of control over land and other means of production . . . poorpeasants’ and labourers’ livelihoods remain precarious as they continue to carry land leases at verylow returns to their labour, often pay high interest rates especially for consumption loans, and faceinsufficient and uncertain employment in the labour market’ (Rao 1999, 243). Writing about changesin a Tamil Nadu village over quarter of a century, Ramachandran et al. (2002, 469) noted that‘chronic employment insecurity, low wages, very high levels of poverty and indebtedness andbackward standards of living in general continue to be the lot of manual worker households’. Seeamong others, Byres (1981), Patnaik (1985), Ramachandran (1990), Bardhan (1983), Reddy (1985),Sen (1998), Bhalla (1999), Chavan (2002), Rawal (2003), Ramachandran and Swaminathan (2005).3 By definition, public action refers not only to the activities of the State, but also the ‘social actionstaken by members of the public’, which are both ‘collaborative’, through ‘civic co-operation’, and‘adversarial’, through ‘political opposition and social criticism’ (Dreze and Sen 1989, vii). In theframework of the Dreze and Sen definition, public action includes actions from above (actions of theState) and below (actions of class and mass organizations, political parties, individuals and non-governmental groups).

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the status of women, education and health. Kerala’s first government in 1956–7was a Communist government, one of the first in the world to be elected throughthe ballot box and a true inheritor of the progressive traditions of early socialreform movements. This government’s radical land reform set the pace for socialdevelopment in the period that followed. The state invested heavily in educationand health, established a subsidized food distribution system, initiated a numberof minimum social security measures and promoted cooperative institutions.4

This article deals with the impact of public action on different aspects of thestandard of living of rural manual labour households in Kerala. Specifically, itanalyses the extent of land and asset ownership, access to credit, access to socialsecurity schemes and food distribution systems and the conditions of housing ofhouseholds participating in agricultural wage work. It is based on a case study ofa desam (a sub-division of a revenue village) in the Malabar region of Kerala –Morazha. Prior to the implementation of land reform in Kerala, Thomas W.Shea had conducted a detailed socio-economic study of Morazha desam, in whichagrarian relations occupied a central place (see Shea 1955a, 1955b). In the presentarticle, using Shea’s work, I also try to highlight certain historical features ofchange with respect to the standard of living of agricultural workers in Morazhadesam.

A contemporary study of the standard of living of agricultural workers in theMalabar region of Kerala is of special significance and interest. When the princelyStates of Travancore and Cochin and the British Indian district of Malabar (whichwas part of the Madras Presidency) were brought together to form the State ofKerala in 1956, there were distinct differences in the state of agrarian relations inthe three regions. Capitalist forms of agriculture had advanced more in the princelystates (particularly Travancore) than in Malabar. Within Kerala, Malabar waswhere a most backward form of janmi landlordism persisted, and where theagrarian structure was characterized by, among other things, complex formsof sub-infeudation of holdings and rack-renting. Parts of Malabar, remarked aBritish observer, had ‘the unenviable reputation of being the most rack-rentedcountry on the face of the earth’ (Varghese 1970, 78).

Agricultural workers occupied a special place within this agrarian regime inMalabar. Under the economic domination of landlords, agricultural workerswere subjected to different types of social (particularly caste-based) and eco-nomic exploitation. The most backward forms of unfreedom marked their lives;they were treated as chattels, and were subjected to onerous forms of bondage.Untouchability was practised against them on a wide scale. As Ronald Herringnoted, ‘landlordism . . . was inextricably tied to a social system that imposed

4 Following Ahmad et al. (1991), my interest in the term ‘social security’ is related to ‘the direct rolethat public action can play in reducing human deprivation and eliminating vulnerability’ (1991, viii).A wide range of policy instruments can contribute to this role; they include land reforms, employmentgeneration, public provisioning of health care and education, food subsidies, and social insuranceschemes. My focus in this article is on policy instruments that contribute to increasing the entitlementsof the population, or increasing the command of the population over commodities in order toovercome deprivation and vulnerability and raise the quality of life.



disabilities and indignities on the lowest orders which were extreme, severe andrigid even by Indian standards’ (Herring 1983, 158).

The socio-economic status of agricultural workers in Morazha desam in the1950s reflected the general backwardness of the standard of living in Malabar. Infact, Thomas Shea wrote in his study of Morazha in 1955 that ‘economic condi-tions in Morazha are unusually bad even for Malabar, which is economically oneof the worst-off districts in India’ (Shea 1955b, 1033). Food policy during WorldWar II had led to an acute shortage of food in Malabar district.5 A choleraepidemic of 1943 also took a substantial toll on lives. Morazha itself was badlyaffected by food shortages and the cholera epidemic (see Sivaswamy 1946). WhenShea conducted his study, the shortage of food was continuing. Shea wrotethat the worst affected sections of Morazha’s population were the agriculturalworkers, whose lives were characterized by extreme poverty and deprivation.Malnutrition had reduced drastically the length of the working day of an agricul-tural labourer. Shea noted that before the War workers used to work from 7 amto 5.30 pm; after the War, physical weakening due to malnutrition had reducedit to 8 am to 12.30 pm (Shea 1955b, 1031). Shea described living conditions ofagricultural workers in 1955 as ‘wretched in the extreme’ (1955b, 1031).

While the celebrated social sector achievements of Kerala had roots in theState’s history, they were also, ‘in an important sense, results of public action inpost-1957 Kerala’ (Ramachandran 1996, 325). The most important element ofpublic action after 1956–7 was the implementation of land reforms across allregions of Kerala, initiated by the Communist Party of India-led government.Land reforms in the State, which have been described as being ‘the mostcomprehensive and far-reaching reforms of their kind in contemporary India’(Herring 1980, A59), represented a historic agrarian transition and a radical shiftin the balance of rural power. The impact of land reforms on agrarian relationsand the personal freedom and self-dignity of agricultural workers may be said tohave been most dramatic in Malabar, where the erstwhile agrarian system wasmost backward and oppressive. This impact went beyond changes in land tenure;land reforms also became the ‘centrepiece of the programme for social and eco-nomic progress’ (Centre for Development Studies 1975, 59) for which Kerala isjustly famous.6

Land reforms in Kerala had three basic components (see Centre for Develop-ment Studies 1975; Oommen 1975; George and Raju 1980; Herring 1983; Rajand Tharakan 1983; Radhakrishnan 1989; Franke 1993; Ramachandran 1996).First, security of tenure was to be provided to tenants. All evictions undertakenafter the formation of the State were held to be illegal. The government took

5 Some scholars have called the food crisis in Malabar in the 1940s a ‘famine’ situation; at least 1 percent of the population of Malabar died due to food shortage (Ramachandran 1996, 245).6 As has been noted in the literature, land reforms in Kerala were the result of many years of classstruggle by peasants and agricultural workers. As Richard Franke (1993, 123) noted, ‘Kerala’s landreform law was the outcome of more than a century of spontaneous rebellion, organising, petitionsigning, marching, meetings, strikes, battles with police and landlord goon squads, electioncampaigns, and parliamentary debates.’

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ownership of all tenanted land and the payment of rent on that land was stopped.Secondly, ceilings were set on ownership holdings of land. Ceiling-surplus landwas to be taken over by the state and redistributed. Thirdly, landless agriculturalworkers were to be given ownership rights over homestead plots.

There is general consensus among scholars that land reform in Kerala wassuccessful with respect to tenancy abolition and the distribution of homesteadlands. Between 1957 and 1993, about 2.8 million tenants were conferred owner-ship rights (or had their rights protected) and about 0.6 million hectares ofland accrued to them (Appu 1996). A significant number of landless agriculturalworkers received ownership rights over the plots of homesteads. Between 1957and 1996, about 528,000 households were issued homestead ownership certificates(SPB 1997). However, there is also a consensus that Kerala’s land reform was notsuccessful with respect to acquiring and distributing ceiling-surplus land to thelandless. Only 1.47 per cent of the total operated area had been redistributedbetween 1957 and 1993 (Appu 1996). As a result, the component of land reformthat directly benefited landless agricultural workers was the distribution ofhomestead land.

The failure in successfully distributing ceiling-surplus land to the landless wasmainly due to the significant opposition that the Communist ministries facedfrom the Union government, from the judiciary and from landlord-supportedpolitical parties in the State. In 1959, the first Communist ministry was dismissedby the Union government before the President of India signed the State’s historicland reform bill. Non-Communist ministries that followed, with the supportof landlord classes, successfully diluted every radical ceiling provision in theland reform legislation. With years passing without any serious implementation,landowners resorted to massive land transfers through changes in ownership andpossession.

The provision to distribute homestead land to agricultural workers was addedon later to land reform laws once it had become clear that the extent of ceiling-surplus land available would be smaller than expected. This addition was made bythe second Communist ministry that came to power in 1967. This ministry, ledby the Communist Party of India (Marxist), drafted the State’s most comprehen-sive land reform law – The Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act, 1970. ThisAct gave landless agricultural workers the option of purchasing 10 cents of landin panchayats or townships, for which they were required to pay only 25 per centof the market value in normal cases and 12.5 per cent of the market value if thelandowner possessed land above the ceiling. Fifty per cent of the amount finallypayable was subsidized by the State, with the remaining 50 per cent to be paidin 12 annual instalments (which were never paid). Thus, even when some com-ponents of land reform were not successfully implemented, most agriculturalworker households in the State received plots of homestead land free of cost.

Apart from land reforms, the State in Kerala also initiated a number of welfaremeasures for the benefit of the rural poor after 1956–7. A series of laws andpublic programmes sought to bring agricultural workers within the ambitof systems of universal school education, health delivery and social security



assistance. Kerala was the first, and the only, State in India to attempt to bringagricultural workers out of the informal sector by actually legislating withrespect to the conditions of employment of different sections of rural workers.The Kerala Agricultural Workers’ Act (KAWA) of 1974 was India’s first compre-hensive legislation for agricultural workers. It sought to give statutory sanctionto minimum wages, to regulate working hours and working conditions andto establish tripartite mechanisms to settle labour disputes. In 1980, the Act wasamended to include a scheme to pay pensions to retired agricultural labourers overthe age of 60 years. Kerala has the most efficient food distribution system amongall Indian States that provides basic food grains at subsidized prices. Kerala hasalso the most widespread network of cooperative credit societies in India.

