Amid the farmers’ protests in India, a TCN Ground report from the weekly markets or haats of West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand demonstrates a viable equitable model to make the free market equitable and friendly for small producers, whom the three farm laws (now repealed) disregard. The report attempts to scratch at a surface level understanding of the agrarian crisis. This is done through the lens of a haat or a weekly market, where small producers set up their shops 2.5 million times a year in over 600,000 villages in India.
Joyona Medhi and Abhishek Basu | TwoCircles.net
WEST SINGHBHUM (JHARKHAND) – On an ordinary day in a 10,000+ populated district of approximately 57 villages of West Singhbhum, a large haat attracts around 12,000 visitors daily. Out of the total footfall, around two-fifth are women. Not focusing on the market access angle which most remote farmers tend to face, but laying stress on the problem of infrastructure, we witness an NGO in Jharkhand called Swadhina recreating traditional markets in the remote villages of West Singhbhum where they are not available. It was a humid summer’s day with a bit of drizzle. Post lockdown, it was unusual to find so many villagers gathered together in a large maath or field. It was a riot of colours and smells and sounds, more like calls of different animals—from sheep to goats, to even parrots and pigeons and pigs.
On asking the organization Swadhina how they managed this feat, while we sipped water from coolers set up for tired marketeering villagers, Pallavi Murmu, a social worker at the NGO, says, “We delegated the responsibility for establishing haats to self-help groups (SHGs). They built the infrastructure for the weekly market with very little money. The SHGs that have taken responsibility for much-required maintenance, receive a nominal fee from the sellers. The effect has been enormous.”
“I generate enough profit from my kitchen gardens. In fact, many of those who work with me in haats make much more money than those who suffer under government wage programmes!”, says Poushali Das who sets up her poultry shop in this Swadhina haat.
“You won’t believe me but there are buyers for everything, from handicrafts to homemade candies!” she goes on to say, pushing me towards coaxing my mother to set up a stall here of fresh mangoes from the backyard. On asking her further, we find that this is enabled because as per her—”the traders who exploited the locals have also been removed right?! What is the use of them when I directly hand over my desi-chickens to Vikram’s (her son’s) friend’s mother who always buys one off me every Sunday. She’s more than just a customer now.”
Vikram, the eleven-year-old tell us that, “There are murgi ladhais (cock fights) that take place with locals bringing in their plump chickens bred solely for this purpose on Sundays.”
Livestock is a big seller with many roping in their herds of goats, cows and not to forget bulls, often a prime catch to till the soil. Betel leaves, ant chutneys, earthen pots to even handicrafts like hand-painted artisanal face masks symbolic of the region’s culture, as we go through the market with Vikram, we find locals pouring in from the nearby villages, some on cycles, most on foot. “We make it a point to be early birds that catch the fresh worms early in the mornings, which is when these haats generally begin sitting,” says Lal Bihari Singh who is a middle-aged man from the village of Khunti. He leaves home on a cycle at around 4 in the morning to reach here by 6.
“Yes, a haat sits,” Vikram reminds us. “It doesn’t just open shutters and begin.” This brings up the reality of how the urban and rural imaginations differ when it comes to setting up shop.
Haats are rural consumer’s first point of contact with commercial market
“Do you know that a haat contains room for even the tiniest producers? Our neighbour Vikas Chacha, who doesn’t even have his own land and tills our soil with Baba (father) sometimes, sets up shop in the haat with us with a kilogramme of vegetables from his kitchen garden!”, Vikram quizzes me. It has a high level of resistance to the privatisation of the village market because what Lal Bihari told us was the sporadic and on-the-go nature of these haats.
“Delivered as though, literally to doorstep, haats are the only venues where people can sell and buy things. Otherwise, the producers will have to travel to wholesale markets, which will cost them time and money,” Lal Bihari explains as we rest by the shade of a Neem tree by a herd of cows roped in by an eager seller, allowing them to chomp on some grass before trade picks up. “I can put on a show of two of them fighting their guts out if you pay the price for the show!”, he screams out to the passersby.
We begin to observe that a haat is a seasonal market that is based on the ecology of the area. It becomes especially difficult to run one due to a lack of institutional support — is what comes across as the immediate reply to almost anyone we spoke to on the state of things here. A broken queue here, a breach of security there, a hassled looking volunteer here, an electricity blackout there—the blame on the lack of institutional support is evident on the field. When we put this question forth to Saswati Roy of Swadhina, she said, “We don’t get any help from agricultural-related organisations like panchayats and marketing committees. As a result, there is no infrastructure for the weekly markets. Many potential purchasers are bound to avoid the markets as a result of this.”
On digging deeper on many of Lal Bihari’s and Vikram’s explainers, the older folk and the children of the area, with strong entrepreneurial help of the women of these households of the strong agrarian base, led us to arrive at the importance of SHGs. With this, we arrive at the heart of the matter—a promise that was made long ago to them by the central government. “The wheels of our trade will only pick up when we have father-like infrastructural support to hold our bicycles!,” says Vikram’s mother Poushali Das. “We don’t want those bicycles they give out for free during the elections!”, comments Laxmi Prasaad, a middle aged woman who buts in for Poushali, sitting by her side by the stack of betel nut leaves. “Not even the sarees from Purulia? (governments have been known to woo this desire of women of Jharkhand for good Bengali sarees),” we ask. “We will be happy if someone from the government helps in buying off a few sarees that I weave too you know!”, comes in her sharp reply. We learn that many women like her from the Adivasi district of Simdega do handicraft work. From hand-painted face masks to bangles made out of lac, to even nowadays sarees, they set up a stall or two occasionally. “The numbers are rising,” she assures me.
