'Thank God, our farmers were untaught'
Maswood Alam Khan | Wednesday, 30 July 2008
OFTEN when I reflect my face on a mirror I wonder what my ancestors did for their living, say, 400 years back! Given the texture and colour of my dark skin, my body size and my idiosyncrasies, I guess my ancestors were fishermen or farmers from a southern part of India where people akin to my appearance are quite visible. Probability that my genes belong to a distant ancestor of a low caste Hindu cannot be ruled out.
Maybe, many of our ancestors were 'chandals' who had the lowest social status in undivided India and who were 'outcastes even among outcastes' by reason of their degrading work as disposers of dead and they were universally shunned. They were not allowed temple worship with others, nor water from the same sources. Persons of higher castes would not socialize with them. If somehow a member of a higher caste bumped into physical or social contact with an untouchable like a chandal, the member of the higher caste used to feel defiled, and had to bathe thoroughly to absolve himself of the impurity.
A U-turn took place at any point of our genealogical background when one of our ancestors perhaps became ambitious to change his caste by choosing a nobler profession. If our wise ancestor were not ambitious, I probably would have been today a rubber plantation worker in Malaysia, or a farmer at a remote village in Bangladesh -- or at best a migrant worker in Mauritius as a descendant of any of the indentured Indian labourers who in the early part of the 19th century were shipped in hordes to Aapravasi Ghat, the immigration depot at Port Louis.
Caste system had its merits, too. Life would have been hellish if the society were shorn of labourers or shit cleaners. Caste system served as an instrument to ensure an orderly and disciplined society where mutual consent rather than compulsion ruled, where the ritual rights as well as the economic obligations of members of one caste were strictly circumscribed in relation to those of any other caste, where one was born into one's caste and retained one's station in society for life, where merit was inherited, where equality existed within the caste. A well-defined system of mutual interdependence through a division of labour created security within a community.
Caste system and its adhering discriminations, however, have been challenged since the time Islam and Buddhism had started radiating all over the world a message of peace and serenity that 'all are equal to the eyes of the Providence and that there are only two castes: one who views life positively and the other negatively'.
An iron curtain was thus lifted and millions from the dark caves of class slavery were emancipated. The hitherto discriminated people belonging to low castes suddenly broke into rapturous applause to the call for a congregation under a common roof of fraternity; en masse they embraced Islam or Buddhism, two religions that blurred the line between the white and the black, between a chandal and a Brahmin and between the haves and the have-nots. The sentiment against the caste system gathered so much steam that many Hindu reform movements like Brahmo Samaj also renounced caste-based discriminations.
With caste system discouraged and partially abolished, a new movement of reverse culture emerged in the mid of the last century: an ironsmith aspiring to make his son a doctor, a 'chandal' aspiring to get his daughter married to an engineer and a dark-complexioned Indian boy studying in Eton aspiring to date with a white-skinned damsel. Selling all their paternal properties many Hindus and Muslims originally belonging to low castes had migrated from rural to urban areas or left home to settle abroad and fraudulently changed overnight their hereditary surnames to graduate themselves to a higher stratum of society.
Farmers had sent their wards to towns for their studying law, medicine or economics with a view to purging themselves of their stigmatic heredity. Thousands of farmers were on a long march to get engaged in non-farm activities in towns and cities at home and abroad -- an ominous bandwagon of vocational desertions the British apprehended in advance during their colonial rule.
Lest they face shortage of labourers in tea plantation or railroad construction the British, whose own society back home was divided by class, attempted to equate the Indian caste system to their own class system; they saw caste as an indicator of occupation, social standing, and intellectual ability and Indian caste privileges and customs were rather encouraged. British policies of 'divide and rule' as well as enumeration of the Indian population into rigid categories during their special census contributed towards the hardening of caste identities.
Money on account of subsidies defrayed nowadays by developed countries for their farmers could fetch much more food grains than their farmers are now producing if the amount was spent for food importation from developing countries where labour is cheap. But, 'food security', a highly prioritized mandate for any government, encompasses responsibilities not only to hoard enough food stock in silos to feed the hungry at times of famines but also to guarantee that farmers remain content with subsidies offered and don't change their vocations so that there is no dearth of workers in agriculture in case a world war flares up or an apocalyptic event closes all the doors for importation of food grains.
Developing nations, however, want to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies in rich countries so they can sell more of their produce, while the United States, European Union and others seek better conditions in emerging economies like India and Brazil for their manufacturers, banks, insurers and telecommunications companies. Rich and poor countries have been clashing on this bone of contention repeatedly since the WTO talks, known as the Doha round, started in Qatar's capital in 2001.