The aim of this article is to examine the role of land reform and the host ofpublic policies discussed above in raising the standard of living of agriculturalworkers in Morazha desam.

THE STUDY AREA AND SURVEY METHODS

Morazha desam is situated in the Taliparamba taluk of the Kannur district ofKerala. This field study was undertaken as part of my larger study of the socio-economic characteristics of agricultural workers in Morazha.

Two factors that guided my selection of Morazha desam for study are ofrelevance here. The first was that Morazha belonged to a region in Malabarabout which there is much published information on the evolution of agrarianrelations. In particular, socio-economic conditions among agricultural workersin Morazha were part of a larger study on agrarian relations in Malabar byThomas W. Shea in 1955 (Shea 1955a, 1955b). As noted earlier, Shea’s study ofagrarian relations in Morazha constitutes an important benchmark in my assess-ment of the contemporary conditions of standards of living in Morazha.

The second factor was that the cropping pattern in Morazha was fairly repre-sentative of the cropping pattern in Kerala as a whole. Mixed cultivation of avariety of perennial and annual crops around a core of paddy cultivation was themain feature of Morazha’s cropping pattern. The most important among theseperennial and annual crops were coconut, arecanut, cashew, pepper, banana andvegetables (including tubers).

The data used in this article are from a detailed census-type survey thatcovered all households in the desam that had two characteristics. The firstcharacteristic was the presence of at least one worker in the household who hadworked for wages in agriculture in 2000–1 and the second was that a major shareof the income of the household came from rural manual labour. In other words,the database for this article covers all households in the desam that earned at leasta part of their incomes from agricultural wage work and a major part of theirincomes from some form of rural manual labour. There were 162 such house-holds; I refer to them in this article as ‘manual labour households involved inagricultural wage work’. Such a selection of households became necessary, as alarge share of the total income of the desam residents came from non-agricultural

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sources. The census survey was conducted in July–August 2001, and the referenceperiod for the survey was the agricultural year of 2000–1.

LEVELS OF HOUSEHOLD INCOME-POVERTY: KERALA ANDMORAZHA

Levels of Income-poverty among Agricultural Labour Households in Kerala

In the analysis of income-poverty in this sub-section, I have used data from the38th (1983) and 50th (1993–4) rounds of the ‘Survey of Consumer Expenditure’of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO).7 I have not used data fromthe most recent 55th (1999–2000) round of the Survey of Consumer Expendi-ture, as it has been pointed out that the estimates for the 1999–2000 round are notcomparable with the earlier rounds (Sen 2002). Sen and Himanshu (2004) haveestimated corrected estimates of the head-count ratio (HCR) for all rural house-holds at the 55th round, but not for agricultural labour households.

Two major conclusions emerge from a review of the literature on the estima-tion of income-poverty among agricultural labour households in India (seeMahendra Dev 1988; Mahendra Dev et al. 1991; Tendulkar et al. 1993; Sen 1998;Sundaram 2001). First, the levels of poverty among agricultural labour house-holds are higher than the levels of poverty among all the other occupationalcategories of households. Secondly, in the total number of rural poor in India,the largest share is constituted by the members of agricultural labour householdsamong the shares of members of all the other occupational groups.

The results of my analysis in Table 1 show that more than half – 56 per cent– of agricultural labour households in India were below the poverty line in 1993–4. The HCR for all rural households in India in 1993–4, computed underdifferent methodologies, varied from 37 to 40 per cent (Sen 2002). As Table 1shows, the HCR among agricultural labour households was not just high inlevels, but also showed a very slow decline over the years.

The achievements of Kerala in reducing levels of rural poverty are exemplaryin this context. An analysis of levels and changes in rural poverty in Keralabrings out three important results.

First, the decline of rural poverty as a whole in Kerala, especially after thelate 1970s, was faster than the decline of rural poverty at the national level.8

Between 1973–4 and 1999–2000, HCR for all households in rural India declinedfrom 56.4 per cent to 29.2 per cent; in the same period, the HCR for rural Kerala

7 As secondary data on household incomes are not available in India, the proxy used in the estima-tion of poverty is consumption expenditure, which is collected by the NSSO in its quinquennialrounds. The Government of India uses a calorie-based procedure to fix the poverty line as theminimum level of income that would enable a person to purchase a food basket, which is equivalentto a calorie content of 2400 in rural areas and 2100 in urban areas (see GoI 1993).8 Dutt (1998, 14) examined State-wise changes in rural poverty between 1957–8 and 1993–4, andconcluded that ‘Kerala had the highest trend rate of decline in the head-count index at 2.4 per cent peryear.’ He added that ‘Kerala progressed from having the second-highest incidence of rural poverty tothe fourth-lowest over the same period’ (1998, 17). Tendulkar et al. (1993) computed HCR, PGI and



Table 1. Head-count ratios for income poverty for members of agricultural labourhouseholds, State-wise, India, 1983 and 1993–4

State Head-count ratios

1983 1993–4

Jammu & Kashmir 45.3 (6) 13.0 (1)Andhra Pradesh 38.3 (4) 24.9 (2)Punjab 29.4 (2) 31.2 (3)Gujarat 41.5 (5) 33.5 (4)Kerala 55.1 (9) 37.3 (5)Rajastan 46.0 (7) 42.3 (6)Karnataka 51.8 (8) 45.0 (7)Tamil Nadu 70.5 (14) 47.3 (8)Himachal Pradesh 25.6 (1) 49.8 (9)Haryana 35.0 (3) 55.9 (10)Madhya Pradesh 68.3 (13) 56.0 (11)Maharashtra 65.5 (11) 57.7 (12)West Bengal 86.9 (17) 59.7 (13)Uttar Pradesh 65.5 (11) 63.9 (14)Assam 57.7 (10) 65.0 (15)Orissa 83.2 (15) 68.0 (16)Bihar 85.0 (16) 78.1 (17)India 65.1 55.8

Note: Figures in parentheses denote rank for the State in that year among all States.

Source: Computed from the reports of Rural Labour Enquiry, various volumes.

SPGI for 17 States between 1970–1 and 1987–8. They concluded that ‘in at least one of the four timeperiods, each of the 17 States enjoyed a reduction in all the indicators. One State, Kerala, enjoyed areduction in all the four indicators over all the four successive time-periods’ (1993, 177). Kannan(1995) also noted the declining rural poverty ratios in Kerala in the 1980s and argued that there wasalso a decline in chronic poverty (the share of population in the lowest 20 per cent with respect toconsumption expenditure), the incidence of which could have been less than 20 per cent in 1987–8.9 Using a different methodology, Kannan (1995) found that the HCR for agricultural labourhouseholds in India was 56 per cent and in Kerala was 55 per cent in 1977–8.

declined from 59.2 per cent to 10.7 per cent (GoI 2002a; Sen and Himanshu2004).

Secondly, along with decline in overall rural poverty, the HCR for agriculturallabour households also declined faster in Kerala than in India. According toone estimate, the HCR for agricultural labour households in India and Keralawere almost the same in 1977–8 (Kannan 1995).9 However, by 1993–4, thedifferences in the HCRs for agricultural labour households between Kerala andIndia had widened considerably. In 1993–4, the HCR among agricultural labourhouseholds in India was 56 per cent, while the HCR for agricultural labourhouseholds in Kerala was 37 per cent (Table 1). Kerala’s rank (in the ascending

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order of poverty) improved from ninth to fifth among the 17 States examinedbetween 1983 and 1993–4.

Thirdly, within Kerala, the difference between the HCRs for all ruralhouseholds and agricultural labour households narrowed considerably between1983 and 1993–4. In 1983, the HCRs for rural households and agricultural labourhouseholds in Kerala were 39 per cent and 55 per cent, respectively. In 1993–4,these HCRs were 25.8 per cent and 37.3 per cent.

While the decline in levels of rural poverty in Kerala is commendable, eventhe existing levels of poverty among agricultural labour households are high atan absolute level and when compared to other States such as Andhra Pradesh,Gujarat and Punjab.10 The number of poor in agricultural labour households inKerala was 1.9 million in 1993–4. It has been found that among the total numberof rural poor in Kerala belonging to all occupational groups, members of agri-cultural labour households constituted the largest share (see Kannan 1995). Inother words, the problem of absolute income-poverty continued to persist amongagricultural labour households in Kerala in the 1990s.

Levels of Income-poverty, Manual Labour Households Involved in Agricultural WageWork, Morazha, 2000–1

My analysis of the incomes of the 162 manual labour households involved inagricultural wage work in Morazha desam showed that 42.5 per cent of thehouseholds were income-poor in 2000–1. For this analysis, I used the updatedofficial poverty line for rural Kerala in 2000–1 as the cut-off.

In sum, official data showed that levels of income poverty among agriculturallabour households declined in Kerala at a rate faster than the country, especiallyafter the mid-1970s. However, the absolute levels of poverty remained high in1993–4. Village-level data from Morazha for all manual labour households in-volved in agricultural wage work also showed that absolute levels of income-poverty were high within this occupational group.

Given that the levels of absolute income poverty are high, one would nor-mally expect the quality of life of these households to be very poor. However,the available evidence from Morazha does not support this hypothesis. It is ananalysis of this evidence that constitutes the rest of this article.

