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Changing Meanings of Seasonal Migration 395

Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2003.

Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3 No. 3, July 2003, pp. 395433.

They Used To Go to Eat, Now TheyGo to Earn: The Changing Meaningsof Seasonal Migration from Puruliya

District in West Bengal, India

BEN ROGALY AND DANIEL COPPARD

This article uses migrant workers testimonies to analyse whether and howmuch the act of migrating seasonally for wage work has contributed to chang-

ing social relations. We investigate changes in the meaning of this kind ofmigration to workers involved in it over their working lives. The emergenceof peasant capitalism in West Bengal from the 1970s resulted in more dayswork and higher wages for migrant workers. This made it possible for wageworkers to view migration as a way of earning and accumulating a usefullump sum, rather than simply surviving through food payments during the period of work, as had taken place in the past. However, there was nogeneral move away from the compulsion to earn a wage through hard manuallabour. Through the testimonies, we explore the ambivalence of migrantworkers towards changes in the relations of production at home and at the

destination workplace.

Keywords: seasonal migration, peasant capitalism, West Bengal, India

INTRODUCTION

Seasonal migration for manual work from rural areas has increased dramaticallyin India since the 1960s (Srivastava 1998; Byres 1999, 13). In West Bengal, thenumber of migrant workers in rice production in particular has grown markedlysince the 1970s, when a second crop, cultivated outside the monsoon season and

Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Nor-wich NR4 7TJ, UK. e-mails: [email protected]; [email protected]

This paper draws on the findings of a larger research project on seasonal migration for rural manualwork in eastern India. We are grateful to co-researchers Jhuma Biswas, Abdur Rafique, Kumar Ranaand Amrita Sengupta, with whom we discussed and developed some of the ideas in this paper; toSujata Das Chowdhury, who assisted Daniel Coppard with the life history interviews, and sub-sequently transcribed and translated them; to Phillip Judge for Figure 1; to Mark Holmstrm, SusanJohnson, Catherine Locke and Valerie Roberts for comments on an earlier draft; and to Terry Byresfor the thoroughness of his suggestions for changes to the first version submitted. Rogaly is gratefulto Elena Ruiz-Abril for research assistance. None of these people are responsible for the views

expressed here or any errors, nor is the Department for International Development (UK), whichfunded the research.


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396 Ben Rogaly and Daniel Coppard

irrigated by canal water, gradually became more widespread. In the 1980s, thistrend accelerated with the rapid expansion of groundwater irrigation and theadoption of high yielding varieties and associated technologies. These changescoincided with an uninterrupted period (since 1977) of Leftist coalition govern-

ment (the Left Front Government), led by the Communist Party of India (Marx-ist) (CPI(M)). The most dramatic changes in the forces of production have beenspecific to certain agro-ecological zones of the state, in particular to the alluvialsoils of the Gangetic plains. Changes in the relations of production over the sameperiod have also been diverse and hard to generalize because of contrastingstarting points.

The research reported here is part of a larger regional project, which hasattempted to link changes in the relations of production to the growth in sea-sonal migration and the employment of migrant workers. The overall storywhich is told is one of wage workers responding to (rather than causing) struc-

tural change. A brief outline of the scope of the project will be given below.However, the aim of this paper is quite specific. Drawing on the detailed testi-monies of just four people (two current migrant workers, one former migrantand the mother of a migrant worker), we analyse whether and how much the actof migrating for wage work has contributed to changing social relations, includ-ing relations of gender and generation within domestic groups, and relationsbetween social classes and social ranks (jati).1 By using testimonies, we are ableto investigate changes in the meaning of this kind of migration to workersinvolved in it over their working lives, to contrast the meanings of migration todifferent migrant workers in the same time period, and therefore to avoid the

reductionism and determinism of many less grounded accounts. Reading thesetestimonies should help to guard against the belief that labour migration is neces-sarily either emancipatory or oppressive.

The changes we find fit well with a bigger structural picture of decliningfeudal production relations in the source area, associated with migration to workin intensive rice production at the destination, which has a more capitalist logic.Overall, the emergence of peasant capitalism in West Bengal from the 1970s hasresulted in more days work and higher real wages for migrant workers bothfrom within the state and from outside it. This has made it possible for wageworkers to view migration as a way of earning and accumulating a useful lumpsum, rather than simply surviving through food payments during the period ofwork, as had taken place in the past. Within this context, however, there hasonly been very limited social mobility and no general move away from the

1 These four testimonies were selected from a much larger data set because, taken together, theyexpress a broad range of motivations for wage work in general and migration in particular, and arealso highly suggestive about how workers motivations have changed in relation to their own lives,to those of their families and to the broader structural changes around them. The alternatives wouldhave been to draw on a larger number of testimonies, which would have meant foregoing depth, or

to narrow the focus onto the perspectives of a particular sex or age group, which was insufficientlybroad for our purposes.


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compulsion to earn a wage through hard manual labour. The detailed testimon-ies allow for an exploration of the ambivalence of migrant workers towardsthese changes in the relations of production at home and at the destinationworkplace.

The overall approach to studying migration in this research project falls withinthe rubric of a political economy concerned with the social relations of produc-tion and, in particular, with class, conflict and power (Fine 2001). However, theapproach also involves being specific about the type of migration in this caseseasonal and for manual work. Such specificity is demanded by Standingspolitical economy framework for migration research (Standing 1981). We shareStandings criticism of neo-classical economics models of migration, which, likethe then still influential dual economy models, were not grounded in analysis ofactually existing social relations (Standing 1981, 173). Subsequent neo-classicaleconomics work on migration has made significant advances, most notably by

the focus on migration as a negotiated decision within households in response torisk and uncertainty (e.g. Stark 1991). However, this approach still does notprovide the tools to unravel how household and individual migration decisionsare caused by, and contribute to, changing social relations, including relations ofproduction, at a particular place and time.

Standings work is especially concerned with the social relations of produc-tion, which variously hold back migration or economically compel it. He holdsthe views that the form of transition [to capitalism] will determine the extent andfunction of migration and that the extent of migration will influence the paceand nature of the transition (Standing 1981, 190). We do not have strong dif-

ferences with Standing on this, and especially appreciate his identification of abi-directional causality. However, we do not concur with the implication thattransitions from one mode of production to the next in the Marxian sense areinevitable. Indeed, in this paper, we take an emic approach, relying relativelyheavily on workers own perspectives on migration and on how these havechanged over workers life times. The extensive use of testimonies is borrowedfrom an anthropological tradition of research on migration. The

uniqueness of particular individual migrant experiences this enables cer-tainly enhances our generalisations about the group experience, but also

elicits humility about the adequacy of these generalisations and a realisationthat few actual individual lives fully conform to the master narratives.(Benmayor and Skotnes 1994, 15, cited by Brettell and Hollifield 2000, 11,emphasis added)

In the context of ethnographic fieldwork reported here, the use of testimoniesreveals the ambivalence individual migrant wage workers had towards feudal-type ties of unequal mutual obligation involving specific patrons in their homelocality and how this changed over their life-times. With age, and decreasingmobility, some workers come to value the reliability of patronclient ties. Evenif we limited the story to material political economy alone, at the individuallevel changes over time are more complex than standard etic categories permit.


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Furthermore, the methods used here make possible a more fine-tuned under-standing of local social relations outside production as well as inside it andincluding contested ideas of appropriate roles inside domestic groups and com-petition between them on the axis ofjati (local social rank) as well as class.

Workers own narratives clearly bring out the importance of non-material di-mensions of the experience of migration, including a sense of being valued (ornot), peer group pressure, and the implications of particular types of work forsocial rank within and between households. We cannot make judgements aboutthe possible role of migration in the emancipation or oppression of workerswithout taking account of the subjective experience of being a migrant worker.

The research reported in this paper was part of a larger project, which aimedto achieve breadth as well as depth in its study of seasonal migration for ruralmanual work in the region defined by the source and destination areas of workersemployed in the most dynamic rice-producing areas of West Bengal. A team of

six co-researchers carried out five concurrent year-long ethnographic studies one in a destination area and four in source areas. (The testimonies drawn onhere were recorded during Coppards fieldwork in a source area2). Rogaly wentfrom site to site and also spent time at bus stands and railway stations wheremigrants and employers struck deals. In a future monograph, we intend to at-tempt to explain the dynamics of seasonal migration in this region of easternIndia and to contrast it with Jan Bremans findings from the sugar cane fieldsof south Gujarat (e.g. Breman 1990). Important differences include the lack of acadre of brokers, non-collusive employers and the greater (though still verylimited) potential for structural change by migrants back home. We will return

briefly to these differences in the conclusion to this paper.

