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principally anti-feudal struggles. Also the agricultural taxes, loans, reduction in the input changes demand for remunerative prices etc complexions pressured on farmer’s movements. In this paper an attempt is made to discuss about the emergence of various present organizations in rural areas, farmer unions and its impact on socio-economic problems and other grievances and also examine the socio-economic empowerment of peasants.

Keywords: Agrarian, discontent, empowerment, movement, peasant, socio-economic

INTRODUCTION :

After independence of India, the policies and programmes we pursued have benefited only a small segment of the society. However, the large sections of people especially those who are dependent on natural resources have been further impoverished the peasants. There is a continuing and ever increasing migration of rural poor who have been evicted more times from their houses in the name of globalization development and scientific management of natural resources have most seriously threatened. The vast section of the people on greater control over their land from many decades through utilizing them in a frugal and sustainable way. All these experiences have led us to understand these issues indepth and redefine the notions of the development process, progress and civilization. The trajectory of a mid 1960’s green revolution influenced by the modernization policy implemented by the central government as well as the responses of the peasant and their struggle to globalizing processes etc where farming has been less affected by this type of intervention. This permits to identify the issues at stake in the two regional ecologies and to see whether they give rise to comparable or even co-ordinated responses by peasant movements.

Western civilization and the forces of globalization, liberalization and privatization have concentrated enormous power in a few lands at huge cost to the vast sections of poor and tribal communities. This power is being misused to make the poor and poorer and invade a whole some lifestyle and culture of human societies. The last man who should occupy the central place in our development paradigm is systematically marginalized and eliminated. The fact that our own democratic governments have since 1947 evicted 1-5 crore rural poor from their homes and habitats in the name of national development and that even after 50 years of adoption of the constitution we do not have a rehabilitation policy is a sad commentary. There is need to give legal protection to the rural poor by incorporating key features into the land acquisition bill itself. The efforts by voluntary agencies who worked out alternate forest, land acquisition and rehabilitation bills are unfortunately not being recognized and the interest of these vulnerable communities not protected.

Agrarian mobilizations are a persistent phenomena of the Indian rural social system being manifested in different parts of the country over a long period of time. Since Indus valley civilization, the cultivation has been in existence, it is the belief of the people that it is a part of their cultural pride. At present they adopt agriculture not because it is profitable but because they have no other alternative and they can feed themselves at for a few months from the yield they are getting. The portrayal of Indian peasantry as fatalistic, docile, unresisting, superstitions and passive has been proved to be without much foundation. During the British period, the Indian rural scene bristled with large scale protests, revolts and militant struggles by the peasantry involving several hundreds of villages and lasting for years together. Peasants conducted a relentless struggle against feudal oppression and played a significant role in the freedom movement.

The colonial rule and the implementation of their land bills upgraded the position of Zamindars and tax collectors into land lords and degraded the position of farmers into tenant. The zamindari system in various provinces of India, the land tax was high and the farmers were forced to pay it off even when there was most unexpected natural catastrophes. In this system only one zamindar was placed instead of many and it made him the foe of the farmers. The defects of these pushed the farmers into object poverty. The inevitable surrender to the money lenders, there was no other source of income, etc., influenced on the social status of the farmers and he gotdown to his position in the society as labour.

The beginning of the 19th century witnessed the extremes of the farmers poverty which drove them to leave their homes and villages. The cause of this exodus took place because of the zamindars who acted as the agents of the British. As a result the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a beginning of new kind of peasant struggle rose against enhancement of rent, evictions and exactions of landlords who were often money lenders. A large scale agrarian mobilizations continue to surface at present times and have acquired varied organizational identities. Political parties, Sanghas, unions have become the organizational expressions of the contemporary agrarian unrests and mobilizations. These organizations were worked as the power groups in the regional or national political scene.

The peasant movements in mid-nineteenth century were intermittent and remained confined to a few regions. Among those the tribal rebellion of 1855-56 in Bengal region against the money lenders, Indigo revolt of 1859 against the indigo planters in Bihar, Maratha peasants’ uprising in Maharastra region during 1869-1974, against the moneylenders. Tenant struggles in UP during 1920’s and 1930s. The Agrarian disturbances in the Madras presidency between 1911 to 1936 etc. are important peasant movements gave support for the future movements of India. As Kathleen Gaugh, the review of the Indian peasant uprisings for more than 200 years, peasants were repeatedly raised against land lords, revenue agents, money lenders, bureaucrats etc. These uprisings have generally fallen into the categories of restorative movements, religious movements, social banditry, tenorist acts for vengeance and justice, mass insurrections and political oriented uprisings.

The phenomena of agrarian mobilization in contemporary times present a far from uniform pattern. On the one hand we have movements such as in the flaming fields of Bihar and the people’s war phenomenon in Andhra Pradesh. On the other hand, large scale mobilizations of the so-called farmers’ movements are taking place in the states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab. These movements have different objectives, goals, strategies, vastly different ideologies and nature of leadership. Among these the peasants movement in Karnataka is important. The main thrust of this paper is to understand the evident agrarian discontent in the study is, the empowerment of peasant movement in Karnataka. Here is an brief attempt to find an answer to the discontent of peasant movement. Due to the imbalance of deprivation theory, people become discontented not because of the absolute conditions of their situation but because they compare their actual condition with what they believe it could and should be.

