the phenomenon of landlessness, and on the other, the implications of the policy interventions on the part of the government on all rural classes and groups, par-ticularly the subordinate land-poor groups, in employment terms. The second sec-tion explains the social dynamics of ascendancy of the rich peasantry to power in rural West Bengal by means of land ownership and authority over labour, and its politics within the state domain and beyond in shaping the condition of unemploy-ment confronted particularly by the landless subordinate caste groups. The third section examines the way the people from the subordinate labouring class in rural West Bengal cope with the predicament of their landlessness and unemployment, and subsequently constructing their politics in order to shape, on the one hand, the dynamic consequences of unemployment, and on the other, the state policies aimed at generating employment. The last section concludes that owing to the determinant role of capital whatsoever in agriculture the state of rural economy of India, particu-larly of West Bengal, has deteriorated, transforming the class configuration and the rural economy further by means of marketization of farming and other occupations.
The government’s attempts that aimed at supporting the rural labour through vari-ous kinds of policies would complicate the issue further. All sections of people are more or less bearing the brunt of the negative implication of these developments in the domain of employment except only a small section of privileged folk across castes who could make their fortune through exploiting favourably the rural market by means of entrepreneurship, be it economic or the political.
Caste, landed class and land
Does caste overlap with class in rural areas of West Bengal? Do the upper castes own highest proportion of land, and then constitute the landed class at the rural fringes? If yes, how do the upper castes who owning larger proportion of land determine the politics in rural areas? How do they shape the phenomenon of rural unemployment? Do they have any role in determining the governmental policies that aim at curbing the rate of unemployment? These questions become pertinent in our context when there is a long-held supposition, particularly among those schol-ars who are concerned about caste in West Bengal, that each and every field of pub-lic life, i.e. economic, political and social-cultural in West Bengal, has continually been dominated by the upper castes since the colonial period. Furthermore, sig-nificantly, the proprietorship of land had been one of the major bases at least at the initial period ever since the domination of the upper castes in both economy and politics in West Bengal. By navigating the colonial and postcolonial terrain of his-tory, Chatterjee (1997 , 69–70) states that Bengali society and polity ‘has concerned the phenomenon of upper caste domination’. History shows, he argues (ibid.),
that the new opportunities opened up by the European trade in the eighteenth century, and later by the Permanent Settlement of landownership and expand-ing network of bureaucracy and profession, were avidly seized upon by the Hindu upper castes, and by the second half of the nineteenth century, the ubiquitous bhadralok
had established unchallenged command over virtually every field of public life in the province. 1 In fact, as I have argued elsewhere ( 2012 , 952): ‘landownership has always remained as a pillar of caste division in the society’. The Anthropo-logical Survey of India has recorded similar observations through its study of 4,635 communities/castes in India that ( Singh 1993 , 79) ‘better control over land and other resources’ as one of the characteristic features of higher castes in India.