SEASONAL MIGRATION AND CHANGING SOCIAL RELATIONSIN RURAL WEST BENGAL

Over 500,000 people (men, women and children) migrate seasonally each year,more than doubling the agricultural workforce in the central rice-producingdistrict of Barddhaman.3 We found the role of the CPI(M)s mass peasant organ-ization to have been crucial in fixing three-way deals between local workers,migrants and employers, and in resolving disputes. One important componentof this has been that employers have generally agreed not to pay migrants lessper day than local workers (though in practice they often work longer hours).In turn, local workers have accepted, somewhat grudgingly, and with sporadic

2 Puruliya District, West Bengal. Rogaly carried out long-term fieldwork in another locality in thesame district during 19912 (see Rogaly 1996).3 This very approximate figure is intended to provide an idea of the scale of seasonal migration,which is impossible to quantify accurately. The reasons for this, and how we came to the number ofover 500,000 can be found in Rogaly et al. (2001). Many of the migrant workers come from other

districts of West Bengal and from neighbouring Jharkhand state (erstwhile south Bihar). See Figure1 for an illustration of four of the main streams.


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protest, that migrant workers be allowed in during peak seasons. In the plannedmonograph, and to a limited degree in this paper, we would like to be able tocharacterize what is specific about agricultural employment relations in WestBengal, compared to elsewhere in India (and further afield) and why.

West Bengal has the highest population density of all the major Indian states.In much of the state south of the Ganges, agriculture is dominated by rice pro-duction with seasonal peaks in labour requirements. There have been radicalchanges in production relations since the abolition ofzamindariin the 1950s andthe cross-class movement of peasants demanding its implementation in the 1960s.The United Front coalition governments of the late 1960s, in which the CPI(M)was a major partner, actively pursued land redistribution, including throughsupport to land seizure by peasants themselves. By the 1970s, peasants of allclasses were seeking opportunities for productive investment (Mitter 1977, 77;Rogaly 1998, 2730) and the stage was set for the rapid agricultural growth of the

1980s (Gazdar and Sengupta 1999). The vast majority of rice production hassince been cultivated by peasants with holdings of less than five acres of land(Rawal 1999, 11). Although large rentier landlords have disappeared, 28 per centof land is still owned by the 7 per cent of peasants with holdings of more thanfive acres (Mishra and Rawal 2002, 338).

In the 1990s there was still a sizeable number of share-croppers, although theirnumerical importance was declining in intensively farmed areas (see, for exam-ple, Halder 1994) and new forms of seasonal fixed rent tenancy had becomecommonplace, especially for the cultivation of irrigated summer rice (Webster1999). In an earlier paper, one of us noted how the coming to power of the

CPI(M) in 1977 also began a period of consolidation of power by middle andrich peasants alongside an unprecedentedly successful electoral strategy involvingthe limitation of the political expression of class contradictions in the peasantry(Rogaly 1998). More recently, a senior minister of the CPI(M)-led Left FrontGovernment identified continuing class tension in the countryside as the firstcounter land-reform tendency which need[s] to be addressed (Mishra and Rawal2002, 353). The rapid agricultural growth of the 1980s and 1990s meant accumu-lation for those with relatively greater land-holdings, especially those who hadbeen able to invest in private groundwater irrigation,4 and thus a process ofdifferentiation within the peasantry.

Some peasants have built on accumulated profits from agriculture and in-vested in fertilizer and rice dealerships, other businesses, livestock, machinery(including tractors), property in nearby towns and in education. Operating asextended families, the potential dominance of this class is enhanced by theircapacity to mix farming with white-collar employment, rice trading and politicalactivism. Despite having relatively little land by international standards, theyhave been described as the neo-rich (Mishra and Rawal 2002). Members of thisclass do not work the land but are involved in supervising wage workers or else

4

Among this group, those who could access reliable supplies of electricity were in a far betterposition than owners of diesel-powered pumpsets because of the difference in running costs.


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employ an agent to do so. The hiring in (and not hiring out) of labour is animportant mark of distinction in West Bengal as elsewhere in India (see Gidwani2000). However, the middle and capitalist peasantry are not the only people whohire in labour. In those areas of intensive rice cultivation which are major desti-

nation areas for migrant workers, even poor peasants will hire migrant workers,but in their cases only for a few days and only when the workers are not requiredby the richer peasants, who are in a position to bear the costs associated withtravelling to recruit labour.

Since 1999, West Bengals rice producers have faced a price scissors emanatingfrom the Central governments liberalization policy and manifest in lower inputsubsidies and, through the freer import of rice, in lower rice prices. Rice produc-tion has become relatively unprofitable for some and loss-making for others andthis has led to calls from middle and capitalist peasants in the CPI(M)-affiliatedpeasant union to limit wage increases.5 According to Mishra and Rawal (2002,

341) real agricultural wages have fallen since the mid-1990s.6 In these circumst-ances, it is not surprising that the argument of significant common cause betweencapitalist peasants and local wage workers has continued to be a powerful oneand may have contributed to the success of the CPI(M) in the 2001 elections.

Class categories such as poor, middle and capitalist peasant have been essentialfor this brief elaboration of the changing social relations of production in whichour analysis is set. However, the close-up individual level of analysis which wepursue in the discussions of workers testimonies requires additional tools. First,as elsewhere in India, there is a strong overlap between class and jati in WestBengal.7 Moreover, there are problems characterizing classes within state bound-

aries because of major spatial contrasts across the state, which our larger studybrings out. Indeed, differences within what appear to be classes in state levelanalysis need to be considered alongside the interests each class has in common.The seasonal scarcity of labour is such that there are competing and conflictinginterests among rich peasants within the destination area and between themand rich peasants in the source area (see Rogaly 1999). The study of seasonalmigration also draws attention to the potential conflict between wage workers.Furthermore, because of the major differences in land productivity, peasantcategories based around landholdings cannot be usefully aggregated across thestate, unless they are appropriately weighted. Almost all seasonally migrant wageworkers across the region we studied combined some of their own productionwith hiring out labour to others. However, as we shall see in the locality onwhich we report in detail in this paper, ecological conditions changed the degreeto which own production was possible: a drought could temporarily make apoor peasant into a landless labourer for a year.

5 This information is derived from interviews Rogaly carried out with Amrita Sengupta inBarddhaman and Kolkata (see Rogaly et al. 2001).6 Our study found evidence of stagnation rather than decline, see Rogaly et al. 2001.7

See, for example, Kohli (1997), Samaddar (1994), Rogaly (1998, 2731) and Halder (1994). SeeLerche (1995) for an Uttar Pradesh case study.


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The spatial location of employment has implications for what doing wagework means, even the hard manual work of uprooting, carrying or transplantingrice seedlings or of cutting, binding, loading and threshing the ripened plants,and then storing the grains and straw. As the narratives in the following section

also suggest, there is variation across space in what it means to work for anotherperson for a wage per se, what it is to carry out a particular type of work andwhat it is to work in view of others (particularly for certain women, for examplenewly married women, to work in view of certain men). This does not necessar-ily relate to variations in the meanings of work in different local contexts,8 butmore crudely to being seen by a relative, neighbour or other local person. Part ofthe meaning of a piece of work only takes on significance when someone youknow can see you doing it or hears from others that you have done it.

Thus relations between wage workers and their employers in contemporaryWest Bengal are actually relations between heterogeneous groups of people,

lying on a continuum of size of agricultural holding operated, with land qualityand irrigation access being important in influencing the cropping pattern andproductivity of individual plots of land. A unit of land in dry unirrigatedChottanagpur yields much less than the same unit in intensively farmed parts ofthe alluvial plains. Some wage workers have land; some employers have verylittle. Some people both hire in and hire out labour. Secondly, migration and theemployment of migrant workers are not neatly related to landholding. Variationsof climate between years,9 unexpected shocks and more predictable life-cyclechanges make for fluctuations in the supply of labour power and effectivedemand for it over time. The presence of local workers alongside migrants and

of recruiting employers in source areas would make for a multidimensional set ofclass relations, even if classes were more polarized. While class is central to thesesocial relations of production, in which a large proportion of production is or-ganized around wage labour, others have argued with respect to West Bengalthat class stratification in the present agrarian society is so complex that it isdifficult to use the old categories to understand class relations in the countryside(Mishra and Rawal 2002, 353). Moreover the meanings attached to doing par-ticular types of work and of being employed as a manual worker for somebodyelse vary across space and are strongly associated with ideas about jati.