10 The higher levels of poverty among agricultural labour households in Kerala compared to Stateslike Andhra Pradesh may be surprising at first sight. However, studies on levels of living in Keralahave noted a few methodological points specific to Kerala that may have resulted in an overstating ofthe actual levels of poverty. One of the arguments is that NSSO surveys may be underestimating thelevels of consumption in Kerala, as they do not account for all the components of the diversified dietpattern such as home-produced tapioca and coconut (CDS 1975; Ramachandran 1996). Studies on thecontradictory relationship between the lower levels of consumption of cereals and better nutritionaloutcomes in Kerala have noted a second factor. These studies argue that unlike in other Indian States,the intra-household distribution of food may be more equitable in Kerala, with respect to gender (seeSwaminathan and Ramachandran 1999). Other scholars have argued that the utilization of nutrientsmay have been better in Kerala compared to other States due to the more efficient interactionsbetween nutrition, awareness on health care and education. As a result, overall nutritional outcomesfrom a given level of consumption may be better in Kerala than in other States.



PUBLIC ACTION AND THE STANDARD OF LIVING OF MANUALLABOUR HOUSEHOLDS INVOLVED IN AGRICULTURAL WAGEWORK, MORAZHA

Land Reforms and Changes in Household Ownership of Land

Studies on social security in developing countries have emphasized that landreforms constitute the most important and effective social security strategy forthe rural poor (see Ahmad and Hussain 1991; Osmani 1991; Guhan 1994). Osmani(1991) notes that in developing economies, control over land and its produce iscrucial in ensuring security of livelihood for the poor. Ahmad and Hussain(1991, 298–9), who studied the social security system in China, argued thatgreater access to land after land reforms was an important factor that gave theChinese population ‘a degree of economic security which is rare in developingcountries’.11 In a review of homestead land distribution policies across countries,Hanstad et al. (2002) noted that homesteads provided multiple benefits to thebeneficiary households ‘in terms of food, income, status and economic security’.According to them, ownership of homestead plots also raised the creditworthinessof households.

Two major assessments regarding the distribution of landholdings in Morazhadesam before land reforms emerge from available secondary data and Shea’sstudy of Morazha in 1955.

First, the distribution of ownership landholdings was very unequal in Morazha.My analysis of the village settlement survey of 1936 showed that about 3 per centof the landowners (who paid more than Rs 50 as assessment) owned about 52 percent of the land in the desam (Table 2). The Kadamberi devaswam (templemanagement), situated just outside the limits of Morazha revenue village, wasthe biggest landowner in the village. The devaswam was thus a powerful janmi(landlord) in Morazha, but the landlord families of the village de facto controlledall the land under the devaswam’s ownership.

In his analysis of the settlement report for Morazha desam of 1936, ThomasShea found that ‘eight devaswoms, or temples, hold the janmam, or proprietaryright to half of the land in the village. They pay more than 25 per cent of the landrevenue, and hold 1/3 of the wet lands. Four of these devaswoms are managed bytwo of the five largest landholders in the village . . . The five largest janmies hold47.5 per cent of wet lands, 49 per cent of all lands, and pay more than 40 per centof the total land revenue’ (Shea 1955a, 998).

Secondly, there was a strong correlation between the caste status of individualsand their land ownership. Either the temple (whose lands were controlled bycaste Hindus) or the upper caste cultivators owned most of the land in thedesam. Data for the constituent parts of Andhur panchayat (which includedMorazha desam) from the settlement survey of 1936 showed that temples,

11 It would be wrong, however, to project land reforms only as an instrument of social security.Land reform is also a propellant of growth in an economy through freeing the demand and supplyconstraints and opening up the home market in rural areas.

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Table 2. Land assessment details, Morazha desam, 1936

Holdings assessed to Number (total) Extent (acres) Assessment (Rs. anas)

Rs 1 and less 67 29.1 37.6Rs 1–10 150 191.9 530.5Rs 10–30 32 182.9 546.1Rs 30–50 9 101.7 337.5Rs 50–100 5 134.3 364.0Rs 100–250 3 254.8 505.0Rs 50–500 1 163.4 352.1Total 267 1058.11 2673.10

Note: The ‘landowner’ in the table could be a temple or an individual.

Source: Settlement survey of Morazha desam, 1936.

Brahmans and Nairs (the upper castes) together owned about 85 per cent of land(see Table 3). Tiyyas (the intermediate caste) were mainly tenants and ownedvery little land, while Pulayas (the most oppressed caste) owned almost noland.

Land reform in Morazha after 1956–7 put an end to both big landlordism andupper caste domination in land ownership. My house-listing survey of all house-holds in Morazha desam in 2001 showed major changes in the distribution ofhousehold ownership of land compared to 1955. First, the extreme concentrationof landholdings that Thomas Shea had noted for 1955 had disappeared. On thecontrary, there was a predominance of small-sized holdings in Morazha in 2001.About 83 per cent of the households owned less than 1 acre of land, and theirholdings accounted for about 43 per cent of the total area (Table 4). There wereonly two households that owned more than 10 acres of land; their holdingsaccounted for just 3 per cent of the total area.

Table 3. Distribution of land ownership, Andhur panchayat, by caste of landowners,1936

Landowners, by caste Area owned (in acres) Share of area owned (%)

Temple managements 1214.7 28.8Brahmans 971.3 23.0Nairs 1392.7 33.0Tiyyas (Ezhavas) 176.6 4.2Muslims 356.6 8.4Others 112.6 2.6Total 4224.5 100.0

Source: Andhur Panchayat (1996), Table 1.



Table 4. Distribution of number and area of household ownership holdings, by size-classes, Morazha, 2001

Land size Number of Share of Area under Share in totalclass (acres) households number (%) holdings (acres) area (%)

< 0.10 138 10.3 8.5 1.00.10–0.24 426 31.7 65.9 7.90.25–0.49 289 21.5 100.1 12.00.50–0.99 269 20.0 187.0 22.31.00–1.49 98 7.3 118.2 14.11.50–1.99 42 3.1 72.9 8.72.0–3.99 64 4.8 108.8 13.04.0–9.99 17 1.3 150.6 18.0> 9.99 2 0.1 25.1 3.0All size classes 1345 100.0 837.1 100.0

Note: Data on number and area of holdings in this table include homesteads.

Source: Survey data, 2001.

The second important result that emerges is a major shift in the pattern ofownership of land across caste groups. By 2001, the monopoly of landholdingsby Brahmins and Nairs (and temples controlled by them) had been considerablyweakened (Table 5). Caste Hindus owned only about 39 per cent (as opposed to85 per cent in 1936) of the total area of land owned by the desam residents in2001. It shows that large areas of land were transferred from Brahmans andNairs to Tiyyas, Pulayas and other oppressed caste groups through land reform.The important point here is that the end of feudal landlordism through landreform in Morazha also meant a break-up of the traditional material basis ofupper caste domination in its everyday social life.

Table 5. Distribution of landownership across residents of Morazha desam, by castegroups, 2001

Caste group Share in Area owned Share in totalpopulation (%) (in acres) area (%)

Brahmans 0.5 12.2 1.6Nairs 25.2 286.5 37.6Tiyyas 34.5 301.5 39.6Muslims 6.0 24.1 3.2Pulayas 6.5 24.1 3.2Others 27.3 113.4 14.9All castes 100.0 761.8 100.0


318 R. Ramakumar


Table 6. Distribution of homestead land among manual labour households involved inagricultural wage work, Morazha, 2001

Size class Number of Share of Average size(in cents) households households (%) (in cents)

1 to 10 33 20.4 5.810 to 20 57 35.2 13.620 to 30 26 16.0 22.730 to 40 16 9.9 32.940 to 50 8 4.9 44.550 to 100 17 10.5 64.4> 100 5 3.1 130.8All classes 162 100.0 25.8

Note: One acre = 100 cents.


Among agricultural workers in Morazha, the shift in the pattern of land owner-ship came along primarily due to the policy of distributing homestead land aspart of land reform. The average size of homesteads owned by manual labourhouseholds involved in agricultural wage work was 25.8 cents, or about a quarterof an acre (Table 6). Five households owned homestead plots of a size above oneacre. When I excluded these five households and recalculated the average size ofhomestead plots, the average plot size came down to 22.5 cents.

Net Revenue from Production in Homestead Plots

Given the importance of homestead land ownership among agricultural workers,it is necessary to quantify the benefits from homestead cultivation for thesehouseholds. I tried to estimate the imputed net income (after deducting the totalpaid-out costs of cultivation and accounting for opportunity costs of familylabour) from homestead cultivation for the study households in Morazha. Theaverage imputed net income from homestead plots in 2000–1 was Rs 1341. Thisaverage net income from homesteads supplemented the incomes of manuallabour households involved in agricultural wage work considerably. As Table 7shows, on average, the net income from homesteads constituted about 6 per centof the poverty line for the study households.12

My above estimate of the net income from homesteads is an underestimateas 2000–1 was a year when there was a sharp fall in prices of agricultural com-modities. For instance, the average price of coconut (the most important crop inhomesteads) at the market nearest to Morazha in 2001 was about 41 per cent

12 The value of production was zero for 17 per cent of the surveyed households; these householdsowned, but did not cultivate any crops in their homestead plots.



Table 7. Distribution of households by the shares of imputed net income fromhomesteads in the income-poverty line, manual labour households involved inagricultural wage work, Morazha, 2001

Share of net income at 2001 prices in Number of Share ofthe poverty line (%) households households (%)

0 27 16.71 to 5 93 57.45 to 10 21 13.010 to 15 5 3.115 to 20 10 6.220 to 30 1 0.6> 30 5 3.1All size classes 162 100.0

(a) Average share of net income in poverty line at 2001 prices = 5.7 per cent(b) Average share of net income in poverty line at average prices between 1999 and2003 = 8.1 per cent


lower than the average price in 1999. The same was true for crops like pepperand arecanut as well. As a result, the average value of production from home-stead plots estimated in my study for 2001 was lower than what it would havebeen for years other than 2000 and 2001. When I replaced the 2001 prices withthe average prices between 1999 and 2003, the average share of net income fromhomesteads in the official poverty line registered a significant increase: from5.7 per cent to 8.1 per cent (Table 7).