This is to say, it is pretty obvious that caste and class are actually overlapping categories in rural areas of West Bengal since the beginning of the colonial period, and the upper castes people who have had the highest proportion of land in their possession, by ignoring the restrictions of mobility whatever it may be between one occupation and another, 2 ably could capture new opportunities opened up whatsoever in the subsequent period, and thereby established their command gradually more over every field of public life. This narrative of Bengal has been substantiated by Chatterjee (1995 , 4–14) who also describes vividly the way the upper castes were compelled to take enthusiastically to the new western educa-tion, including English, to grab new opportunities in the bureaucracy and trade after the rentier economy began to stagnate towards the end of the nineteenth century. I endeavour an entry into this argument, and raise questions about why the rentier economy began to stagnate towards the end of the nineteenth century, and whether the upper castes had any roles in ruination of the rentier economy. We might find an answer of the above question if we try to understand the trajectory of transformations in land relations, and the role of the upper caste landholding group in shaping the phenomenon of both landlessness and unemployment. It can be said that the changing pattern of land relations while affecting more or less each of the rural classes negatively in employment terms, at least at different points in time, has actually turned the marginal peasants at their worst. The land relations, i.e. the land-based classes in Bengal, would never cease to change and so never take a concrete shape throughout the long history of more than around five centuries. The subjects’ relation with the ruling power, be it the Mughal, the Company, or the colonial government, has changed continuously over time, so has the land relation. The nature and extent of revenue collection on the part of the ruling power would actually determine the fate of what kind of relations the peas-ants or raiyats can have with the land. However, before the East India Company was granted the Dewani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1765, the raiyats would always possess some amount of land from which they could at least earn their subsistence, of course, in return for rent or revenue while often been determined customarily. 3
I have described in the previous chapters a brief account of consequences of the grant of Dewani to the East India Company, and the subsequent enactment of Permanent Settlement on the livelihoods of the peasantry as well as the zamin-dars in rural areas of Bengal. There were lots of dimensions existed regarding the issues of proprietorship and occupation of land throughout this period. How-ever, it does not need mention that ( Chatterjee 1984 , 6) ‘the primary and abiding interest of the colonial government’ in Bengal ‘was the extraction of a part of the surplus in the form of land revenue’. In its attempt to carry on the extraction
of surplus ‘productively’ either, broadly, from land or agriculture, the colonial government had undertaken several try-outs in vain before permanently being settled with the Permanent Settlement. Although it never explained the reasons why the British colonialists needed to extract the surplus from India’s agriculture, the Floud Commission, while recommending the abolition of Permanent Settle-ment in the year 1940, justified the enactSettle-ment of zamindari settleSettle-ment on 1793 on the grounds that what the protagonists of the Permanent Settlement wanted to legalize were already customarily prevailed at that point of time. The Floud Commission attempted to summarize the rights of three stakeholders; the state, the zamindars and the raiyats by taking a thorough look into the evolution of land relations in India just before the end of the British rule. While the state’s claim as
‘the supreme owner of land’ is nothing unusual according to the commission, and
‘has been limited to a share of the produce’, the zamindars had never any absolute right of property, ‘nor were it intended to give them such rights by the Permanent Settlement. The rights of the raiyats , the Commission states, were primarily the rights to cultivate, and ‘they could be evicted for failing to cultivate properly’ in the earlier period. Under the regime of Permanent Settlement ( Floud Commission 1940 , 43), ‘their holdings were heritable’, and ‘their rate of rent was limited by a customary pargana rates’, and as earlier ‘they could be evicted for failing to pay their dues’. What the colonialists actually did was, as the Commission argues, to endorse the continuation of earlier system of revenue collection.
From the beginning of the age of policy intervention, it was felt that the laws were bound to be complicated and ‘filled with ambiguities’ ( Nielsen and Oskars-son 2016 , 69) due to the very fact that the empirical reality even within a province was highly variegated in terms not only of economic relations, but also of regional specificities and ethnic traditions. For instance, take the issues of different classes of zamindars mentioned in the Report of the Floud Commission. It would reveal evidently what a difficult task it was to address different classes of zamindars with a single enactment. There were at least four classes of zamindars in terms of nature and level of revenue collection before the Permanent Settlement was enacted.
These classes of zamindars included the ‘original independent chiefs’, the ‘old established landholding families’, the ‘collectors of revenues’ and the ‘farmers’.
The titles of the zamindars signify the extent of disparity existed then among them as far as the assets, control and the status are concerned. Undoubtedly, as the Com-mission observes, the effect of Permanent Settlement ‘was to level all classes under the same denomination’ resulting in different outcomes in case of different sections of zamindars . While one section i.e. the ‘farmers’, could obtain some rights as proprietors, another section had to lose some privileges.