Jati, like class, is particularly complex in rural southern West Bengalbecause there is no clear polarization and no single dominant jati. Jatirefers toa persons social rank in relation to caste, ethnic group, religious communityor nation. Importantly for this paper, it varies across space as people identifythemselves and are characterized by others differently at home and away from

8 P. Bardhan (1999) argues that cultures of work are determined at least in part by agro-ecology. Inhis view, there is no accident in the tendency of landowners in West Bengal to get others to do theirdirty, wet paddy production work for them.9

And the variation in vulnerability of different qualities of productive land to adverse climaticconditions.


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home.10 Moreover, ideologies of work are strongly linked to ideas about jati.There is an unbreakable link here with class. Having to do hard manual workfor others is an important marker and even more so for people in jatis whichassert higher social rank through generally not hiring out labour. The paid work

done, where it is done, and for whom, is caught up in contests over the relativestanding of different jati. Ideas about work and jati are used as resources inestablishing the distinction of individuals and of groups in relation to others (seeGidwani 2000). In the next section, we examine how the meaning of migratingfor manual work in rice production has changed over time through the testimon-ies of four individuals.

CHANGING MEANINGS AND EXPERIENCES OF WAGE WORK

The answers to the questions of who migrates for wage work, what it means to

them and how that changes emerge from complex social relations, but alsocontribute to them. This paper is concerned with individual migrant workersexperiences and the potential for wage workers to effect change in the structuresthat compel them to carry out hard manual work for others. In aggregate, wecan assume that wage workers have less power to shape these relations than therich and middle peasants who employ them. However, actual changes in socialrelations take place between people, rather than between categories. They do notfollow a neat pattern which corresponds to class or local social rank expressed asjati. Local social rank also changes over time and varies among wage workers,who include both poor peasants and landless people. In this section, we draw on

the narratives of migrant workers in a rural locality of Puruliya District to illus-trate some of the ways in which the pattern of seasonal migration, its meanings,and the social relations in which they are embedded have changed over time.

The testimonies reported here are extracts taken from interviews with wageworkers in a locality in Puruliya District, which lies in the Chottanagpur Plateauand is the westernmost district of the state of West Bengal.11 The locality wasselected because, like other localities in the eastern blocks of Puruliya District,many wage workers migrate out seasonally for employment in rice cultivationand in brick kilns in the plains of West Bengal. The project as a whole wasconcerned most with seasonal migration for agricultural work as this was pre-dominant across the four studied streams (see Figure 1). The work involved in

10 In a separate paper, Rogaly and Rafique (2003) have analysed the struggles involved in migrationfrom the perspective of women left behind by male migrants, and the compromises they have tomake to stay on the right side of the male kin they rely on. The paper concerns another of the fourstreams of migration studied, the only one which involved (mainly Muslim) men going away ontheir own. In the stream discussed in the present paper, migration is by men, women and children.11 We present selected extracts from the interviews, which sometimes took place over severalsittings. The extracts do not include interviewers interventions and consequently read as moreflowing and coherent here than the taped interviews actually were. This is part of the process oftranslation, which also includes the rendering of the Bengali original into English (by Sujata Das

Chowdhury), and which inevitably reflects the choices (conscious or otherwise, and socially embed-ded for sure) of the present authors.


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Figure 1. Four seasonal migration streams into or across West Bengal.

Source: Drawn by Philip Judge.


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rice cultivation was in several ways similar in the source areas and in the destina-tion areas of West Bengal, centred around Barddhaman District. Many migrantsfrom the Puruliya locality, which we will call Bajnagarh, cultivated small plotsof rice themselves and hired out wage labour to larger-scale cultivators in and

around Bajnagarh. In both locations source and destination areas rice wastransplanted and harvested by hand. There were seasonal peaks in labour re-quirements associated with these work tasks and some complementarity betweenthe two areas as the monsoonal harvest of those poor peasants who migratedoccurred slightly earlier than in Barddhaman and the cut paddy of those who hadsignificant amounts of low land cultivation in Bajnagarh (former landlords, nowpeasant capitalists12) could wait to be threshed as there was no widespreadsummer rice cultivation. That the latter occurred to such a large extent in Barddha-man District and hardly at all in the eastern part of Puruliya created anothercomplementarity. Nevertheless, the supply of workers to peasant capitalists in

Bajnagarh was reduced by the migration and there could be conflict too withworkers own cultivation, particularly at the time of transplanting the monsoonalrice crop.

The operations of transplanting and harvesting paddy are performed in groupsby those who can afford to hire labour. In the destination area, all the tasksassociated with these operations were done by both male and female workers,predominantly, but not exclusively, adults. Back at Bajnagarh, agricultural wagework apart from ploughing was done by women and adolescent boys morethan men, who were found to seek higher wages elsewhere or to prefer theirown cultivation. Transplanting there was exclusively done by women. Trans-

planting includes uprooting seedlings, washing the mud off roots to make themlighter to carry, collecting them into piles, carrying them to other fields andreplanting them individually. In Bajnagarh, work was generally organized sothat uprooting would be done in the first part of the day, with replanting done inthe afternoon.

At harvest, the key activities requiring groups of workers were cutting thecrop with a sickle, binding the cut crop and loading it onto a bullock cart, or forsome rich peasants at Barddhaman onto a tractor trailer. The bound rice plantsthen needed to be unloaded and threshed. Threshing was usually done by handon a stone slab in Bajnagarh but threshing machines, either foot-pedalled ordiesel-powered, were common in Barddhaman. After threshing, straw wouldbe piled up. This last task was considered a special skill by both employers andlabourers, and was undertaken by one or two experienced members of thegroup. As the testimonies showed, some workers valued being identified byemployers and by fellow-workers as having particular practical skills and leader-ship qualities.

12 Some of whom combined agriculture with other enterprises, including transport. Below we usea combinedjati-class category for the major employers at Bajnagarh. This is appropriate because the

broad range of social relations of production they are involved in does not fit into a single materialistclass category.


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Employers at Barddhaman also hired migrants for other agricultural work,including potato planting and harvesting. Wage work in Bajnagarh includedconstructing bandhs or arhs and levelling land so that it could retain the waternecessary for wet rice cultivation. The building and maintaining of bandhswas

also asked of migrant workers at Barddhaman. Workers from Bajnagarh proudlyclaimed that Puruliyan workers had contributed much to the digging and con-struction of the canals of Barddhaman District.

The major employers at Bajnagarh were descendants of the former zamindarswho were still disputing the amount of compensation offered them by the gov-ernment. Locally referred to as rajas (literally rulers), and Rajput by jati, theseemployers had had diverse fortunes following the abolition ofzamindari. Someamong them had diversified into business (for example, transport: one ownedthree buses). Others had white-collar employment. However, all the rajasnowmanaged the cultivation of a larger proportion of their own land through hiring

and supervising wage workers. Being a raja in Bajnagarh has symbolic signific-ance because of the association with earlier feudal wealth and power.

We refer to rajasas a jati-class because raja operates as a social rank in a waywhich is inseparable from class position, and because rajasare involved in a broadrange of social relations of production, which cannot be aggregated into a singlematerialist class category. Those rajaswho hired in large numbers of agriculturalworkers now resembled capitalist peasants rather than landlords. Though rent-ing out land to poorer tenants was still practised, there had been a markeddecline in the mutual obligations between rajason the one hand and the formerservice providers, poor peasants and landless workers around them on the other.

Some land-owners in Bajnagarh might be described as middle peasants relyingmainly on their own labour for cultivation and only hiring out as migrants indifficult years, such as the years of drought in the late 1990s. As we shall see inthe testimonies, feudalism was in decline in Bajnagarh, but had not disappeared,and while the former landlords became capitalist peasants, some middle peasantshad experienced downward mobility.

The workers who provided the testimonies were (quite understandably) un-able to give detailed contextual information on every employer they had workedfor. Some migrants from Bajnagarh travelled to a labour market place at Bankurabus stand unsolicited and made deals with employers who had travelled therefrom Barddhaman District. Others, however, were recruited by one of the tworegular labour gang leaders (sardars) in Bajnagarh, who had provided workersto the same group of employers in a single village of Barddhaman for over adecade. These sardarswould travel to Barddhaman in advance of each season andreturn to Bajnagarh with detailed requirements for migrant workers.