Tharakan (2002, 358) has noted that there are ‘many scholars who failed tounderstand the significance of the allotment of homestead land to the poor’ inKerala as part of land reform. My estimates of net income from homesteads, thefirst for Kerala in my knowledge, support Tharakan’s argument, and show thathomestead plots brought in more than marginal monetary benefits to agricul-tural worker households.

Levels of Asset OwnershipAsset ownership among agricultural labour households, Kerala State

According to secondary data from the All India Debt and Investment Survey(AIDIS) in 2002, the values of assets owned by rural households and agriculturallabour households in Kerala were higher than those for India by a considerablemargin (Table 8). The average value of assets held by members of agriculturallabour households in India (Rs 50,914) was only 43 per cent of the average valueof assets owned by members of agricultural labour households in Kerala (Rs118,955). Out of 1000 agricultural labour households in rural Kerala, only 52

320 R. Ramakumar


Table 8. Per 1000 distribution of households by household asset holding for eachhousehold type and average value of assets, Kerala and India, rural, AIDIS, 2002,agricultural labour households and rural households

Household asset Number of Number ofvalue class (Rs) agricultural labour rural households

households per 1000 per 1000

Kerala India Kerala India

< 15,000 52 182 29 7615,000–30,000 45 238 22 8330,000–60,000 182 306 63 14860,000–100,000 190 176 95 146100,000–150,000 269 58 125 123150,000–200,000 98 18 89 87200,000–300,000 130 16 126 109300,000–450,000 32 4 122 82450,000–800,000 2 2 151 79> 800,000 0 0 178 67All 1,000 1,000 1,000 1,000Average value of 118,955 50,914 509,679 265,606assets/household (Rs)

Source: NSSO (2005).

owned assets valued at less than Rs 15,000; in rural India, the number was 182.About 53 per cent of agricultural labour households in rural Kerala had assetholdings valued above Rs 100,000; in rural India, only less than 10 per cent heldassets valued above Rs 100,000.

Levels of asset ownership, manual labour households involved in agricultural wagework, Morazha

My data from Morazha show that the average value of assets owned by a manuallabour household involved in agricultural wage work in 2001 was Rs 264,153(Table 9). This value was about five times the asset value of an average agricul-tural household in rural India in 2002, equivalent to about 12 times the officialpoverty line for a five-member household in 2000–1 and about 9 times theaverage income of my surveyed households in 2000–1. Within the set of sur-veyed households, there was no significant difference between the value of assetsowned by income-poor and non-income-poor households.

The value of owned land, houses and buildings formed about 92 per cent ofthe total value of assets of the study households (Table 9). The relatively highshare of the value of land owned was, in the first place, due to the fact that thesehouseholds owned land, the rights to which they received through land reform.



Table 9. Percentage of households holding different types of assets and average value ofeach type of asset, manual labour households involved in agricultural wage work,Morazha, 2001

Asset type All households Households below Households abovethe poverty line the poverty line

Share in Average Share in Average Share in Averageasset asset asset asset asset assetvalue value value value value value(%) (Rs) (%) (Rs) (%) (Rs)

Land 69.5 183,633 70.9 165,151 68.7 197,346House and buildings 22.5 59,407 23.0 53,464 22.2 63,817Livestock 0.4 1,075 0.3 760 0.5 1,309Non-agricultural assets 7.5 19,867 5.8 13,432 8.6 24,641Agricultural implements 0.1 170 0.1 124 0.1 205All assets 100.0 264,153 100.0 232,930 100.0 287,319


Land reform in Kerala aimed at the distribution of a minimum of 10 cents ofhomestead land to landless agricultural workers. In 2001, a household that owneda homestead plot of 10 cents in Morazha had a fixed asset valued at Rs 80,000–100,000 (that is, about four to five times the official income poverty line for afive-member household in 2000–1).13

State-supported Social Security Schemes

In a survey of social security schemes in India, Mahendra Dev (2002, 228) notedthat Kerala ‘has the most wide-ranging set of schemes for the benefit of theunorganised sector’ workers. According to the estimates of Duvvury and George(1997), about 51 per cent of Kerala’s income-poor population aged 60 and abovewere recipients of some social security assistance. RBI data for 2001–2 show thatthe share of revenue expenditure on ‘social security and welfare’ in total revenueexpenditure was 1.7 per cent in Kerala, which was higher than the correspondingshare of 0.5 per cent for the central government (RBI 2003).14

13 A secondary reason was the high unit value of land in Kerala compared to other States (see Pathak1981; Varghese 1987; Pradhan and Subramanian 2002). In an inter-State analysis, Pradhan andSubramanian (2002) found that the per-acre price of irrigated land in Kerala was the highest, at Rs572,210, among the 18 States they studied. In Morazha, on an average, an acre of garden land waspriced at Rs 800,000–1,000,000 in 2001. According to Varghese (1987), two major reasons for thehigher prices of garden lands and homesteads in Kerala were the demand for such land for houseconstruction purposes and the higher profitability of commercial and tree crops relative to paddy.14 This was true of data for earlier years also. In 1992–3, the Kerala government spent Rs 80 croreon ‘social security and welfare’, which formed 2.8 per cent of the revenue expenditure of the State(Rajan et al. 1999). In the same year, the corresponding share in the Central government budget wasonly 1 per cent.

322 R. Ramakumar


Duvvury and George (1997) note that the policies of social security forunorganized workers in Kerala after 1956–7 were significantly influenced by thedifferent experiments undertaken by the State’s working-class movement before1957. Citing Isaac (1984) and Isaac et al. (1997), they point out that historically,‘the working class movement in Kerala had experimented to integrate the strug-gle against capitalists and the colonial state with their initiatives for welfare andmutual benefit activities’ (Duvvury and George 1997, 14). These experimentsincluded institutional arrangements like labour associations and cooperatives.The lessons learnt from these arrangements influenced the demands of the labourmovement for social security as well as the formulation of labour welfare policiesof the state after 1956–7. The establishment of Welfare Funds was one importantpolicy intervention in this period.

Welfare Funds are the institutions constituted by the state for the distributionof social security assistance for rural unorganized workers. The benefits fromWelfare Funds to workers can be divided into three types (Duvvury and George1997). First, some Funds provide provident fund benefits to members uponsuperannuation, a monthly pension and a gratuity payment. Monthly pensionswere provided by 8 of the 19 Funds in 2001. Secondly, some Funds give socialinsurance benefits to members, such as a payment for medical treatment orphysical disability. Thirdly, some Funds provide different types of welfare assist-ance to members, such as assistance for children’s education, marriage of daughtersand construction of houses.15 About 19 Welfare Funds for different sections ofunorganized workers were established in Kerala after 1956–7 (Duvvury andGeorge 1997). In 1995, Welfare Funds covered at least 50 per cent of all theunorganized workers in the State, accounting for about 2.6 million workers. Ingeneral, the funds for these institutions were generated through contributionsfrom workers, employers and the government over a period of time.

In Morazha, 23 per cent of all the manual labour households involved inagricultural wage work (38 out of 162) received some form of direct social securitypayment in 2000–1. The direct social security schemes of which my surveyedhouseholds were beneficiaries were the agricultural worker pension, constructionworker pension, disabled persons pension, widow pension, old age pension,handloom worker pension, fishermen pension and traditional artist pension.

The allowances provided through the major schemes of which members ofmy surveyed households in Morazha were beneficiaries in 2001 are as follows.

• The agricultural worker pension was Rs 110 per month (or Rs 1320 per year).• The allowance for physically handicapped persons was Rs 110 per month

(or Rs 1320 per year).• The pension for widows was Rs 100 per month (or Rs 1200 per year).• The pension for old aged persons was Rs 100 per month (or Rs 1200 per year).• The pension for traditional artists was Rs 400 per month (Rs 4800 per year).• The pension for construction workers was Rs 150 per month (or Rs 1800

per year).15 In this context, see also Kannan (2002).



If we consider only the 38 households that received direct assistance in 2000–1, the average annual income from direct social security schemes was Rs 1585.16

The share of households that received social security payments was higher amongincome-poor households (2.2 per cent) than among non-income-poor house-holds (0.8 per cent). In the estimation of direct social security payments, I haveassumed that households have actually received all the dues from the govern-ment. However, in 2000–1, the government was yet to pay the full amount oftheir pensions for many beneficiaries in Morazha.

The average direct social security assistance of Rs 1585 formed 5.5 per centof the annual income of the households and 7.2 per cent of official income-poverty line in 2000–1. When I excluded income from direct social securitypayments (actually received at the time of survey) from the incomes of thesurveyed households, the head-count ratio of poverty increased from 42.5 percent to 44.4 per cent.

The estimation of social security income as a share of total income, however,does not fully capture the benefits from social security payments to its benefici-aries. The initiation of a scheme to pay retired agricultural workers a monthlypension is not a programme of poverty alleviation, but a protective socialsecurity cover aimed at reducing economic vulnerability and deprivation amongthe poor. In Morazha, direct social security assistance played a significant rolein reducing vulnerability and deprivation. Two points highlight this argumenteffectively.

First, I compared the quantity of cereals purchasable with one year’s pensionwith the Indian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) per capita recommendeddietary allowance of cereals. The recommended dietary allowance of cereals was420 g per capita per day, or 153 kg per year. With the average amount of Rs 1585received as pension, a beneficiary could purchase 132 kg of rice from the openmarket in 2000–1. This quantity purchasable was equivalent to 86 per cent of theICMR’s recommended dietary allowance.

According to NSSO data, the per capita annual consumption of cereals inrural Kerala was 119 kg in 1999–2000. The average pension amount for a benefi-ciary in 2000–1 in my survey was sufficient to purchase 132 kg of rice per year,which was higher than the actual consumption of cereals by an average ruralhousehold in Kerala in 1999–2000.