The zamindars as a category were really variegated, so were the raiyats . Despite the execution of the Permanent Settlement, the primary interest of the colonial government in Bengal, the extraction of the surplus in the form of land revenue, did not go well for long. This institutional form of revenue collection could never knit the interests of three stakeholders together in a fruitful way so that each of them would benefit. What is of our interest is the fact that these three stakeholders the commission mentioned, the state, the zamindars and the raiyats , were always
in a conflict, and the state of their economy had weakened since. Whereas the colonial government tries to squeeze maximum amount of profit both in terms of revenue, and from trading in agriculture and industries, the zamindars tried to amass profit in having it both ways, being the ‘proprietors’ and the collectors of revenue, and the payers of revenue to the government. The raiyats were the worst victims and got fragmented into different classes or segments in rural areas. Was it ever possible to achieve success in fitting together the conflicting interests of dif-ferent stakeholders with a single piece of legislation? The answer is an emphatic no . Actually, the trajectory of revenue collection under the Permanent Settlement brought into being such a situation in which the class relations in rural Bengal did not only begin to change but also did it become more incompatible with each other. The interests of the classes are irreconcilable so much so that the small peasant economy had become almost unviable.
Most historical narratives written about the experiences of the Permanent Settle-ment in Bengal reveal more or less the same story that the economy of the prov-ince ceased to prosper anymore, rather decaying every now and then, despite the repeated attempts of reviewing the situation and the subsequent policy interven-tion, be it new or revised form, by the colonial government. Diverse kinds of inter-ests articulated by several numbers of classes, sections and groups thus came to the fore with their own ambiguous rights, identities and demands as consequences of, particularly, the intervention of the organized domain of politics therein. The issues of ethnicity, regional specificities and economic diversities complicated further the ways in which their articulations of demands began to take shapes at the rural margin. In contrast to the interests of the British colonial state which was imag-ined as the ‘sovereign authority’ of all revenues, three categories of main classes made their appearance with their overlapping – sometimes conflictual, sometimes cooperative – demands and interests in the ‘political drama’ performed in colonial Bengal during the last three decades. While the colonial state which being ever threatened with its exchequer becoming empty in want of revenues had intervened with a number of successive policies to resolve irreconcilable interests of different stakeholders in rural economy, the classes in the rural soil got entangled with orga-nized domain of politics based mainly on the nature of interests that the classes in question could as far articulate. At least, at that point in time, as Chatterjee (1984) identifies, there were three main classes that had emerged through the evolution of agrarian structure of Bengal.
First, the class at the top of agrarian structure was the zamindars , the proprietors of the soil. The folks mainly from the upper castes constituted this category by utilizing the opportunities opened by the Permanent Settlement. Apart from being the old established landholding families, many others from among the upper castes took the opportunities to become either the ‘collectors of revenues’ or the privileged
‘farmers’, and later in due course transformed into a zamindar class. Sarkar (2016 ) rightly argues that even the businessmen who were once prosperous had become zamindars afterwards. The affluent section of professionals who made their for-tunes by way of practising law and medicines had also invested their surplus money either to buy the company’s newspapers or the ‘ zamindari ’ (ibid., 59). He attributes
this trend to the lack of interest on the part of Bengali people in business. However, I argue, the affluent Bengali persons were tempted to buy the zamindari because, on the one hand, the zamindari was very lucrative i.e. prosperous at that time, and on the other, the businesses and trades were then progressively turned into loss-making sectors due to the invasion of British imperialist capital. Nonetheless, Sarkar’s nar-rative depicts clearly the trend that many people, mostly the upper castes, 4 who were already settled in other sectors had conveniently become the zamindars owing to the facilitating arrangement provided by the Permanent Settlement. But their days were not stable and began to evaporate since, particularly, the beginning of the twentieth century. Now they were in decline, and they began to venture towards cities and urban areas to grab all new opportunities in the bureaucracy and trade after the scope of rentier economy began to vanish. This category of landed class faced a two-pronged challenge, on the one hand, from the mass of peasantry, and on the other, from a new class of rich peasant-moneylender-traders. We may say, if we read it on caste term, that the upper castes began to face challenges both from the lower castes and the middle castes as far as land is concerned.