The destination area study by Amrita Sengupta and visits to destination areavillages by Daniel Coppard, Kumar Rana and Ben Rogaly, suggested that in thelate 1990s employers recruiting seasonal migrant workers were engaged in capit-alist production relations. They were not wholly landlords because they them-selves took part in recruitment and supervision on some or all of their land.They were capitalist peasants rather than middle peasants because they relied on


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hired manual labour more than on their own.13 There was a clear cultural distinc-tion between employers who worked the land themselves alongside the workersthey hired and those employers who would go as far as supervision, but nofurther. Even for employers with a landholding of around seven acres, there

were differences between those who aspired to genteel bhadralok status and avoidedall manual work, and those who were proud of being chashis (peasant cultiv-ators). Those with still smaller land-holdings in destination area villages alsoemployed seasonal migrant workers for periods of just a few days, borrowingthem from the larger-scale employers. These could be characterized as middlepeasants.

Many capitalist peasants hired both local workers and migrant workersat transplanting and harvest. When Coppard visited the Barddhaman Districtvillage to which labourers were regularly taken by the established labour sardars,he met one employer, who regularly hired labour from Bajnagarh. The max-

imum area he controlled in any one season was approximately twenty acres,including land rented in. He also owned one tractor, six peddle threshers and adiesel-powered pumpset for groundwater extraction. Another employer, to whomthe first occasionally supplied migrant labour, cultivated four acres and might bedescribed as a middle peasant. When capitalist peasants supply labour to middlepeasants at the destination, they do not charge a commission, but they do en-hance their own social standing, which is part of their class position locally.Employers who can afford to recruit their own migrant labour are also in aposition to decide the timing of operations. Others have to wait their turn.

Jaladhar Kaibarta

Jaladhar Kaibarta is a 35-year-old man, residing in the Loharpara of Bajnagarhwith his wife and younger son, aged six.14 His elder son, twelve years old, hasbeen working in a sweet shop in Ranchi ( Jharkhand) since August 1999. Thepara, consisting of single-storey mud-dwellings, is built at the foot of the wallsof some of the largest brick houses of the former rajas. There are several differentjati in Lohar para. Many of the residents were said to have originally settled inthepara to provide various forms of service to the raja.15 Jaladhars parents werefishermen (ghuna):

13 As in Bajnagarh, the categories of middle peasant and capitalist peasant are not broad enough tosubsume all the recruiting employers in the destination area. Some mixed multiple enterprises in asimilar way to the larger Bajnagarh employers. The categories are also problematical because, aselaborated above, they misleadingly imply an equivalence in the class structure in source and destina-tion area. Further, their uncritical or de-contextualized use might be taken to infer, wrongly, thateach peasant class in West Bengal is a class-in-itself and does not contain contradictory interests.14 The names of people and of some places have been changed throughout the paper. There areinconsistencies in the ages of people mentioned in this and other narratives.15 This is based on accounts given by the rajas themselves, as well as by various respondents in

Lohar para. Referring to rajas in this way is not intended to obscure the major wealth and otherdifferences among raja families (see the discussion of the testimony of Jaladhar Kaibarta, below).


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My parents used to work the whole day. They caught fish, then afterselling those in the market we got some money, and from that we boughtsupplies. [As a child] I played throughout the day. When I became a littlemore responsible I took cows to the field, and later my elder brother sent

me to school. After a few years, when I was in class four, my brothercouldnt afford to continue my schooling, so I stopped and started workinglocally as a labourer. I did all types of work, digging and levelling fields,cutting paddy, ploughing, but the wage then was very low, between fiveand ten rupees per day. My parents would get angry with me because I wasnot interested in learning our caste profession, that is, making nets andcatching fish. Whenever I worked for others, as I sometimes did, I nevergave the money to my parents. That is also why they were annoyed withme. But out of a mere five rupees, what was I supposed to give them?

When I became older I started catching fish, learning from observing my

parents. I learnt how to make nets. One day I went to catch fish with a newnet in one of the rajas ponds. The raja took my net away, and beat me.The rajasare not very good. They never tolerated torkari16 on top of myrice. I was twelve when I got beaten by that raja. Those rajashave sincedied. We dont care for the rajas now. We only have a little respect forHaripada Raja17 because he helps us out when we are in need. Our chil-drens generation does not care at all. My son sometimes says that he willmove away when he gets married. He doesnt like the rajas dominance inthe area, nor the neighbours complaining about him to them. The neigh-bours dont like our improved living standards. We have just made a new

roof, and they will not be happy with that. Last year we suffered a lotduring the monsoon. We simply sat under an umbrella for the whole night.The cows were soaked. Nobody observed our suffering. But now we aremaking our new roofs and they just cant tolerate it. The neighbours arenot good.

My parents were labourers for the rajas. My father was very honest andinnocent, so he did not even have land to build a house on. We fourbrothers bought this piece of land with the help of Haripada Raja, but theroadside portion he kept for himself.

When I was a child, the place [Lohar] was beautiful. We had a bamboobush near our house. There was a temple of Manasa. There were so manytrees, and the ponds were full of fish. But even then my parents sufferedfrom poverty. Now, although we are working as labourers, we are notfacing such poverty. We used to be poor all the time. After working wehad food, which is what we manage now. But as the wage has increased,so has the cost of things. Previously, pastu18 was a standard menu for us.

16 Torkariis the generic term for a cooked vegetable accompaniment to rice.17 This is a pseudonym which we use for one of the richest among the rajas, who continues to be an

important patron in the locality.18 A paste made from poppy seeds and mixed with vegetable accompaniments to rice.


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Even in marriage parties pastu was a common menu. But now only thosewho have money can eat it. We eat only potatoes, tomatoes and othervegetables.

Earning money is very hard for us. My eldest son was a good student,

but I couldnt afford his study. The younger one is going to school and theelder is bearing his schooling cost; he wishes to do so until he completes hisschooling, so we expect he will finish. You can see our condition. We aredoing earth work and agricultural work. Our profession will no longer beours, because fishing in ponds and rivers has become restricted. And youcan find fishing nets in every house, maybe in Santal or Mahato or Bauri orSahis houses, so we are compelled to do other work.

In this locality there is no work at all. We have to wait until someonecalls us for their personal work, and [even] then the wage is only Rs 20after a whole days work. We can only sit and eat food until Jaistha-Sraban.19

As the rains start we do our cultivation and after harvesting, leaving thepaddy inside, we go to Barddhaman. As soon as I became responsible Istarted migrating. I first went with a Dom family who lived next door.That was before my marriage. They used to go previously. I was unem-ployed, so they asked me if I was interested to go with them. Before goingsome said, You will have to do a lot of work. You will have to start yourwork from early in the morning. But I thought, Let me see, and I foundthat it was not so difficult. Sometimes I missed my village and relatives,but that is quite natural. Sometimes I was uncertain whether I could con-tinue to work over there, thinking that I might have to come back early

because of my mental condition. But the Dom man was very good. Healways encouraged me.

We stayed there [in Barddhaman] happily. We were the same age groupand cooked in the same place. Sometimes while working together wesang jhumur.20 We enjoyed that. When binding paddy, if we sing we willnot realize when our work has been completed. When we first reachedBarddhaman town it was new to us. The people were unknown to us, sowe moved together, and talked only amongst ourselves.21

I first decided to go for fun. Lots of people were going from the village,so I thought I would also go to see the new place. Those whose financialsituation was not very good used to migrate then. Our condition was notgood. Even now we prefer to go because if we work there for one month,we may bring food for another two months. We can also buy new clothesfor the children. If we can bring back at least Rs 500, we can buy saris for

19 Mid-May to mid-August, the main period for preparing land and seedlings for the annualmonsoonal rice crop.20 A genre of folk song in Puruliya District.21 This refers to the process of finding work. Agricultural employers would come to Barddhaman

town to recruit workers arriving from Puruliya and elsewhere, mainly for work in rice transplantingand harvesting.


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our wives, and if we bring rice it will be our food. It is certain that we shallat least bring rice, because they offer 1.5 kg of rice per head, and we dontneed that amount of rice for our food. So we save that and bring it back. Ifby chance we cant get any work here, we at least can eat that rice.

My parents never stopped me going. I was older then, and they thoughtthat I could manage my own food anywhere. Sometimes to make my newclothes I went topub.22 When I first went I had no family of my own, so Ihad no responsibilities. Now I have my family, so I have to ask my wife,or have to make arrangements for them before leaving. But since we havebeen going topub it has been possible to get loans from local people, as wehave done this year. By combining a loan with our previous earnings frommigration, I have managed to make this tiled roof. We will have to go topub to repay the loan.

