Abstract
With reasonably accessible transportation, infrastructure and communication networks, hardly any area or community remains totally disconnected from the globalised urbanised world. However, regions distant from the centre of political and commercial power continue to be countrysides, unlike the immediate peripheries of metropolitan cities or intermediate towns. Away from the peripheries of mega cities and other urban areas, interior India reveals a distinct picture of ‘under-cultivated’ lands inhabited by ‘unemployed’ or under-employed poor. With few non-farm employment options and weak development indicators, towns in remote rural locations retain more of their rural nature and culture. They house small buildings that host mostly government agencies (panchayat office, hospital, post office, train and bus stations and market yards) and a few shops selling consumer goods and services like mobile phones or home appliances, apart from a few local markets for perishables, agricultural inputs and equipment. People and produce from the surrounding areas regularly pass through these nondescript towns.
“…The modern industrial and social ideal is to suck out everything that is best from the village into the city… Rural life has no separate existence of its own, its existence is for the city. ….It has made our middle class helplessly subservient to employment and service, and has also killed the independence of our peasant proprietor. It has jeopardized food supply, and is fraught with the gravest peril not only to handicrafts but also to our national industry, agriculture.….India will tend to establish a solidarity between the village and the city, the labourer and the employer, the specialist and the layman, the multitude and the genius, the brain worker and the manual labourer.”
Mukerjee (1916)
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Notes
- 1.
The six districts of North-East Karnataka are—Bellary, Bidar, Kalaburagi, Yadgir, Raichur and Koppal.
- 2.
Comparative history of both the regions has been discussed in Chap. 4.
- 3.
Recently, renamed as Kalaburagi implying stony land.
- 4.
- 5.
Governor-General Dalhousie asked young Raja Venkatappa Naik of Shorapur to appoint a British officer at his court. The Raja refused and began strengthening his army. The British sent a force under Captain Newberry to capture Shorapur. On 7 February 1858, the Bedar army with support from other Principalities retreated to the Wagingera Fort (on the outskirts of Yadgir town surrounded by rocky hills) and waged a fierce battle. On 8 February 1858, the British army with fresh reinforcements besieged the fort at Shorapur. Raja Venkatappa Nayaka fled to Hyderabad where he was summoned by the Military Commission and was sentenced to death. Upon request from Meadows Taylor, the commission reduced punishment to four years to be housed at Kurnool. When he was being escorted to the prison, it is reported that Raja picked up the commander’s revolver and shot himself dead.
- 6.
In 1841 upon the demise of Raja Krishnappa Nayak, Philip Meadows Taylor was appointed by the Nizam of Hyderabad as their political agent at Surpur (present Shorapur), as prince Venkatappa Nayaka was just seven years old. Taylor returned to Hyderabad when Raja turned 19. Taylor Manzil, the unique and beautiful bungalow on a rocky hill just outside Surpur town, was built during Taylor’s 12 year posting here.
- 7.
Implementation of land reforms in Karnataka State involved receiving applications from tenants claiming ownership rights over the land they cultivated.
- 8.
The Upper Krishna Project consists of two dams constructed across the river Krishna and a network of canals. The main storage is at Alamatti Dam, a few kilometres downstream of the confluence of Ghataprabha and Krishna rivers. A lower dam, Basava Sagara dam, situated at Narayanpur a few kilometres downstream of the confluence of Malaprabha and Krishna rivers, serves as a diversion dam. The Project was planned to be implemented in different Stages and Phases. Stage-I of the project utilised 119 TMC of water to irrigate 4.25 lakh hectares and in Stage-II, 54 TMC of water is utilised to irrigate 1.97 lakh hectares. Thus, the command areas in the drought-prone districts of Northern Karnataka viz. Gulbarga, Yadgir, Raichur, Bijapur and Bagalkot are irrigated under UKP Stage-I and II with total utilisation of 173 TMC water.
- 9.
Yadgir Industrial Park was promoted in 2016 encouraging investors to move away from Bengaluru—https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/yadgir-industrial-hub-attracts-13500crore-investments/article8140895.ece.
- 10.
In 2012, only 1200 workers were employed with 290 registered industrial units—http://dcmsme.gov.in/dips/DIP-%20Yadgir.pdf.
- 11.
Bohnal tank was renovated by Surpur King Nayaka in the seventeenth century, later expanded by Meadows Taylor and converted to a bird sanctuary in 2010.