Secondly, for beneficiaries who were old aged and economically dependent ontheir children due to poor health, the pension they received from the governmentwas a matter of great joy and pride; it gave them a feeling that they were alsoearners and raised their levels of economic security and self-esteem significantly.17

16 Apart from monthly pensions and allowances, members of Welfare Funds also received socialinsurance and welfare assistance. There was a retired female agricultural worker in my survey whoreceived a grant of Rs 2000 for her daughter’s marriage and another worker who received Rs 300 forthe purchase of spectacles in the reference year of 2000–1.17 Gulati (1990) had noted that the receipt of social security pensions helped the beneficiary tofinance 50 per cent of the cost of his or her annual cereal consumption and also significantly increasedthe social acceptance of older persons in their households.

324 R. Ramakumar


Thus, protective social security initiatives of the state like pension schemesplayed a major role in reducing levels of vulnerability and deprivation andraising the social dignity among manual labour households involved in agriculturalwage work in Morazha.

The Public Distribution System (PDS) of Food

Kerala has the best-functioning Public Distribution System (PDS) of food amongall States in India. The ration shop network that forms the PDS in Kerala has itsorigins in the struggle by the Left-led peasant movement to establish ‘Producersand Consumers Cooperatives’ (PCCs) for the public provisioning of food grainsthat began in 1942 in Malabar, and continued in different forms through the1950s and 1960s. Till 1997, the PDS in Kerala covered almost the whole of thepopulation of Kerala through a deep-running network of ration shops. Rationshops in Kerala supply mainly four commodities: rice, wheat, sugar and kerosene.Four ration shops operated for Morazha’s population in 2001.

Access to PDS

In Morazha, 157 out of the 162 manual labour households involved in agriculturalwage work (97 per cent) possessed ration cards in 2001. Estimates at the Statelevel show that about 97 per cent of households in Kerala had ration cards in theyear 2000 (Suryanarayana 2001).

Though the PDS in Kerala was universal for a long period of time, it hadceased to be so by 2001. Under the neo-liberal regime at the centre, universalPDS was scrapped and a Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) wasintroduced in 1997. Under the TPDS, the population had to be classified intoAbove Poverty Line (APL) and Below Poverty Line (BPL) categories.18 In 2001,subsidized food was to be made available to only the BPL households, and theAPL households had to pay a price equivalent to the full economic cost ofpurchasing and handling the food grains.19

In Morazha, out of the 157 manual labour households involved in agriculturalwage work with ration cards, 96 households (61.2 per cent) were officiallyclassified as BPL and 61 households (38.8 per cent) were officially classified asAPL in 2001. It is clear at once that the number of manual labour householdsinvolved in agricultural wage work classified as income-poor in my survey and asBelow Poverty Line (BPL) as per ration cards differ considerably. In my survey,only 42.5 per cent of households were classified as income-poor.

18 For detailed information on targeted PDS, see Swaminathan (2000). Throughout this article, theterms APL and BPL refer to the households classified as Above Poverty Line and Below PovertyLine by the government.19 Swaminathan (2000) argues that the use of an income-criterion to classify rural households intoAPL and BPL may not be appropriate, as wages and days of employment in the informal sectorfluctuate widely. An estimation of annual incomes of households is, thus, very difficult. Further, asthe income-poverty line itself is fixed at a near-destitution level, the exclusion of a household justabove the destitution line of income from social assistance schemes cannot be justified.



Table 10. Distribution of households by income-poverty classification and type ofration card, manual labour households involved in agricultural wage work, Morazha,2001

Households that by income Households that by ration Numbercriterion were card type were

Above poverty line Above poverty line 45Above poverty line Below poverty line 46Below poverty line Above poverty line 16Below poverty line Below poverty line 50

All households 157

Note: Of the 162 study households, only 157 had ration cards.


A widespread complaint from other parts of rural India after the introductionof TPDS has been the existence of a major mismatch between households class-ified as BPL by the government and their actual standard of living (Swaminathan2000; Swaminathan and Misra 2002; GoI 2002c). A high-level committeeappointed by the government in 2002 concluded that ‘the narrow targeting ofthe PDS based on absolute income-poverty is likely to have excluded a large partof the nutritionally vulnerable population from the PDS’ (GoI 2002c).

I attempted to estimate the errors of inclusion and exclusion of householdsfrom PDS in my survey in Morazha. First, 46 households were classified as BPLby the government, although they were not income-poor by my survey (Table 10).Secondly, there were only 16 households which were classified as APL by thegovernment, but were income-poor by my survey.

I then estimated the error of wrong inclusion (E) and error of exclusion (F).20

The E-ratio refers to the proportion of non-income-poor households in all house-holds who are classified as BPL by the government. The F-ratio refers to theproportion of income-poor households in all households who are classified asAPL by the government. Evidently, a high F-ratio represents a more seriouswelfare failure than a high E-ratio from the viewpoint of social security. As seenfrom Table 11, the F-ratio in my survey was only 10.2 per cent while the E-ratiowas higher at 29.3 per cent. These ratios are very different from those estimatedby studies in other States; Swaminathan and Misra (2002) found in a Maharashtravillage that under the TPDS, the F-ratio was 42.6 per cent and the E-ratio was6.1 per cent.

The low F-ratio and the high E-ratio noted for Morazha is a result ofthe efforts of the State government and the Left-political parties to bring in alarger proportion of households under the ambit of the PDS than the proportion

20 For a discussion on the measurement of inclusion and exclusion errors in targeted programmes,see Cornia and Stewart (1993).

326 R. Ramakumar


Table 11. E- and F-type errors in the provision of PDS,manual labour households involved in agricultural wagework, Morazha, 2001

Measure of error Value (in per cent)

Error of wrong inclusion, E 29.3Error of wrong exclusion, F 10.2


stipulated by the Central government. From the time of initiation of the PDS inthe 1960s, the system was universal in its coverage in Kerala (Koshy et al. 1989;Mooij 1999; Swaminathan 2000; Suryanarayana 2001); all households had thesame terms of access. At the time of introduction of the targeted PDS in 1997,the Central government wanted the State government to restrict the supply ofsubsidized provision of food grains to only the income-poor, or 26 per cent ofthe State’s population. This figure was arrived at based on the NSS survey onConsumer Expenditure in 1993–4. As such, the quantity of food grains that theCentral government provided to the State from 1997 onwards at subsidizedprices was calculated according to the requirements of only 26 per cent of thepopulation. This effort to convert the universal PDS to a targeted PDS led topublic protests and agitations, and there was intense pressure from Left-politicalmovements to restore the universal character of the PDS.

The Left government in Kerala argued that the HCR of 26 per cent cited bythe Central government did not conform to the actual state of poverty in theState, and wanted the benefits of the PDS extended to 42 per cent of the popula-tion. The Central government did not agree with this view, but the Stategovernment went ahead on its own and extended the benefits of food subsidy to42 per cent of its population. According to Suryanarayana (2001), the additionalburden on the State government in extending this benefit was Rs 480 million in1997. The better coverage of income-poor households under PDS in Morazha,as compared to other States, was due to this decision of the State’s Left-government to extend food subsidies to an additional section of the population.

Purchases from the Public Distribution System, Morazha

In Table 12, I have presented the purchase of commodities from the PDS by fourcategories of surveyed households according to their status based on income-poverty and on the type of ration card. On an average, an income-poor house-hold classified as BPL purchased 23.6 kg of cereals per month from the PDS:23.1 kg of rice and 0.5 kg of wheat. In a year, an income-poor householdpurchased 283.4 kg of cereals: 277.2 kg of rice and 6.2 kg of wheat (Table 12). Atthe per capita level, an individual from an income-poor household purchased67.5 kg of cereals annually from PDS: 66 kg of rice and 1.5 kg of wheat.



Table 12. Extent of purchases of commodities from PDS, manual labour householdsinvolved in agricultural wage work

Households that by Households that by Rice Wheat Sugar Keroseneincome-criterion were ration card type were

(a) Average purchase per household (rice, wheat and sugar in kg per year, kerosene in litres)Above poverty line Above poverty line 136.8 10.5 – 37.2Below poverty line Above poverty line 96.8 9.0 – 38.4Above poverty line Below poverty line 355.2 12.9 27.6 40.8Below poverty line Below poverty line 277.2 6.2 21.6 44.4

(b) Share of households purchasing (per cent)Above poverty line Above poverty line 55.6 15.6 0.0 100.0Below poverty line Above poverty line 37.5 37.5 0.0 100.0Above poverty line Below poverty line 97.8 13.0 97.8 97.8Below poverty line Below poverty line 98.0 12.0 92.0 100.0


The recommended dietary allowance of the ICMR of cereals is 420 gm percapita per day, or 153 kg per year. As a share of the ICMR allowance, per capitapurchases from the PDS by income-poor BPL households formed 44 per cent.As a share of the NSS estimate of the actual per capita annual consumption ofcereals for rural Kerala in 1999–2000 (119 kg per capita), per capita purchasesfrom PDS in an income-poor manual labour household involved in agriculturalwage work formed 57 per cent. The data suggest a significant contribution bythe PDS towards raising the levels of food grain consumption of manual labourhouseholds involved in agricultural wage work in Morazha.

The extent to which manual labour households involved in agricultural wagework accessed the PDS to purchase commodities was very high in Morazha.About 98 per cent of all BPL households (irrespective of whether they wereactually income-poor or not) purchased rice from the ration shops in 2000–1.Over 97 per cent of BPL households purchased kerosene from the PDS in2000–1. Evidently, the reach of this instrument of food security in the desam wasvery deep.

Benefits from the Public Distribution System, Morazha

To quantify the extent of State support that each household received from PDS,I first calculated the implicit State subsidy it received through PDS. ImplicitState subsidy was defined as the difference between the total expenditure in-curred by a household on PDS purchases and the expenditure if the householdhad turned to the open market for its current PDS purchases. Of course, theassumption here is that price elasticity of demand is zero.

328 R. Ramakumar


On an average, a BPL income-poor manual labour household involved inagricultural wage work received an implicit assistance of Rs 1205 from the PDSin 2000–1 (Table 13). As a share of the income-poverty line, this implicit assist-ance was 7.5 per cent of the income-poverty line. The average assistance to a BPLnon-income-poor household as a share of the income-poverty line was 6.6 percent of their income-poverty line.