We took the children with us when they were very small. We never

missed a single year then. But this year, since we have [bought] a fewlivestock my wife remained behind to look after them. If we leave thechildren here to look after the livestock alone, the neighbours will eat theanimals. We have always tried to earn some more money. Our childrenhave become used to good food. If we offer them ordinary food they arenot satisfied. What is the value of our lives if we fail to give them goodfood?

Those left behind are concerned about where exactly we have gone,how the employer has behaved towards us, etc. They worry if they receiveany news of a bus accident. But those who migrate, since we are from the

same village and known to each other, enjoy migration. In the eveningtime, young boys will not allow us to sleep. They will sing jhumuranddance. There is cooking on one side, and song and dance on the other. Theemployers have realized what type of people they have. The Barddhamanpeople are afraid of us [people from Chottanagpur] because they think weare short tempered and fighting people.

I made a group, and we now migrate together. Sometimes, if I find itimpossible to go, I ask them to go but they dont like to leave without me.We are used to working together; if by chance some refuse to go we all feelbad. They know that I can negotiate with the employer about workloadsand wages.

This time they requested me to say something to our employer. He wasmaking the group work until 5 or 6 pm. We were unhappy, so once I hada talk with him, What did you say in Bankura?23 Why are you using themuntil the evening? He said, they dont know the work properly, and sothey are very slow. I said, Okay, I will stay with them for the next day.I worked with them and there was no problem. Harvesting work was very

22

Literally east, referring to rice cultivation work in and around Barddhaman District.23 A labour market place where work arrangements were negotiated.


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easy for the people of our group, but potato planting was unknown tothem and that created problems. While planting potatoes, you have tomaintain at least a four to six fingers gap, but they planted closely, some-times with four to five seeds together.

We have to pay the [political] party office Rs 5 per head, and they [inturn] will help us get the correct salary from the employer. If the employerfails to keep his promise then we will complain to the party, and with theirinterference, it will be solved. This system is very helpful for us, so as wereach the village we try to find out which party is in power there. Withinthree or four days, when the neighbours become known to us, we askthem about the local political situation, and then we start saying we are alsofrom the same party which is in power there.24

People ofpub do not generally make any miscalculation about wages,but here the employers are not so reliable. They cheat us. Suppose we are

working for one month, at the end of the work the local employer will say,You were absent for two days. But that doesnt happen there. They willpay us the full amount, and also warn us about pick-pocketing. Sometimesfor our security they will also accompany us up to the village bus stand if itis far from the village. But not all are so helpful. If we find an employersbehaviour towards us is not good, or he is talking badly to all of us, thenwe may decide to change our employer. But then the employer will notagree to pay our wages because we have not finished his work. With thehelp of the party we will be able to get our wages. The party also works forthe villages good name. If an employer betrays us, and the party does not

help us, then the village would automatically become infamous because wewould discuss the matter at the Bankura bus stand. Then it would be hardfor the villagers to get labour next time.

Those who dont have any regular income are bound to go to pub,because that is the way we can bring some money. We can buy clothesfrom that money, and the rice we bring with us is also very helpful. If I seemy children in front of my eyes are not getting enough food, how can Igive up trying? If I dont get any work, I might try to steal. We cant standto see our sons suffering. But now we are getting work in Barddhaman.Why should we steal?

Discussion

Jaladhar Kaibarta narrates his life as a wage worker, stressing a sense of respon-sibility for his family, which began when his father died and increased when he

24 In Barddhaman District, this is usually the CPI(M), which has by far the largest number ofaffiliates through its mass organizations of any party in the district. Many rich peasants belong tothe Krishak Sabha (CPI(M)-affiliated peasant union) and/or to the party, as do peasants of all classesand local wage workers. Migrant workers are asked to pay subscriptions to the party at the monsoonal

rice harvest. In the larger research project, we found instances where the local members of the CPI(M)had intervened to enforce payment by recalcitrant employers (see below and Rogaly et al. 2002).


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became a father. Jaladhar says that he would steal if necessary and indeed blameshis fathers honesty and innocence for their lack of a homestead plot as children.The narration includes a sense of migrating because of poverty, because of mater-ial need, but which at the same time began from curiosity.

It was as a migrant that Jaladhar first did manual work for others. In terms ofclass relations, that migration has helped Jaladhar and his family move awayfrom dependence on the rajasas patrons, explained largely as a consequence ofadditional financial freedom and control. This became clearer in other conversa-tions with Jaladhar regarding petty accumulation investment in cattle, newroof as investment to attract a good wife for his son and the ability to accessand manage credit. Jaladhar explained that being known to be a regular seasonalmigrant worker improved his capacity to access credit in Bajnagarh. Such creditincluded a loan for the roof, which was paid off by additional migration andinterest-free credit for day-to-day purchases and agricultural inputs from local

shopkeepers and dealers.Yet there is a continuing reliance on one raja, singled out. Aside from this

more personalized relationship, Jaladhar and others continue to refer to the prin-cipal landowners and employers of the locality collectively as raja. Rajasoftenspoke of themselves as a homogenous group, as a means of distinction, despitevery significant diversity and conflict among them. Importantly, such differen-tiation of wealth and influence among the rajaswas also well recognized by wageworkers and other non-rajas. Yet the collective raja has remained a powerfullyenduring term of identification.

Jaladhar narrates a two-way deterioration in relations with the rajasas a jati-

class. On the one hand, rajasresented any form of upward mobility among theirerstwhile service jati-classes. On the other, Jaladhar emphasizes the decline inrespect for the rajasbetween his own and his sons generation in Lohar para. Thismay well have been nurtured by his son working away from home in teastalls,an opportunity offering relatively greater potential for independence and self-worth. Interestingly, this proved to be a pattern among young men of the para.It was explained by another Lohar para resident that the very act ofmoving awayto work and earn gave rise to the qualitative change in relations, quite apart fromthe meanings attributed to the type of work done.

Jaladhar expressed his and his sons disgust at what he sees as the envy of theirneighbours other wage workers belonging to Ghuna and otherjati as migrantremittances were spent on visible improvements to Jaladhars house. Conversa-tions with other migrating households of the samepara revealed how they attrib-uted an outbreak of local violent conflict during Pous Sankranti25 to the envy ofnon-migrating households, who resented visible signs of affluence (such as newclothing) afforded by migrants earnings. Moreover, Jaladhar laments that theircaste occupation of fishing is no longer restricted to Ghunas. Yet the story ofdoing migrant work at Barddhaman is one of (particularly male) camaraderie

25

A major festival in mid-January which coincides with the end of the period of threshing andstoring away the main rice crop, as well as with the return of agricultural migrant labourers.


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acrossjati(among Puruliyan wage workers).26 From his first adventure with theDom, through to forming a group which expected each other to go (if by chancesome refuse to go, we feel bad), and the references to jhumursongs, there is asense of the Chottanagpuris making the most of a situation of hard manual work.

Jaladhar also contrasts the meaning of being reliant on wage work for othersin the locality with the greater agency he can exert as a migrant, especially asa small-time leader of a migrant group. Coppard travelled with Jaladhar toa labour market place and observed his negotiation with various employers.His demeanour was one of quiet confidence, standing straight and lookingemployers directly in the eye. He seemed more comfortable than a number ofthe employers there. Further assertiveness is expressed in the narrative regardinghis willingness to stand up for his rights and the rights of the group by com-plaining to individual employers and to local political parties in cases of mistreat-ment. This contrasts with the experience of being a wage worker in Jaladhars

own locality. In this locality there is no work at all . . .. He relates a dependenceon others for work, waiting to be approached and declining returns to their oldjatioccupation of fishing.

The employers of the alluvial plains are seen as being kept in check bothby their fear of the people of Chottanagpur and by the need to avoid bringingtheir village into disrepute to avoid disruption to the flow of migrant workers.By capitalizing on exaggerated images of harsh landscapes and peoples inChottanagpur as held by employers in the plains, Jaladhar influences the experi-ence of class relations at the destination. The same employers are seen as beingregulated by an institution characteristic of Barddhaman District (at the heart of

the plains areas), the political parties ensuring proper payment for the sake of thevillages reputation. In another conversation with Jaladhar, he described how hewas able to use the good behaviour of Barddhaman employers as a tool to helphim contest local Bajnagarh employers dishonesty.