- 12.
District at a Glance (2015) reports 50 lakes and 1200 open wells in Shahpur and 26 lakes and 1147 open wells in Shorapur. Wells in these parts of the State are bigger and used historically for irrigation. According to State Agricultural Statistics (2015), mean area irrigated by each well was 2.96 ha, compared to 1.02 ha per well in the State as a whole, in 2014–15.
- 13.
- 14.
Information from interactions with farmers and local researchers.
- 15.
Protective irrigation refers to supplementary source of water applied as per requirement. It covers maximum possible area and protects crops against soil moisture deficiency. Productive irrigation with higher water input per unit area aims at achieving high productivity.
- 16.
Questioned by the irrigation commission (1903) on the benefits to farmer in growing rice, Deputy Collector in charge of Kurnool-Cuddapah canal replied ‘… their dry crops pay them better’.
- 17.
, In our study taluks rainfed areas show better literacy rate.
- 18.
- 19.
Study taluks with 273 kg of fertiliser use per ha of net sown area as well as the whole district of Yadgir with 204 kg/ha rank high in the State. Water quality impact of this high level of application has been reported. https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/Alarming-chemical-content-in-Surpur-water/article16528900.ece.
- 20.
Cropping intensity is high when the same land is cultivated multiple times in an year.
- 21.
Report about crushing poverty in six districts of NEK forcing under-aged girls into early marriage and motherhood—https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/Reluctant-mothers/article17286108.ece.
- 22.
Karnataka accounted for 23% of child marriages reported in India (Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights).
- 23.
President of Shorapur APMC: ‘… around the year 2000, we had hardly 100 traders and commission agents. Now there are more than 600 commission agents and around 300 traders for paddy in Shorapur market alone’.
- 24.
Report explains how an increase in production did not compensate fall in price of red gram—https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/deal-with-dal-how-processors-jack-up-prices-during-lean-seasons/528481/.
Farmers failed to take informed decisions based on the likely future price and not based on previous year’s market price. More details at https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/drop-in-pulse-prices-despite-good-rains-reveals-india-s-flawed-agri-policy-117041200154_1.html.
- 25.
Gini coefficients calculated based on per capita expenses in 2012 was 0.199 in Yadgir compared to 0.254 for the State. Human Development Index for Yadgir was 0.28, while for the State it was 0.519 in 2014.
- 26.
Since 2009 when Yadgir came to exist as a separate district, per capita income increased at an annual rate of about 21.5% and GDP grew by 18.5% for both Yadgir and the State till 2015.
- 27.
- 28.
Any employment generation scheme that does not revive and strengthen diverse skilled occupations in rural India generally remains ad hoc and patchy in impact. For instance, even the ambitious and widely implemented scheme like MGNREGS (Narayanan et al. 2014; Breitkreuz et al. 2017). Joblessness for the masses, intrinsic to the neo-liberal economic model that displaces these livelihood options is well-known now (Sanyal 2007, pp. 245–247; State of Working India 2018).
- 29.
More than 86% people of rural Yadgir owned a mobile phone, second only to Bengaluru with 91%—https://www.huffingtonpost.in/open-magazine/a-call-to-action_2_b_8120574.html.
- 30.
Out of 81 and 40 reported cases of farmer suicides from Shahpur and Shorapur, respectively, 68 and 34 were attributed to indebtedness (communication from Department of Agriculture, Government of Karnataka).
- 31.
Categorised as seasonal migrants, members of 16 out of 41 farmer families we interviewed were engaged in non-farm work outside their villages for almost six months every year.
- 32.
When the peak yield levels start dipping, immigrant workers from Andhra put up in camps around the head end of irrigation canals leased by Reddys were relocated either back to their source villages or to newly leased-in land in other command areas. Thus, local lessors who worked in the Reddy farms trained themselves in paddy cultivation to take on the mantle of rice farming.
- 33.
Between 2013 and 2018, 4 constituencies of Yadgir district recorded 20% increase in voters’ count—https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/voter-count-surges-in-north-karnataka-districts/articleshow/63840450.cms.
- 34.
Read about the study team’s narratives as folk artists and traditional festivals at https://smallfarmdynamics.blog/2017/06/.
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Purushothaman, S., Patil, S. (2019). Family Farms in Yadgir District. In: Agrarian Change and Urbanization in Southern India. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8336-5_9
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