In sum, as an instrument of social security in the provision of food, the role ofthe PDS in Morazha was crucial. The share of average subsidy assistance in thepoverty line for income-poor BPL households, for instance, underlines the sig-nificance of PDS in increasing their command over essential commodities, raisetheir levels of calorie consumption and thus, overcome economic vulnerability.21

Public Action and Access to Credit

Provision of credit at affordable costs to the poor is an important component ofany social security strategy. In their work on social security for the poor, Drezeand Sen (1991, 13–14) note that

the time pattern of earnings [of poor households] may not at all matchwith the time pattern of needs. Indeed, sometimes the needs are maximalprecisely when incomes tend to be minimal . . . This inter-temporalmismatch would not matter greatly if capital markets were ‘perfect’, allowingadjustment of expenditure to needs even without altering the pattern ofearnings . . . But capital markets . . . are frequently non-existent or feeble(especially in developing countries). Social security has a special role inthese circumstances.22

Table 13. Average annual implicit subsidy per household from PDS, manual labourhouseholds involved in agricultural wage work, Morazha, 2000–1

Households that by Households that by Average implicit As a share of theincome-criterion ration card type subsidy per household income-povertywere were (Rs per year) line (%)

Above poverty line Above poverty line 290.20 1.2Below poverty line Above poverty line 193.50 0.8Above poverty line Below poverty line 1571.70 6.6Below poverty line Below poverty line 1205.20 7.5


21 Studies based on NSS data have noted that Kerala and West Bengal were the only States in Indiawhere the consumption of cereals in both rural and urban areas increased over the 1980s and the 1990s(see Swaminathan and Ramachandran 1999; Patnaik 2001).22 On the importance of credit institutions in social security policies, see also Burgess and Stern(1991).



Historical Features of Rural Credit Markets in Malabar

A historical survey of the nature of rural credit markets in Malabar till the 1950sshows that these markets were characterized by heavy indebtedness among thepeasantry, presence of landlords and traders as major lenders, and the incidenceof usury as a major form of surplus extraction.23

In 1956–7, according to the Second Agricultural Labour Enquiry, nearly 95per cent of the attached agricultural workers in Malabar, who mostly belongedto the deprived castes, were in debt. This burden of debt forced labourers andsmall tenants to enter into oppressive and bonded forms of labour and landrelations. While one section of workers of the traditional slave castes becamedebt-bonded attached workers under their old masters, the others remained heavilyindebted to informal sources even when not debt-bonded.24 E. J. Edona, a mis-sionary in Kannur in the early twentieth century, wrote of debt-bonded workersthat ‘social disabilities and economic bondage have fettered their freedom’ andthat ‘the perpetual burden of debt binds them with an iron chain to their masters’(Edona 1940, 133).

In 1951–2, 83 per cent of the principal borrowed by rural households inMalabar was from landlords and traders, as per the All India Rural Credit Survey(AIRCS). Loans from landlords and traders also came at very high interest rates.According to Sreenivasaraghavaiyengar (1893, 254), Malabar was the region inMadras Presidency where moneylending appeared in its most oppressive form –one that he described as being of a ‘genuine usurious type’. My calculations fromthe case studies presented in Sreenivasaraghavaiyengar (1893) suggest that interestrates ranged from 40 per cent to 150 per cent per year.

Features of the Rural Credit Market in Morazha, 2001

Even a cursory look at the data from Morazha in 2001 indicates a revolutionarychange in the character of the credit market since the 1940s. The data show aremarkable expansion in the provision of credit to the poor from the formalsector. Further, credit was provided at terms that were generally favourable tothe poor – in respect of the purpose for which credit was advanced, in respect ofthe collateral that was required and in respect of the interest rates on loans (for adetailed analysis, see Ramakumar 2005).25

23 A detailed historical survey of the nature of rural credit markets in Malabar is in Ramakumar(2005).24 See, in this context, Ramakumar (2005) and Herring (1983). Hjejle (1967, 109) writes that evenafter the abolition of slavery in Malabar in 1843,

the majority of slaves . . . lived on the properties where their ancestors had worked and theirconditions did not seem to have altered in any considerable way. They were no longer boughtor sold, but frequently hired out by their masters. In general, it was their indebtedness, whichleft the slaves in the hands of their masters.

25 Field studies from other parts of rural Kerala in the post-land reform period also show substantialchanges with respect to agricultural workers’ access to formal sector credit. George (1992, 117) wroteof the relatively low dependence of rural workers on local moneylenders in the 1980s and their

330 R. Ramakumar


Table 14. Principal borrowed, by sources of borrowing, manual labour householdsinvolved in agricultural wage work, Morazha, 2001

Source of Number Share of (2) Principal Share of (4) Shares withinborrowing of loans in total (%) borrowed (Rs) in total (%) sectors (%)

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)Cooperatives 184 97.4 1,971,550 97.3 99.1Government 2 1.1 18,550 0.9 0.9Formal sector 186 98.4 1,990,100 98.2 100.0Moneylenders 1 0.5 5,000 0.2 13.9Friends and relatives 1 0.5 25,000 1.2 69.4Chit finance 1 0.5 6,000 0.3 16.7Informal sector 3 1.6 36,000 1.8 100.0

Total 189 100.0 2,026,100 100.0 –


Between the 1950s and 2001, there was something of a reversal of the roles ofthe formal and informal sectors of credit in the credit portfolio of rural manualworkers in our study area. In 2001, about 99 per cent of the total principalborrowed by manual labour households involved in agricultural wage work inMorazha came from the formal sector (Table 14). Landlords, traders and othermoneylenders were effectively eliminated as sources of credit. Within the formalsector, cooperative credit societies accounted for 99 per cent of the credit ad-vanced. About 97 per cent of all loans taken by the study households were fromthe cooperative sector. Of all the credit supplied by cooperatives to the studyhouseholds, one society – The Morazha-Kalliasseri Service Cooperative Bank(henceforth MKSCB) – accounted for about 89 per cent of total number of loans.

The study households borrowed from the cooperative sector mainly for con-sumption expenses, a major purpose for which rural poor households requirecredit. Some of the major purposes of loans drawn were house construction andrepair, marriage expenses, medical expenses, educational expenses and repay-ment of other debts. Credit from the formal sector was available at easy termsand conditions for households. Immovable collateral, such as land, was insistedon as security only for loans of large size. The surveyed households were able toborrow loans of larger sizes also by surrendering land (obtained through land

‘marginal’ dependence on landlords for credit; the main reason for the change, he wrote, was the‘collapse of feudal relations in the agrarian sector’. Cooperative banks and societies had become majorsources of loans for agricultural workers. Bureaucratic delays in obtaining loans were far less thanbefore, because agricultural workers had gained a major say in the functioning of cooperative banks.According to George, one reason why moneylenders could not charge high interest rates in ruralKerala was that the threat of physical violence could not be used to recover loans advanced to unionizedagricultural workers. A district-wise survey of agricultural workers by the Government of Kerala in1983–4 also showed similar results. For the State as a whole, the survey found that 53 per cent oftotal number of loans was from public commercial banks and cooperative societies (GoK 1985, 73).



reform) as collateral. The cooperative society had eliminated arbitrariness andset standardized quantities of credit that could be provided on each type ofcollateral, such as gold. Rates of interest charged by the cooperative bank werealso standardized for each type of loan. No manual labour household involvedin agricultural wage work (except one) in Morazha paid an interest rate morethan 18 per cent per annum for any loan outstanding in 2001.

Public Action and the Emergence of the Cooperative Movement

The spread of the cooperative movement in Morazha had a direct link with thepolitical movement for land reform in Malabar led by the Left peasant unions.During the Second World War, at a time when Malabar was experiencing anacute food shortage, the peasant movement launched an agitation to prevent thehoarding of food grains by landlords and traders. This movement aimed atforcibly collecting food grains from the granaries of landlords and traders andselling them to the general public through Producers and Consumers Coopera-tives or PCCs (Ramachandran 1996). After the War, most of the PCCs wereconverted into credit societies that began to advance credit to cultivators at lowinterest rates. These societies were called Aikya Nanaya Sanghams (CooperativeMoney Societies). These Aikya Nanaya Sanghams were later converted into servicecooperative banks, the form in which they operate today.

Struggles against janmi landlordism were very active in Morazha and theneighbouring villages like Kalliasseri and Pappinisseri. One of the first PCCs tobe established in Malabar district was in Pappinisseri.26 It was as part of thismovement that the Aikya Nanaya Sangham that functioned at Anchampeedika,Morazha’s main market place, was transformed into a cooperative society(Morazha-Kalliasseri Multipurpose Cooperative Credit Society) in 1950.27

Morazha is thus distinctly different from other Indian States and many devel-oping countries with respect to the provisioning of credit as an instrument ofsocial security. The major historical features of the rural credit market in Malabarwere usury-based exploitation of the poor and oppressive relations of debt bond-age. Public action in Morazha developed a banking institution that helped toeliminate these exploitative features of the credit market, and expanded theaccess to affordable credit of manual labour households.

The Conditions of Housing

The conditions of housing for the rural poor in Kerala are closely related to landreforms. The free provision of homestead sites to landless agricultural workerswas an important step in that workers could avoid the difficulties of financingthe purchase of land to construct houses. Given that the most important barrier

26 The PCC formed at Pappinisseri was converted into an Aikya Nanaya Sangham and later into acooperative rural bank. This bank – The Pappinisseri Cooperative Rural Bank – still exits.27 For a case study of the society, see Ramakumar (2005).