The craft industry aside, we are taken back to what was proposed to be state-sponsored—very much like the institutional backing always provided to “art and culture”—the yet unfulfilled promise of setting up the GrAMs or the Gramin Agricultural Markets. Herein lies the sole crux of the problem, we find out.
What are GrAMs?
The proposal to set up GrAMs or the Gramin Agricultural Markets by the central government in its bid to be elected to power in 2014, was a solid plan to back our entrenched haat system. The agriculture minister had promised the upgrading of 22,000 rural haats into GrAMs whose infrastructure would be strengthened by employing government schemes like MGNREGA. “These agricultural markets would be exempt from regulations which generally clamp APMCs down, by enabling farmers to electronically take bulk orders and make direct sales with the consumers”, said Hemkant Toppo, a senior member of the Kisan Parishad. “A 2,000 crore AMIF or Agri-Market Infrastructure Fund was also announced to implement this scheme however official documents reveal that the scheme has not even crossed the infancy stage yet!”
The scheme’s design, according to many farmers and farm leaders like Hemkant Toppo, is problematic. “One of the main reasons why no state has filed a proposal is that the Centre has included a provision for giving loans through this fund rather than disbursing funds immediately. The plan was designed in such a way that it could not be implemented!”, fills in Lal Bihari who keeps track of matters like these on a steady basis through the local dainik jahaan that he reads at the tea stall by this haat. He receives the rest of the snippets from a lot of clerical staff, and village elders who are regulars at this stall.
“The passage of these new farm laws is only the last nail in the coffin,” says who we later get to know as Prashanta Nath, the local lad who has recently secured an administrative role at a factory in the city (Jamshedpur). His father still does kheti though he says, “The government paved the way for private sector procurement outside of APMC. Why would they spend money to turn these haats into an agricultural market? Why would they stick to the original plan which involves taking the onus and providing solid infrastructure to back the potential of India’s huge democratic markets?”, he very blatantly points out.
“No, instead we will ask the corporates to replace the middlemen and harrow the ordinary farmer needlessly, if not more”, adds Hemkant Toppo.
“What is the opposite to a private system which the government wants to bring in, if not dilapidated ration shops filled with middlemen?”, we ask. “The middlemen can be handled if the model by Swadhina is executed right,” says Hemkant. “The middlemen, come to think of it, are not the problem in the first place. The lack of infrastructure is,” chimes in Lal Bihari all knowingly.
“The unavailability of the 22,000 Gramin Agricultural Markets—converted out of the local haats as promised— is,” says the eleven-year-old Vikram succinctly, looking into the distance where the dust from the shuffling hooves of the cattle, was creating a haze. It was a slow realisation of the bleak state of affairs. But realisation nonetheless.
In a parallel universe: The woes of farmers far and wide
The debate over the 3 new farm laws enacted rashly by the Center, has raised many questions. Dilapidated ration shops, distress selling by farmers—especially small farmers, and ultimately the rise of a corrupt class of middlemen, are what seem to be the core problems that need to be “wiped out”—bureaucrats of the right say repeatedly.
This has caused the laws to be labelled as the “Teen Kaale Kanoon” or the three black laws, by the farmers who have been sitting in protest at the borders of our capital, namely Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur, since last year winter. They believe that their agency to sell will be “wiped out” instead. Once the big corporate houses step in, small producers will be erased as the new market bodies cater to only big to medium farmers.
This is exactly the reason cited by this report in The Wire as to why the farmers of the north-eastern regions of India, namely Assam, are not actively involved in the nationwide farmer protests. Cultivable land being heavily taxed under colonial law led many small producers to sell them off to big to medium zamindars, and work as labourers in the profitable tea gardens instead. The trend to avoid agriculture as a means of livelihood for average middle-class men has been going on since.
“So much is the discouragement to involve oneself in the rusted system of this sector, that even the big to medium farmers seldom sell their produce in the MSP at the government mandis. They choose to often have their other legs dipped in some other business to fall back on in case their hold on the quicksand of agriculture slips one day”, says Prof Shoma Chakravarti, who we met at a local haat’s administrative unit. She offers her services as a retired professor of Rural Development and Agrarian Crisis at the Women’s College of Jharkhand.
In conclusion: Zooming back in on the field
This leads us to ask if there is any way this market can be made equitable for small farmers? Is there any way their inherent fear of the free market can be addressed? Can we make the market equitable and friendly for small producers who also wish to be traders of their own produce?
India’s much neglected rural periodic markets or the weekly haats could be the answer, we find out.
A report by The Economist claims that India’s 47,000-odd haats can offer immense thrust to rural marketing with their readymade distribution network. The Indian avatars of hypermarkets account for over two-thirds of India’s population, 56% of income, 64% of expenditure and 33% of savings.
We found out that the functionalities of haats make them the most democratic market. It is astounding that small producers set up their shops 2.5 million times a year in over 600,000 villages in India.
Text Joyona Medhi. Images: Abhishek Basu
Joyona Medhi is a freelance writer. Abhishek Basu is an independent documentary photographer. Their work, both together and independently, covers a range of projects from the very real to the hyper-real. They are strong vouchers of slow journalism, long-form narratives, in-depth reportages, active listening, and process-oriented understandings. They are currently based in New Delhi.