Here we see the pattern of migration changing along with family circumstances(for example, having children and accumulating livestock). Jaladhars recent prac-tice of migrating every year is in part a response to a sharp decline in the availabilityof local work due to a persisting drought. Clear aspirations for a certain qualityof life are expressed: Our children have become used to good food . . . What isthe value of our lives if we fail to give them good food? Yet in spite of the refer-ences to being better off and the expressed capacity to move out of raja domina-tion, Jaladhar is acutely aware of continuing poverty: now only those who havemoney can eat pastu. We eat only potatoes, tomatoes and other vegetables.

Brick kiln migration and Bahadurer-ma

Privately owned brick-making units (brick kilns) have become main sourcesof employment for many Bauri households in Bajnagarh. The work and

26

There is a silence about who does the cooking and other essential work while young boys singjhumur.


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remuneration are organized very differently to work in rice production. Al-though gangs were hired from Amdih, units of two people were required foreach work team, which was often made up of husband and wife. The men cutand shaped the brick from the mud, while the women carried the bricks (three at

a time) to a space for them to dry in the sun. Bauris expressed pride in theirbrick-making skill, which they saw as distinguishing them from locally recruitedworkers, who merely carried the bricks. Payment for brick-cutting was approx-imately Rs 100 per 1000 bricks per unit of two workers and was made at the endof the season. Other workers were employed at different rates for carrying bricksto and from firing and for storage. Migration to brick kilns involved far longerabsences (up to nine months per year) and of whole families. Children and othersunable to perform heavy work would migrate to help with cooking, cleaningand other reproductive work. This meant parents could earn more per day (giventhe piece rate arrangement). Older children would also assist with drying bricks

and earn additional income through casual labour.Unlike the migration for rice work, brick kiln migration involved a signific-

ant advance payment in Bhadra-Asvin (the hungriest season in Puruliya) and tomeet festival expenses. Pre-migration advances of up to Rs 1800 were common,and in addition the brick kiln owner would pay a weekly advance of Rs 250300for food, fuel etc. at the workplace. Remittances brought home were thus rela-tively small as deductions were made against all advances before payment at theend of the season. Economically, we do not consider brick kiln migration ashaving moved away from being merely a survival strategy, as has been the casewith agricultural migration, albeit only for somepeople, someof the time. How-

ever, as the testimony implies, brick-kiln work has been associated with changedsocial relations manifest in reduced dependence on the rajasas ajati-class. It is notclear whether the prime motivators of this change have been the rajas or thisparticularjati-class of workers, the Bauris.

Bahadurer-ma27 lives in the small hamlet of Amdih to the north of the rajashouses. Like the vast majority of other people living in Amdih, she is Bauri. Therajasexplain that they originally brought the Bauris to the locality to do manualwork for them (under a similar arrangement to the one they had with the peopleof Loharpara). The Bauris were regarded by otherjatisin the locality, includingthe rajas, as of lower social rank than the service jatiof Loharpara. Many Baurishave since moved away from working for the rajas as domestic (women) ormanual (men) workers, often on annual and longer term arrangements, to rely-ing on earnings from seasonal out-migration to agricultural work (mainly ricetransplanting and harvesting) in Barddhaman and to brick kilns. Bahadurer-mais a passionately vocal woman of 70. She has lived in Amdih since her marriage55 years ago.

27 Neighbours and immediate family spoke of this respondent to Coppard and Das Chowdhury viaher identity as mother of Bahadur (the literal meaning of Bahadurer-ma). We adopt this practice

here. Bahadur, who is her eldest son, has been considered the head of the household since herhusband died.


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I worked in my parents village as a housemaid. I also did agriculturalwork. My aunt married in this village, and she arranged my marriage here.When I heard that I was going to marry a man who already had five wives,I did not feel very comfortable, but at the same time I learnt that he had left

them. Previously it was very common: if the girls disliked their husbands,they just left and remarried someone they liked. Now remarriages havebecome less common. I was 15 when I came here to be married and whenI was 16 or 17 my first son was born. I have delivered seven daughters andfour sons. My husbands other wives had not provided any sons. Three ofmy daughters and two of my sons are still alive. After the[se] shocks [of thedeaths of six of my children] I have become like a stone. I was healthyearlier, but now Ive become thin. I am shameless; that is why I am stillworking and taking food. God knows how long I have to live. I have 21grandchildren. That is how old a lady I am.

My husband worked for the same raja from his youth until his death.His wage was five serof paddy per day. We would collect the paddy everyfive or six days. When my children grew older I also started to go to workin the rajas house. My husband died ten years ago, but I still continue togo.

I arranged all the childrens marriages. My elder daughter-in-law was 13when she came here. She was just a child. Bahadur [eldest son] was 17. Shewas just like a packed bag, and now she has grown old before my eyes. Shehas much tolerance. That is how she is still staying in our house. Mygrandsons marriage was arranged by his parents because I was sick then.

The dowry was not very high considering my family status. We have landsand we dont have any real crisis. So Rs 4000 as a dowry was nothingactually, although they also gave bangles and necklaces of silver. The landwe have was my father-in-laws. My father-in-law employed agriculturallabour because he could not cultivate himself, [but] we now cultivate theland ourselves.

After marriage I was busy with household work: cooking, bringingwater, looking after the children. I also made rice from paddy becausewages were then given in paddy and there were no husking mills. When Iwas young, my husband didnt allow me to go to the rajas houses, noteven to collect his wages. [She was reluctant to say why, then her daughter-in-law explained: previously, young women would not go to rajas housesbecause rajaswished to keep beautiful women at night. If they tried now,they would be beaten by our men.]

I started doing agricultural work locally earlier when I was 1819 yearsold. The wage was 3 ser of paddy, but it was profitable then because themarket prices of other things were low. Now we are given Rs 20, which is2 kg of rice.28 Where will we buy oil, salt and vegetables from?

28

This local wage was less than half the standard wage paid to agricultural migrant workers at thetime of the fieldwork: Rs 28 and 2 kg of rice.


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I first started working in the rajas housewhen my children grew older.I stopped going for a while, but after my husbands death I joined again.Why should I give up my job? Now I am working in the rajas housebecause of my temper. I cant tolerate my daughter in laws dominance: I

get angry easily and stop taking food at home. So I need my own earnings.In the afternoon I can no longer tolerate the sun, so my daughter does mywork then. She also works in a separate household. I go there early in themorning. I have to clean the cow shed, wash utensils, clean the burnedutensils, sweep the courtyard; there is a lot of work to do. We carry theutensils to the pond. The rajas women used to bathe in that pond earlier.The government provided all their facilities. Their electricity line had beensanctioned in our name. We demanded electricity from the higher author-ities, and learnt that the line they are enjoying actually had been sanctionedfor us. As we are illiterate we are helpless.

During Ashar-Sraban29 I also do local agricultural work. I will singJhumursongs in the fields and play music and dance. This old lady will do every-thing there. The raja and small farmers of Amdih will employ people, buthow will the rajas give us work daily? Maybe they employ us once everyten days. We either go to the Mahato villages or work for people of ourown caste. The rajaswill only employ well dressed, smart young women,not an old woman like me.

When I first came here Amdih sukhir Brindaban chhilo Amdih was aspeaceful as Brindaban.30 Life was comfortable. When we worked in therajas houses they would never look to see what we had taken from their

houses. They used to say, nie ja take it. Suppose we had done somethreshing in a rajas house and cleaned the paddy. If we said there are manystone chips in this paddy, they would ask us to take the paddy, and makerice out of it for ourselves. But now they are even measuring the amountof muri31 they are giving us, even after much heavy work. They are notready to give us any extra. Now if the sons of the rajas find only a littlepaddy spread in the floor, they will ask us to carry it inside their houses. Sothe good days have passed. They will never come back again. We havenever seen such a crisis in this area before. These rajas, their nature is tosqueeze the poor. They like to swallow the poor.

When I came here all the men of Amdih worked for the raja. The rajawere very rich then. Large stores of paddy and rice used to be in thecourtyard, not inside their rooms, because they were too big. Our peopleused to make shelters on top to protect them from the rain and sun. WhenI came here, no-one used to go outside the village for work. But atpresent due to hunger, they are moving around in search of work, eithereastwards [i.e. to Barddhaman], or to Raniganj, Kalipahari, Asansol, Tata[for brick-making].

29 Mid-June to mid-August. Season for transplanting the annual paddy crop.30

The kingdom of lord Krishna.31 Puffed rice, considered a snack.