332 R. Ramakumar


to better conditions of housing – lack of ownership of house sites – was over-come through land reform, worker households in Kerala were in a better initialposition to improve their housing conditions.28

The proportion of households living in pucca houses was 52 per cent in ruralKerala at the Census of India 1991, as compared to 31 per cent in rural India.29

One of the important reasons for Kerala moving ahead of other States in thisrespect was State action that supplemented the benefits of land reform. Theimplementation of public housing schemes of the Kerala government began inthe early 1970s. One of the important schemes was the ‘One Lakh Houses Scheme’of 1972, which envisaged the provision of houses to landless agriculturalworkers who did not receive homesteads under land reforms. The efficientimplementation of public housing schemes resulted in a rapid reduction of thedifference between the number of households and the number of houses in ruralKerala (Gopikuttan 2002). Gopikuttan noted that houses in Kerala have a largeraverage number of rooms, higher value and better quality compared to otherStates. Importantly, he concluded that ‘unlike in other parts of the country,being a State with an educated population aware of the popular programmes ofthe government, the major proportion of public housing schemes in Keralaseems to have reached the target groups’ (2002, 6). In the period after 1996–7,local panchayats have also started taking serious interest in the schemes to providehousing subsidies to poor households.

Data from secondary sources show that the conditions of housing andsanitation for rural households in Kerala are considerably superior to those inother parts of India. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS), 1999 showedthat 77 per cent of houses in rural Kerala were pucca houses, while only 19 percent of houses were pucca houses in rural India (IIPS 2001) (Table 15). The meannumber of persons per room, a measure of sufficiency of housing space, was 1.3in rural Kerala and 2.7 in rural India. The share of households with no toilets athome was 17 per cent in rural Kerala and 81 per cent in rural India.

The Kerala Statistical Institute conducted a district-wise survey of quality oflife in 1996–7 (KSI 1999). The study area in Kannur district was Madayi village.This survey found that 97 per cent of households in Madayi lived in tiled orconcrete houses. Only 3 per cent of households lived in huts. No householdreported the source of drinking water as an ‘unprotected source’, while an earliersurvey by the same organization in Madayi had shown that 1.2 per cent ofhouseholds belonged to this category. About 96 per cent of households reported

28 Vyas (1964, cited in Ramachandran 1990) noted that in the Gujarat villages that he studied, thedependence of halis on their employers was considerably weakened after the allotment of plots ofland by the government to the halis for construction of houses. In villages where the allotments werenot made, the conditions of dependence remained strong.29 The Census of India classifies the types of houses into three: pucca, semi-pucca and katcha. Thedefinition of these three types is based on the type of materials used for the walls and roof. If bothwalls and roof are made of pucca material, the house is called pucca house. If both walls and roof aremade of katcha material the house is called a katcha house. If only either the wall or roof is made ofpucca material, the house is called a semi-pucca house. The NFHS, on the other hand, classifies ahouse into pucca, semi-pucca and katcha on the basis of the materials used in the walls, roof and floor.



‘protected well’ (covered well) as the source of drinking water; 79 per centamong the above 96 per cent had ‘own protected wells’. About 90 per centof households reported using a flush or ESP (borehole with water seal) toiletfacility.

Housing Conditions in Morazha, 2001

Data on the housing conditions of all households in Morazha desam are availablefrom a survey undertaken by the local panchayat in 1996. Data from the survey,presented in Table 16, show that a large proportion of houses in the desam (73per cent) were tiled. While 19 per cent of houses had a concrete roof, only 8 percent of houses had thatched or partially thatched roofs. The survey also showsthat in the whole of Andhur panchayat, there were only 14 homeless householdsout of 4197 households (0.33 per cent). Results of this 1996 survey are notavailable for agricultural worker households alone. Nevertheless, it does showthat the task of providing safe shelter for the population had been achieved to alarge extent in Morazha by 1996.

Table 15. Distribution of households according to selected housing and sanitationcharacteristics, India and Kerala, rural, NFHS, 1999

Housing characteristic Share of households (%)

India Kerala

(a) Type of house:Katcha 41.4 7.8Semi-pucca 39.5 15.5Pucca 19.0 76.7Total per cent 100.0 100.0

(b) Mean number of persons per room 2.7 1.3

(c) Sanitation facility:Flush toilet 8.8 15.4Pit toilet/latrine 10.0 67.3No toilet facility 81.1 17.3Total per cent 100.0 100.0

(d) Source of drinking water:Piped 25.3 11.4Hand pump 47.3 2.2Well water 23.5 83.6Surface water 3.5 1.1Other 0.7 1.7Total per cent 100.0 100.0

Source: IIPS (2001, Table 2.9, 25).

334 R. Ramakumar


My survey in Morazha in 2001 showed that no manual labour householdinvolved in agricultural wage work in Morazha was homeless. No manuallabour household involved in agricultural wage work lived in a katcha house. Allhouses had pucca roofs. About 91 per cent of houses had their own latrines, withonly 9 per cent left without their own latrines.

As mentioned, land reform was the critical policy measure that ensuredhousing space for the poor in Morazha. One important driving force behindthe ability of households to finance house construction on their land was theavailability of credit at affordable rates of interest from cooperative societies(another product of public action). About 44 per cent of the principal borrowedby the manual labour households involved in agricultural wage work (and unpaidat the time of survey) was for the construction of houses. One of the mostimportant purposes for which the cooperative society in the desam providedcredit was also for the construction of houses.

The data also show that the task of providing separate latrines to poor house-holds in Morazha has been achieved to a very large extent. The provision oflatrines on such a mass scale was achieved primarily due to the subsidies forlatrine construction provided under the decentralization policy of the Left-ledgovernment from 1996–97. About 32 per cent of the manual labour householdsinvolved in agricultural wage work received the fixed subsidy of Rs 2000 perhousehold from the panchayat for latrine construction. My field notes show thatthis amount was fully utilized by all households either to construct latrines or toconstruct better latrines in place of old and dilapidated ones. The transparentprocess of selection of beneficiaries in the grama sabhas (assemblies of villagers)helped to ensure that only the needy households received the subsidy. The stand-ard reaction to a question ‘What did you gain from the new panchayat system?’from many of my surveyed households was: ‘we got Rs 2000 for the construc-tion of latrine’. There is no doubt that the availability of finances to constructhouses and the provision of subsidies for latrines led to major improvements insanitary conditions in Morazha.

Sanitation facilities for the poor in the Indian countryside have been a pointof serious analysis in The National Human Development Report (NHDR)

Table 16. Distribution of houses according to roof type, all households, Morazhadesam, 1996

Type of roof Number of houses Share of houses (%)

Thatched 19 1.4Partially thatched 97 7.0Tiled 1015 72.9Concrete 261 18.8All types of houses 1392 100.0

Source: Andhur Panchayat (1997).



2001. The report observes the following on the provision of latrine facilitiesin India:

A majority of India’s population does not have access to toilet facilities intheir dwellings and lacks sanitation facilities for the disposal of wastewater.Apart from the availability of safe drinking water, lack of sanitation, par-ticularly sewage and disposal of solid waste including night soil has beenobserved as among the main reasons for prevailing ill health and morbiditylevels in the country. As per the 1991 Census, less than one-fourth of thehouseholds in the country had toilet facility within the premises of theirresidence. (GoI 2002b, 40)

The NHDR cites Kerala’s commendable performance in toilet provision to itspopulation (51 per cent as against less than 25 per cent according to Census ofIndia 1991 and 85 per cent as against 36 per cent according to NFHS, 1998–9)and comments that, ‘the problem of sanitation for the majority, at household level,is essentially of awareness and education and not really of resources’ (2002b, 40).

Other studies have also pointed out the importance of educational achieve-ments and the increased awareness that follows as an important determinant ofimproved health indicators in Kerala. Advances in female literacy and schooling,for which Kerala is famous, had led to a better and scientific understanding ofhealth and sanitation issues in rural households. As Ramachandran (1996, 235)noted, ‘the provision of health facilities has an outstanding effect on societieswhere social, economic, and political conditions are such that people are ready toreceive and make good use of these facilities’. Improved sanitation facilities inMorazha are a reflection of this empirical fact.

REPRISE AND CONCLUSIONS

Public action was the driving force behind the celebrated social developmentachievements of the State of Kerala in India. Through public action, the Statein Kerala implemented a historic land reform, invested heavily in educationand health, initiated a number of social security measures (such as schemes forsubsidized food distribution and for social assistance and social insurance forunorganized workers and destitute sections of the population) and encouragedcooperatives. The general objective of these social security schemes, as for coun-tries across the world, was to address issues of deprivation, economic vulner-ability and the low quality of life of the poorer sections.

In this article, my major concern has been to examine the ways in whichpublic action affected different aspects of the standard of living (other than educa-tion and health) of agricultural wage workers in Morazha desam in the Malabarregion of Kerala.30 Scholarly research has indicated that Malabar was the region

30 On Kerala’s achievements in education, see Tharakan (1984), Ramachandran (1996) andChandrasekhar et al. (2001). On Kerala’s achievements in health care, see Panikar and Soman (1984),Krishnan (1994) and Ramachandran (1996).

336 R. Ramakumar


in India where agrarian relations were most oppressive before 1956, and whereagricultural workers experienced the most backward working and livingconditions. The effort in this article has been to trace the changes in the livingconditions of households involved in agricultural work in Morazha over time,and relate these changes to the processes of public action that have markedthe history of socio-political life in Kerala.

I first examined the progress of the State in reducing income poverty. Notonly were the levels of income poverty among agricultural labour householdsand all rural households in Kerala much lower than the national average, but alsothese rates of poverty had declined at a much faster rate in Kerala than in otherIndian States. However, absolute levels of income-poverty among agriculturallabour households have continued to be high in Kerala. In Morazha desam, 42.5per cent of all manual labour households involved in agricultural wage workwere income-poor in 2000–1.

Even while the absolute level of income-poverty in Morazha was high, income-poor households enjoyed higher levels of standard of living (with respect tocertain important indicators) than is normally associated with such low incomelevels among labouring households. In particular, they enjoyed higher levels oflandownership and asset ownership, better access to credit, better access to socialsecurity schemes and subsidized food distribution systems, and better conditionsof housing and sanitation compared to similar socio-economic groups in otherStates. The argument in this article is that such a transformation of socio-economic conditions was brought about through public action from above andbelow, and could not have been secured by any other means.