American farmers dominate world markets under the free-enterprise system. They are ever creative in figuring out how to gain larger yields of crops through mechanization or through improving crop strains, such as hybrid corn. They are also taught how to calculate investments taking into account each and every segment of agricultural inputs including self-labour, time, and opportunity cost.
If an American or a Japanese farmer finds that his investment in farming is not highly rewarding compared to same investment elsewhere, he is the last person to remain a farmer. That is why the USA, to keep their farmers pleased and happy, is distributing more than $48 billion annually in agricultural subsidies linked to price, production and other trade-distorting criteria in contravention of 'fair trade for all' espoused by the World Trade Organization.
On the other hand, a Bangladeshi farmer's idea of paradise is to till his beloved patch of land and harvest the yield first to fill the stomachs of his family members and then sell whatever is left as surplus. They have not been taught how to calculate opportunity cost on account of labour invested by his family members and himself. Our farmer sells his land to send his son to Dubai to earn money and prestige and the son, as he returns back to home with some savings after a couple of years, cannot really buy back the land that was sold to buy him the job in Dubai. The unseen opportunity costs thus become the implicit hidden costs of his foolish course of action.
Whatever the asking prices we don't hesitate to pay a private tutor, a cab driver, a hair cutter or a plumber. But we groan in pains and fume in grudges whenever we have to pay a little more to a farmer for his products because we have been used for ages to look at them as belonging to lower castes. Thank God our farmers remained unlettered since time immemorial, did not calculate opportunity cost and dared not ever to ask for a fair price. If our farmers were as educated and organised as their American counterparts, we would have been bound to pay a heavy price for our rice.
A bad omen for doom is palpably clear now in Bangladesh with farmers and their sons deserting their paternal homes and fields in quest for fortunes in Dhaka or Dubai as farming in fields is now viewed as degrading a work as that of a 'chandal' in the past. Pushing a cart to carry goods or pulling a tricycle to haul human passengers or cleansing tiled floors of a hotel in Kuala Lumpur instead of tilling lands or weeding the paddy fields is nowadays deemed a graduation from a lower to a higher echelon in our society.
Subsidy to farmers must be the 'priority number one' for our very survival. Educated sons of farmers are getting used to sedentary jobs; they would never go back to their ancestral homes to cultivate fields burning their skins under a scorching sun. If we, therefore, fail to keep our farmers glued to their fields by making the farming jobs more prestigious and monetarily more rewarding than the non-farming ones and if hopping from villages to towns continues unabated the day, I am afraid, is not far away when we would once again be colonized -- this time by a country who could well protect their farmers through heavy agricultural subsidies.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank. He may be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]
Maybe, many of our ancestors were 'chandals' who had the lowest social status in undivided India and who were 'outcastes even among outcastes' by reason of their degrading work as disposers of dead and they were universally shunned. They were not allowed temple worship with others, nor water from the same sources. Persons of higher castes would not socialize with them. If somehow a member of a higher caste bumped into physical or social contact with an untouchable like a chandal, the member of the higher caste used to feel defiled, and had to bathe thoroughly to absolve himself of the impurity.
A U-turn took place at any point of our genealogical background when one of our ancestors perhaps became ambitious to change his caste by choosing a nobler profession. If our wise ancestor were not ambitious, I probably would have been today a rubber plantation worker in Malaysia, or a farmer at a remote village in Bangladesh -- or at best a migrant worker in Mauritius as a descendant of any of the indentured Indian labourers who in the early part of the 19th century were shipped in hordes to Aapravasi Ghat, the immigration depot at Port Louis.
Caste system had its merits, too. Life would have been hellish if the society were shorn of labourers or shit cleaners. Caste system served as an instrument to ensure an orderly and disciplined society where mutual consent rather than compulsion ruled, where the ritual rights as well as the economic obligations of members of one caste were strictly circumscribed in relation to those of any other caste, where one was born into one's caste and retained one's station in society for life, where merit was inherited, where equality existed within the caste. A well-defined system of mutual interdependence through a division of labour created security within a community.
Caste system and its adhering discriminations, however, have been challenged since the time Islam and Buddhism had started radiating all over the world a message of peace and serenity that 'all are equal to the eyes of the Providence and that there are only two castes: one who views life positively and the other negatively'.
An iron curtain was thus lifted and millions from the dark caves of class slavery were emancipated. The hitherto discriminated people belonging to low castes suddenly broke into rapturous applause to the call for a congregation under a common roof of fraternity; en masse they embraced Islam or Buddhism, two religions that blurred the line between the white and the black, between a chandal and a Brahmin and between the haves and the have-nots. The sentiment against the caste system gathered so much steam that many Hindu reform movements like Brahmo Samaj also renounced caste-based discriminations.