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At that time, the rajas work was the only work here, and that wassufficient for our people. Now the rajasare not employing us. They preferLohar people as domestic workers. Ashar-Sraban is coming and you willsee they will not employ us. In earlier times, Lohar women would refuse,

saying dont touch the rajas utensils, otherwise we will have to takebath, but now they are washing the utensils, and so we are not getting anywork. Previously Ghuna people used to catch fish, but now they are doingagricultural work for the rajas. Bahire khete khete hobek we have to earn ourfood by working outside the locality. I can say this even in front of them.

We dont like to do that work because of the amount of food they offer.Our men demand more wages and for that reason the raja sometimes bringlabourers from other places. The wages are so low here that men workingin the field cant manage food for their women. But the raja also avoidemploying us. They will bring Majhi, Mahato, Lohar or Ghuna. Then our

men will automatically go east to work. They cannot simply wait andwatch that. Now they have learned brick-making very well. Raniganj,Tata, Asansol, wherever you go you can see Bauri people are makingbricks. Our newly married granddaughter-in-law has not learned that workyet, but others, my two sons and one grandson, know the work very welland have been going for the last four years.

We used to catch fish from the ponds and canals. Now from our earningwe are buying rice, vegetables and fish. We are earning daily and spendingdaily. I am worried about my sons future. We have lived in a good time,but I wonder what is waiting for them. In the whole of Manasadih there is

nobody who can employ us poor people. We have to work outside for atleast 6 months a year. We only get water and wood from this village, andwe buy rice from what we earn outside. From Sraban ( JulyAugust) theyhave to go outside, and then again in Agrahayan (NovemberDecember).Some will go to cut paddy, some to make bricks. During Bhadra-Asvin(mid-August to mid-October) they will eat from the money of the brick-kiln contractor.

People had not started going to the brick fields when I came to Amdih.Now it has become common. Shopkeepers will not give loans to us, theygive loans to the service holders who get a monthly salary. We get loansonly after giving collateral to them. By giving mortgages of daughters anddaughter in laws utensils we eat. With the interest, the amount of loandoubles, so their [our sons] pockets get empty as soon as they come back[from migration].

Only one raja gives us loans, not all the houses. The raja who gives usloans, gives them to us because we have a good relation with him. Thatdoesnt mean that he will give loans to all the villagers of Amdih. Othershave relations with other families, and they might take loans from them.But in Manasadih there is an invisible knife at the poor snake.

What they earn today, we will eat tomorrow. We dont have anysavings. Our life has no value. If Bahadur can gather paddy or money by


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working outside, then I will have mental peace. Every day they have towork to get food, thats what I dont like about this life. I know now it isnot possible to buy land again.

Discussion

Bahadurer-mas narrative reveals much tension in her accounts of her relation-ship with the rajas. Part of this is revealed in the contrast between her open,almost fearless criticism of the current rajas I can say this even in front ofthem (impersonal) and her refusal to identify her own particular employer(personal).32

Like Jaladhar Kaibarta, Bahadurer-ma admits a continuing reliance on andindeed good relations with a raja patron. At the same time, the current rajasgeneral callousness towards other Bauris is remarked on. However, there is a

difference in their perception of change in employment-class relations, even thoughboth were at one point closely associated with the rajas. Jaladhars narrativedescribed a permanent state of agitation, while Bahadurer-ma relates to a time inthe past when things were better.33

She spits vehemently when she talks of the rajas. She blames the rajas forabandoning the Bauris, for preferring to employ others in their place. At othermoments, she puts the agency in the hands of the Bauris, emphasizing theirpride, as expressed, for example, through their unwillingness to work for thelow wages paid by the rajas. Yet at the same time, one of her most heartfeltconcerns is with the decline of the rajas. In the good old days, there was plenty of

food freely available. Now, with much more reliance on cash to buy it, there isa sense that the rajas decline, in spite of the possibility of migration, will makesurvival even more difficult.

When account is taken of Bahadurer-mas daughter-in-laws intervention dur-ing the narrative, the past is not simply portrayed with nostalgia. There is ambi-guity here too. That Bahadurer-mas husband forbade her as young womanfrom working for the raja for fear of her being used sexually suggests a less thangolden age. Further, Bahadurer-mas statement that the rajaswould in presenttimes have been beaten by our men for such behaviour powerfully describes agreater capacity on the part of the Bauris to control events, in stark contrast tothe rest of her narrative.

Bahadurer-ma deploysjaticategories herself to explain changing relations, therajaspreference for employing otherjatito do the work that Bauris used to do.She herself feels that she is treated with more respect if she works forjati-classesother than the rajas. Other Bauris expressed pride in the relatively recently skillof brick-making. Members of other jati considered this very tough work, to

32 Although his identity was already known to us.33

This may be a consequence of the age difference between the two: Bahadurer-ma is about 35years older than Jaladhar.


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which, perhaps ironically, a degree of respect (were not tough like Bauris) wasattached.

Unlike Jaladhar, there is no ambiguity about Bahadurer-mas continuingpoverty. Migration is not seen as emancipating in any sense: it is a means of

getting by. Access to loans for consumption relies on keeping a good relationwith the raja patron, in contrast with the general improvement in creditworthi-ness associated with migration for rice work in particular, as alluded to byJaladhar.34 However, among the Bauris, Bahadurer-ma emphasizes her own relat-ively high level of wealth: The dowry was not very high considering my familystatus. We have lands and we dont have any real crisis (this in spite of havinglost much of their land).

Bahadurer-mas narrative of a long and hard life is also intensely concernedwith paid work as providing some autonomy in intra-household relations, espe-cially vis--visher daughter-in-law, whose increasing power Bahadurer-ma finds

so difficult to handle. This is evident from the way she carries herself, despite herage, and is not surprising considering that Bahadurer-ma has arranged marriagesand expects to be centrally involved in organizing those of her grandchildren. Ifher own daughter helps out, this does not detract from the increased self-esteemshe experiences at home through continuing to labour for the raja patron.

Soma Mahato

Across the fields to the east of the rajas houses there is a separate hamlet with atightly clustered group of single-storey dwellings,35 where Deshwalli Majhis,

Mahatos, Rajputs, Karmakars and others live side by side. Most residents culti-vate land, whether as owner occupiers or tenants, and many households pursuea strategy of both hiring in, and selling, agricultural labour. A relatively largenumber of women and men regularly migrate out for agricultural work inBarddhaman. They are mainly organized by the two established sardarreferredto earlier. Soma Mahato, a Mahato woman of 28, is a regular migrant worker.She was born in the hamlet and has returned there, having separated fromher second husband. Others report that she has an extra-marital relation withRamgopal Majhi, one of the two migrant labour sardars. Ramgopal was presentfor much of the interview.

My mother never worked outside the house. She only did the cooking andlooked after the children. My father was a carpenter. He used to makeroofs and doors as well as doing his own cultivation work. All of myfathers four brothers lived with us. My jetha [fathers elder brother] andkaka [fathers younger brother] were both bagal [cowherd] in two differentrajashouses. At that time my uncles son and I were the only children in

34 This contrast could be read as one between brick-kiln and rice production migration. However,

Bahadurer-ma refers to both.35 Most of these are of mud, though there are also a few brick-built houses.


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36

The hungriest season of mid-August to mid-October.37 Mid-February to mid-March.

the family and living was not difficult. But as my fathers brothers marriedand had children our living conditions deteriorated. They improved againwhen we separated from my uncles and each brother started their owncultivation.

Before separation we grew much maize on our homestead land duringBhadra-Asvin.36 We used to give it as loans to other people of our casteand, in return, after the paddy harvest, they would repay the same quantityin rice. That was profitable and we didnt have to eat corn instead of rice.We hired in wage workers for our main cultivation tasks as there werefewer household members then. This was less profitable and when thefamily separated, both the agricultural and homestead land was divided upand my father and uncles managed their own cultivation. We still cultivateour part of the homestead land, but eat the maize now instead of givingloans.

Soma has two younger brothers and two younger sisters.

When I was 5 or 6 years old I went to the local village primary school fora few days. But my fathers brothers were not happy with that. Yourfather cannot even earn five paisa and you want to go to school! So Istopped going and started looking after our buffalo. I did that work formany years. My brothers are educated though. They have studied to highschool level. The elder of my brothers has passed class eight. I am nowurging my sisters son to continue his studies. I will bear the cost myself.