It was land reform that prepared the ground and set the pace for every socio-economic advance made in Malabar after 1956–7. It is significant to note herethat the long struggle for land reform in Kerala was an integrated one: a strugglewhere there was a convergence of resistance against different forms of class-,caste- and gender-based discriminations. Land reforms undermined not onlyfeudal landlordism, but also the traditional economic base of upper caste domi-nation. Without land reforms, it would have been impossible to imagine theuniversal spread of female literacy and mass schooling for girls in Malabar. Thus,land reforms in Kerala were important, both intrinsically and instrumentally (seeRamachandran 2000). Intrinsically, land reform was important as it weakenedthe foundations of an oppressive agrarian regime and freed workers from differentforms of unfreedom. Land reforms were instrumentally important, as the post-land reform society that emerged was favourable to advances in the social andeconomic conditions of the poorer sections.

My data from Morazha clearly show how traditional agrarian power wasweakened by land reforms. Land reforms resulted in historic changes in thepatterns of land ownership among different social groups in society. Big land-lordism and the extreme concentration in the ownership of land, which was adistinct feature of agrarian relations in Morazha before land reforms, no longerexist. Land reforms helped to transfer significant areas of land in Morazha fromupper caste households to backward and oppressed caste groups. The largest



benefit to agricultural workers from land reform was through the acquisition ofownership, free of cost, over homestead land.

The ownership of land on a mass scale was clearly associated with the highvalue of assets owned by the surveyed households. Secondary data show that theaverage value of assets owned by agricultural labour households was the highestin Kerala among all States. In Morazha, the most important asset (in terms ofvalue) owned by the manual labour households involved in agricultural wagework was homestead land.

Land reform is considered as the most important and effective social securitystrategy for the rural poor. Kerala is a State where this role of land reform as acentral component of social security policy could be demonstrated best. First,due to the ownership of homestead land, workers were freed from being forcedto depend on landlords for living space. Secondly, the free provision of home-stead land represented a major financial saving for worker households, as invest-ment in land for housing was not required. Thirdly, production in homesteadplots was an important supplement to the incomes of households. The averagenet income from cultivation in homestead plots was the equivalent of about 8 percent of the official poverty line in 2000–1.

An analysis of other advances in standard of living made by the surveyedhouseholds brings out the central role of the movement for land reform on theone side and the role of the State and mass political organizations in sustainingthese benefits on the other.

There were major differences in the character of the rural credit market inMorazha in 2000–1 on the one hand and in the 1940s and the early 1950s on theother. Landlords and traders, who advanced loans at usurious rates of interest,were the major sources of credit for manual workers in the 1950s. In 2000–1,cooperative banks and credit societies had taken their place. About 98 per cent ofthe total credit borrowed was from the formal sector and almost all of that wasfrom cooperative banks. The mean rate of interest and the modal rate of interestat which my study households borrowed in 2000–1 were below 18 per cent perannum. These societies provided loans mainly for various consumption purposesof households, such as construction and repair of houses, marriage expenses,educational expenses, medical expenses and repayment of other loans.

The establishment of cooperative credit societies was a major achievement ofpublic action in Morazha. During the Second World War period, when therewas a severe food shortage in Malabar, the Communist peasant union formedsmall cooperatives – called the Producers and Consumers Cooperatives (PCCs) –to forcibly secure food grains from the store rooms of landlords and distributethem to the general public. After the War, the PCCs started to distribute creditto peasants, and over time, these small units of credit supply were transformedinto larger cooperative banks.

The Public Distribution System (PDS) of subsidized food in Kerala is widelyrecognized as India’s most effective. In Morazha, more sections of the rural poorthan in other parts of the country had access to the PDS. The average per capitapurchase of cereals from the PDS in 2000–1 for an income-poor household

338 R. Ramakumar


classified by the government as Below Poverty Line (BPL) was about half theIndian Council of Medical Research’s (ICMR) per capita recommended dietaryallowance of cereals. On an average, the implicit subsidy received by an income-poor household classified as BPL was about 8 per cent of the official poverty linein 2000–1. The ration shop network in Kerala also has its origins in the peasantmovement for public provisioning of food grain that began in Malabar in 1942(through the PCCs), and continued in different forms through the 1950s and1960s.

For the beneficiaries of direct social security schemes, pensions were impor-tant shields against destitution, and helped beneficiaries live with dignity insociety. The average amount of pension for a beneficiary in 2000–1 was sufficientto allow the beneficiary to purchase a quantity of cereals equivalent to 86 per centof the ICMR’s recommended dietary allowance of cereals. The conception anddesign of social security schemes in Kerala can be convincingly traced to theefforts of Kerala’s working class movement in the 1930s and 1940s to integratethe struggle against capitalists and the colonial state with their initiatives forwelfare and mutual benefit activities.

Housing conditions of the surveyed households were also remarkably supe-rior to those of similar sections in other States of India. No manual labourhousehold involved in agricultural wage work in Morazha lived in a katcha housein 2000–1. All households had pucca roofs. About 94 per cent of manual labourhouseholds involved in agricultural wage work in Morazha had a latrine in theirhouse. In rural India as a whole, 81 per cent of households did not have a latrineat home in 1999.

The condition of improved housing for the surveyed households was closelyassociated with the distribution of land through land reforms. In a State whereland prices were the highest in India, the primary barrier to better housingconditions is the difficulty to finance the purchase of house sites. This barrierwas overcome through land reform. The availability of cheap credit from thelocal cooperative banks (the product of public action) to construct houses and theavailability of financial grants from the panchayats (the local organs of the State)also helped the surveyed households to improve significantly their conditions ofhousing and sanitation.

In sum, public action was the most important determinant of higher qualityof life in Morazha. The achievements of public action in relation to raising thequality of life of manual labour households in Morazha were substantial. Landreforms by the State changed the conditions in which labour power was sold; itfreed workers to sell their labour power to the employers of their choice. Landreforms also provided worker households with homestead land free of cost. Theincome from homesteads supplemented household incomes and helped raise foodintake and nutrition. Legislation by the State provided for an innovative pensionscheme for unorganized workers. The public distribution system of the Stateserved effectively to improve nutrition. The political movement for land reformplayed an important role in eliminating older forms of usury-based exploitation,and to establish cooperative credit institutions. Institutions of local government



also provided subsidies to the poor to construct latrines, leading to significantimprovement in the conditions of sanitation.

The achievements in Morazha, and in Kerala, are remarkable also because thegains were preserved over time. Here again, the credit goes to sustained publicaction. Kerala’s society is marked by the presence of democratic political regimesthat work towards the welfare of the poor. It is also marked by the presenceof an alert citizenry; mass organizations, mainly from the Left, that representpeople of different backgrounds consistently strive to protect institutions ofpublic welfare from degenerating.31 This is one important way by which thepossibilities of rent-seeking or hijacking by elites of gains from public welfareinstitutions are minimized. After 1996–7, a significant boost to transparency inpublic administration was achieved through the State government’s decentraliza-tion programme. Beneficiary selection through grama sabhas has also significantlyreduced corruption in the delivery of benefits from public schemes. There is,moreover, a vigilant free press in Kerala, which enjoys wide readership acrossregions and classes, and which highlights failures of public administration andinstances of leakages. In essence, it is the high levels of democratization of ruralpublic life that has helped Kerala, and Morazha, to preserve its social sectorachievements over the years.

The conclusions of this article can also be extended to develop a larger argu-ment on the development experiences of Kerala vis-à-vis other Indian States. Ifother Indian States are to achieve the high levels of social indicators secured inKerala, it is necessary that the bases on which different forms of class-, caste- andgender-based discriminations survive are weakened. This requires (a) land re-forms on a large scale; (b) social movements that question the relevance of tradi-tional values and attitudes with respect to caste, social justice, the status of women,education and health; (c) an enlightened political agency that actually helps tobring about social change and delivers benefits to the poor; and (d) the dominantpresence of a pro-poor State, based politically on people’s struggles, that puts inplace and implements programmes of social change. The general level of socialindicators in many other Indian States is not high because these conditions areyet to be met.

The Morazha that I surveyed in 2000–1 was very different from the Morazhathat Thomas Shea surveyed in 1955. Shea characterized the conditions of life ofagricultural workers as ‘wretched in the extreme’ (Shea 1955b, 1031). My studydocumented the significant transformation in the quality of life of people thattook place in Morazha after 1955, through a significant weakening of the factorsthat led to ‘wretched’ conditions of life. Public action was the driving force

31 An early example in this regard was provided by Joan Mencher (1980, 1781–2):

In Kerala, if a Primary Health Centre were unmanned for a few days, there would be amassive demonstration at the nearest collectorate led by local leftists, who would demand tobe given what they knew they were entitled to . . . [T]he availability of doctors at a primaryhealth facility, and public knowledge that something will be done at any time of the day ornight if it is an emergency, has gone a long way to lowering child death.

340 R. Ramakumar


behind this transformation, and the destruction of traditional agrarian power bythe State through land reform was the most critical step.

ACRONYMS USED IN TEXT

AIDIS All-India Debt and Investment SurveyAIRCS All-India Rural Credit SurveyAPL Above the Poverty LineBPL Below the Poverty LineGoI Government of IndiaGoK Government of KeralaHCR Poverty Head Count RatioICMR Indian Council of Medical ResearchIIPS International Institute of Population StudiesKAWA Kerala Agricultural Workers’ ActKSI Kerala Statistical InstituteMKSCB The Morazha-Kalliasseri Service Cooperative BankNFHS National Family Health SurveyNHDR National Human Development ReportNSSO National Sample Survey OrganizationPCC Producers and Consumers CooperativePDS Public Distribution SystemPGI Poverty Gap IndexPPGI Pro-Poor Growth IndexTPDS Targeted Public Distribution System

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