The peasant movement in Karnataka was one of the major revolt in the global peasant revolts of India. The movement took place for the people’s sovereignty both locally and globally. Although an agrarian movement, it took place under the farmers issues and aims for broad social change at various levels of society. Autonomy, justice, peace and dignity are fundamental tenents of the vision of the peasants struggle. Under the empowerment of farmers community, the peasant movement become powerful under the banner of Karnataka state farmers’ association called Karnataka State Rajya Raitha Sangha. It has inspired the farmers to participate and made a movement in and around the world to take direct action against multinational companies by creating solidarity and collective action through people’s movements. In Karnataka many isolated smaller local farmers groups under the leadership of Prof. MD Nanjundaswamy, H.S. Rudrappa and N.D. Sundaresh bringing together under the banner of Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha. The Movement took place as part of a long process of construction of a new society, which is driven by people at the local level but must reach the global level and which cannot take place without the active and direct involvement of society as a whole.

The Gandhian objective of village republic, a form of social, political and economic organization based on direct democracy, economic and political autonomy and self-reliance. The movement is strongly based on Gandhi’s philosophy of Swadeshi. This means that political and economic power must reside in the villages through democratic village assemblies. The needs of the villages should be met first and foremost through local production and consumption. Swadeshi emphasizes local technologies and cultures. Under the protest while most of the peasants did not get good quality of seeds and pesticides and at fixed price. The supply of seeds by the government and private agencies were spurious and of low quality. The fertilizer of good quality, required quantity and at fixed price non-remunerative prices for agricultural products, costly agricultural inputs, the malpractices and ill functioning of the agricultural market, lack of irrigation facilities, uncertain monsoon, the inadequate agricultural tools and implements, agricultural labourers, the indebtedness due to loan in order to overcome their economic problems causes for the movement launching against the government.

The peasants felt that the cities and the towns were growing at the cost of villages. The shortage of basic amenities like hospitals, schools, roads, drinking water, etc. In total there was an element of discontentment among the peasants since quite longtime, but this discontentment was not transformed into a movement probably, due to lack of leadership and organization. The discontent was silently tolerated due to the prevalence of widespread illiteracy and resultant ignorance. The absence of enlightened leadership to show them the path of solving their problems. The peasants caught in the vicious circle of poverty, illiteracy, ignorance, tradition, unemployment, exploitation and so on were incapable to act on the grievances. The farmours association called Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha created the necessary conditions for transforming this discontent into a movement. The association created the awareness among the peasantry, it motivated, educated and activated the peasantry. The farmers became conscious of their rights and dignity. The 19 points charter of demands submitted by the farmers association to the government included most appealing and attractive demands like load waiver, remunerative prices, cheap agricultural inputs, reduction in electricity changes, old age pension, treating agriculture as an industry and reservation of 50 percent of seats in educational institutions and so on. The very strong, appealing and convincing speeches of the leaders made their own impact on the peasants. Thus the association was successful in the mobilization of the peasants in movements and in motivating them towards action. The peasants wanted to remove the structural barriers which were the sources for their discontentment. The exploitative and profitless agricultural market system, exploitative and anti-peasant government departments, expensive, time consuming and complex procedures of getting loan etc., were some of the important structural barriers for the socio-economic progress. Thus all these factors were the genesis of peasant movements in Karnataka due to the socio-economic empowerment on community progress.

REFERENCES :

Brass Tom, ‘The Policies of Gender, Nature and Nation in the Discourse of the New Farmers Movements’, Journal of Peasant Studies, Special Edition, 21 (3-4), 3-26, New Delhi, 1994.

S.R. Hiremath (ed.), ‘Community Control, Ref: Samaj Parivaratana Samudaya (SPS) et al., Amended draft of Forest and the Land Acquisition Bill of 1995 & 2000, Bangalore.

Ghanshyam Shah, ‘Social Movements in India-A Review of Literature’, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 1990, Pp.32.

Krishna Reddy, K., ‘Bharatha Desa Charitra Adhunika Yugam’, Hyderabad, 1994, P.247.

Shambhu Prasad, S., Bharathi, Sahitra Masa Patrika, Madras, March-1939, Pp.328-29.

 

RESERVATION FOR BACKWARD CLASSES AND WOMEN

AKSHATHA PARANJYOTHI KUMAR* & Dr.VANAJAKSHI R HALLIYAVAR**

*Assistant Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Government First Grade College, Rajajinagar, Bangalore-10

**Associate Professor, Dept. of Kannada, Government First Grade College, Rajajinagar, Bangalore-10

Reservation in India deals with distributing certain percentage of seats in government institutions for backward classes and women in society. It can also be regarded as a form of quota-based affirmative action. Reservation is governed by Constitutional laws, statutory laws and local rules and regulations. The Reservation Policy in India focuses on Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribes(ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC). It has the main objective of uplifting these sections of the