With caste system discouraged and partially abolished, a new movement of reverse culture emerged in the mid of the last century: an ironsmith aspiring to make his son a doctor, a 'chandal' aspiring to get his daughter married to an engineer and a dark-complexioned Indian boy studying in Eton aspiring to date with a white-skinned damsel. Selling all their paternal properties many Hindus and Muslims originally belonging to low castes had migrated from rural to urban areas or left home to settle abroad and fraudulently changed overnight their hereditary surnames to graduate themselves to a higher stratum of society.
Farmers had sent their wards to towns for their studying law, medicine or economics with a view to purging themselves of their stigmatic heredity. Thousands of farmers were on a long march to get engaged in non-farm activities in towns and cities at home and abroad -- an ominous bandwagon of vocational desertions the British apprehended in advance during their colonial rule.
Lest they face shortage of labourers in tea plantation or railroad construction the British, whose own society back home was divided by class, attempted to equate the Indian caste system to their own class system; they saw caste as an indicator of occupation, social standing, and intellectual ability and Indian caste privileges and customs were rather encouraged. British policies of 'divide and rule' as well as enumeration of the Indian population into rigid categories during their special census contributed towards the hardening of caste identities.
Money on account of subsidies defrayed nowadays by developed countries for their farmers could fetch much more food grains than their farmers are now producing if the amount was spent for food importation from developing countries where labour is cheap. But, 'food security', a highly prioritized mandate for any government, encompasses responsibilities not only to hoard enough food stock in silos to feed the hungry at times of famines but also to guarantee that farmers remain content with subsidies offered and don't change their vocations so that there is no dearth of workers in agriculture in case a world war flares up or an apocalyptic event closes all the doors for importation of food grains.
Developing nations, however, want to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies in rich countries so they can sell more of their produce, while the United States, European Union and others seek better conditions in emerging economies like India and Brazil for their manufacturers, banks, insurers and telecommunications companies. Rich and poor countries have been clashing on this bone of contention repeatedly since the WTO talks, known as the Doha round, started in Qatar's capital in 2001.
American farmers dominate world markets under the free-enterprise system. They are ever creative in figuring out how to gain larger yields of crops through mechanization or through improving crop strains, such as hybrid corn. They are also taught how to calculate investments taking into account each and every segment of agricultural inputs including self-labour, time, and opportunity cost.
If an American or a Japanese farmer finds that his investment in farming is not highly rewarding compared to same investment elsewhere, he is the last person to remain a farmer. That is why the USA, to keep their farmers pleased and happy, is distributing more than $48 billion annually in agricultural subsidies linked to price, production and other trade-distorting criteria in contravention of 'fair trade for all' espoused by the World Trade Organization.
On the other hand, a Bangladeshi farmer's idea of paradise is to till his beloved patch of land and harvest the yield first to fill the stomachs of his family members and then sell whatever is left as surplus. They have not been taught how to calculate opportunity cost on account of labour invested by his family members and himself. Our farmer sells his land to send his son to Dubai to earn money and prestige and the son, as he returns back to home with some savings after a couple of years, cannot really buy back the land that was sold to buy him the job in Dubai. The unseen opportunity costs thus become the implicit hidden costs of his foolish course of action.
Whatever the asking prices we don't hesitate to pay a private tutor, a cab driver, a hair cutter or a plumber. But we groan in pains and fume in grudges whenever we have to pay a little more to a farmer for his products because we have been used for ages to look at them as belonging to lower castes. Thank God our farmers remained unlettered since time immemorial, did not calculate opportunity cost and dared not ever to ask for a fair price. If our farmers were as educated and organised as their American counterparts, we would have been bound to pay a heavy price for our rice.
A bad omen for doom is palpably clear now in Bangladesh with farmers and their sons deserting their paternal homes and fields in quest for fortunes in Dhaka or Dubai as farming in fields is now viewed as degrading a work as that of a 'chandal' in the past. Pushing a cart to carry goods or pulling a tricycle to haul human passengers or cleansing tiled floors of a hotel in Kuala Lumpur instead of tilling lands or weeding the paddy fields is nowadays deemed a graduation from a lower to a higher echelon in our society.
Subsidy to farmers must be the 'priority number one' for our very survival. Educated sons of farmers are getting used to sedentary jobs; they would never go back to their ancestral homes to cultivate fields burning their skins under a scorching sun. If we, therefore, fail to keep our farmers glued to their fields by making the farming jobs more prestigious and monetarily more rewarding than the non-farming ones and if hopping from villages to towns continues unabated the day, I am afraid, is not far away when we would once again be colonized -- this time by a country who could well protect their farmers through heavy agricultural subsidies.
The writer is General Manager, Bangladesh Krishi Bank. He may be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]