Second, by utilizing the growing land market, commercial farming and farm-related trading, and, of course, the scope of expansion of agriculture in newer stretches of lands, a new class of people had emerged during the period of late colonialism. This new class can be called as the ‘rich peasant-moneylender-trader’
class. The people of this class had in the main come from the middle and lower castes as indicated by Chatterjee (1984 , 1997 ) and Sanyal (1981 ), and become prosperous gradually through cultivating new land either by purchasing from the debt-trapped peasantry or from the decaying zamindar class who already began to leave the soil of rural Bengal. Considering the case of West Bengal, the castes like Sadgope , Mahishya , Ugrakshatriya among middle castes, and Poundra Kshatriya and Rajbanshi among Scheduled Castes would constitute this new class. We would also find that a considerable section of Muslim peasants fall in this class inhabited mainly in Bangladesh, and in some parts of the northern region of West Bengal. The history of emergence of this class is thus not so old. Hence, the nar-rative of this class seems to be important since it has established its ( Chatterjee 1984 , 62) ‘control over the land and the produce of the peasantry’ by ‘challenging the erstwhile dominance of the landed proprietor’.
The third category is actually the mass of peasantry in rural West Bengal. The people of this category were struck hardest by the breakdown of small peasant economy in Bengal during the period of late colonialism. The peasantry at large who were once mostly the rent payee raiyats became marginal in terms of their dismal economic condition. Due to the stress exerted both from the upper caste proprietors and the colonial state, many of them were forced to lose their land, and subsequently became poor peasants. They were turned into either the share-croppers by losing ownership rights or agricultural labours by losing even the occupancy rights to land. The category of marginal peasants includes the poor peasants, the sharecroppers 5 and the raiyats (also under- raiyats ). A fierce conflict between the uppercaste proprietors and the mass of peasantry actually had torn the eastern part of undivided Bengal apart. The organized domain of politics began to
spring up at this very moment and was widespread rapidly in the politically fertile soil of Bengal. The lower and middle castes, the Scheduled castes as well as the Scheduled tribes had constituted this category for which most of the government policies are aimed at, and the politics has become so vibrant in rural areas.
If we take stock of the current status of these classes/castes, we find an inter-esting trajectory of class/caste dynamics at the grassroots of Bengal. My earlier ( 2013 ) as well as present research reveals that most of the local zamindars belong-ing to the upper castes have eventually fled from their ancestral villages owbelong-ing to the resistance of the peasantry belonging mainly to the SC and ST, and also in some occasions to the middle caste Mahishya under the leadership of Communist Left during the period of the 1960s and 1970s. The upper caste families have either sold off their land or still have kept it in their possession. In the latter case, they are to engage sharecroppers for cultivating their land. Most of them have actually taken modern professions and have settled in cities like Kolkata. In my recent field survey, I find that there is no noticeable trace of upper castes in as more as 12 vil-lages out of 18 vilvil-lages. In six vilvil-lages they are present with their strong charisma.
If we take stock of the current status of these classes/castes, we find an inter-esting trajectory of class/caste dynamics at the grassroots of Bengal. My earlier ( 2013 ) as well as present research reveals that most of the local zamindars belong-ing to the upper castes have eventually fled from their ancestral villages owbelong-ing to the resistance of the peasantry belonging mainly to the SC and ST, and also in some occasions to the middle caste Mahishya under the leadership of Communist Left during the period of the 1960s and 1970s. The upper caste families have either sold off their land or still have kept it in their possession. In the latter case, they are to engage sharecroppers for cultivating their land. Most of them have actually taken modern professions and have settled in cities like Kolkata. In my recent field survey, I find that there is no noticeable trace of upper castes in as more as 12 vil-lages out of 18 vilvil-lages. In six vilvil-lages they are present with their strong charisma.