My own marriage happened before I had grown up, before the family

separated. Although I was healthy and stout, my menstruation only startedafter my marriage. But my husband was not good. He never looked afterme properly. When I stayed there my father had to give me money, some-times Rs 200300 per month. My husband was useless. He couldnt doagricultural or any other work. He didnt have much land either. So I cameback. My marriage took place in one Falgun37 and I came back in the next.I had no relation with anyone. I worked locally and then started migratingout for work [the following year]. After four to five years I got marriedagain. However, [my second husband] refused to keep me with him. Hehad been married before and this was his practice. For the second marriagemy father had given me some expensive utensils. When the marriage endedI brought them back. My father said Since you are not going to marryagain but are still young, you had better have the operation [sterilization].Only my parents knew about my operation. I started off in the morningand after the operation I took rest in a Brahmin womans house. Then inthe evening the bus dropped me back at Manasadih. I walked from there[a distance of almost one kilometre].


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I learnt to cook at my in-laws house, and when I came back from myfirst marriage I started doing waged agricultural work. I learnt how totransplant seedlings and bind the bundles of straw. I had never done it athome. I also did earth cutting for large farmers. When I was 1617, I

worked as a coolie on a dam during Baisak-Jaistha.38 Mahadev Karmakar39held the contract for that work. I earned Rs 5060 a day, when the localwage rate was only Rs 12. Wherever they [Ramgopal Majhi and otherlabourers] went they informed me and I accompanied them. Once or twiceI visited the brick field.

After working locally for a year I started going to Barddhaman. Thiswas 1012 years ago. I have been migrating to the same village inBarddhaman ever since. I knew that people from our village went toBarddhaman. I thought that I could eat at others expense [in Barddhaman]and bring back money and rice. To earn was the motivation of my migra-

tion. But not just money and rice, also oil, salt, chilli, turmeric, potato anddal. Before going I had seen and heard about that earning in kind. So Iwished to go. My father said, parbis to ja if you can, you may go, and Ithought, Let me try. The employer in Barddhaman is a big farmer. Eightylabourers work together, so if one cannot do the work properly, that wouldnot be a big problem. I went with an aunt and uncle, which may be whyI was allowed to go so easily. Ramgopal was a labourer too then. No onefrom our side [of the village] was migrating then, but by the time Ramgopalbecame a sardar, people from our side had also started going.

When I first went, it was Baishak.40 We reached Barddhaman quickly,

by 3 pm. I was not very worried. I thought, It is only agricultural work.I can do that. In the beginning the work and the fields were unknown tome, so we followed the sardar. But now the employer puts me in charge ofwork: Take this many labourers and finish cutting paddy for that field.Now I know my way around. Those who are new follow me. Nothingelse has changed in my work.

When I first returned from Barddhaman, I bought three blouses and asaya (petticoat). Two blouses were for my mother and sister and one sayaand blouse I kept for myself. Later I also brought wool from Barddhaman.At Barddhaman bus stand there is a large rest room. We keep our luggagethere and take turns to do our shopping. Now we come back by train,walking to Barddhaman from the village which is another type of joy.

To my eyes nothing has changed [there]. The duration of work in dif-ferent seasons is the same.41 Working hours have decreased a little, because

38 Mid-April to mid-June.39 See the testimony which follows.40 Mid-April to mid-May.41 Other data from the wider project suggested that length of the working day varied according tothe number of hours of sunlight, which was greatest at the summer rice harvest and least at themonsoonal rice harvest. For those working on a piece rate, common in the summer harvest when

employers feared that storms would destroy the crop if it was standing in the field too long, workinghours were even longer, in one case as much as twenty hours per day.


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now the employer has given us responsibility for completing work, both atharvest and transplanting. So, if we manage to finish that work earlier, wecan get off earlier. Even if I get work locally,I prefer to go to Barddhaman,both because the wage is higher and because we also get rice, vegetables,

oil, salt and dal. It is simply more profitable to go to Barddhaman. We cansave both money and rice by working there. If I hear some people aregoing, my mind will be restless to go there too. I will think to myself,how can I arrange to go with them? Why are they not asking me to gowith them? In my opinion it is good to go to Barddhaman, at least it isbetter than working locally. If we work locally we just earn and eat, wecant save anything. Only in Barddhaman are we eating and saving at thesame time. On the way to Barddhaman we never experience anything bad.No harassment or accidents, nothing. If there are mosquitoes in Barddhaman[its not a problem since] we have bought nets for Rs 100. We are earning

money, so that is not a big problem for us.I keep some of my earnings (Rs 100200) with me for buying gifts for

my nephew and sister. The rest of the money I give to my father. I amnow responsible for everything in our household. I look after the moneyand spend it, whether it be for our agriculture, or household expenditure,or relatives or medicine. My father put me in charge. I have become likethe elder son of the family because my brother is suffering from a long termstomach illness. He cannot do any hard work for the time being. If he iswell for a few days, he falls sick again shortly afterwards. Before this illnesshe also worked with me locally and in Barddhaman. He has suffered a lot.

For the last 12 years I have been in Bajnagarh, and I have been going toBamunia [a village in Barddhaman] continuously for the same period oftime. The money we earn we save; only if we dont get any local work orthere is crisis of food do we spend it. From that money we have boughtone bigha [a third of an acre] of land, and have taken three pieces of landfrom different persons on mortgage, in exchange of Rs 1200 for each piece.

As long as my health remains as fit as it is now, I shall continue to go toBarddhaman. Ramgopal and his wife have just gone to collect money fromBamunia. They will also fix a date, and I will go without finishing our owncultivation if necessary. My father will make a separate house for me andgive me a piece of land. [Although I am a single woman] I never feelinsecure about that. I know my father will arrange everything for me.Because of migration our land-holding has increased now. So in our fam-ily, migration is not only for survival, it is a source of extra income.

Discussion

Soma Mahato has spent her life doing hard manual work for others for a wage.Alongside a process of becoming a regular migrant wage worker for rice trans-planting and harvesting a total of four seasons per year in Barddhaman, Somahas become increasingly relied on by the father and brother she lives with to


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42

Even now, most of Somas remittances are handed over to her father: a demonstrative, if alsomostly symbolic, gesture towards his authority.

organize the household economy and to bring in cash income. However, fromthe start, the kind payments of rice, and especially the accompaniments, attractedher to the Barddhaman work.

Somas story can be read as one of emancipation as a woman in terms of her

move away from difficult marriages towards effectively running household af-fairs in her natal village. When she first migrated she required her fathers per-mission and was only allowed to go because she was accompanied by relatives.42

Migration has been central to her small-scale but steady accumulation of wealthfor the household, some of which she expects to inherit. It has also enabled herto purchase goods on the journey home, including the blouse and petticoat,which are signs of upward mobility for many women. She has a very positiveview of migration, clearly indicating, moreover, that it was and continues to beher choice. The meaning of migration for Soma contrasts with that for manyother migrant women in the locality, who are obligated to go by (and often go

instead of ) their husbands.Soma even describes walking to the train station from the destination village

as a joy, despite the problems of carrying rice, cooking utensils, etc. It is likelythat her love affair with Ramgopal contributes to the joy she experiences inmigration. If Soma Mahato is on a path to emancipation, it is not one which shecurrently plans to lead away from doing migrant work. In Barddhaman, follow-ing repeated migration to the same village, and perhaps also because of her closeassociation with Ramgopal, the employer has given her a leadership role, whichshe values in itself. In Barddhaman, she is also able to be more intimate withRamgopal, whose wife does not usually migrate.

In Somas narrative, the rajas fade into the background. Her uncles wereemployed by them and as a child this was an important source of income.Consistent with Somas narrative regarding migration to Barddhaman, she doesnot see being a wage worker in itself as demeaning. Soma Mahato is proud ofbeing able to do agricultural tasks competently. Indeed, she speaks positively oflife at home once they stopped hiring in workers and managed their own cultiva-tion. This may have to do with Mahatos sense of themselves as cultivators. Forexample, the uselessness of her first husband is associated with his inability todo agricultural work and his lack of agricultural land. However, it also seems torun against the grain of the idea that controlling others labour is necessarilystatus enhancing.

Mahadev Karmakar

Mahadev Karmakar lives in the same hamlet of Bajnagarh as Soma, althoughhe too has spent long periods living elsewhere, in his case in his mothers villageof birth. He is now fifty, with five sons by his first wife and a daughter by his


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second. They are Karmakar, known as blacksmiths because of their caste occu-pation. Through Mahadevs life, he has practised several occupations, includingbagal (cowherd), owner-cultivator and agricultural wage worker. Seasonal mi-gration was something he (and some other members of his family) did in the past

for several consecutive years and has now given up. Mahadev now works asa munish (regular manual worker) for one of the raja. His wife and second soncontinue to migrate seasonally.

When I returned to the village [from my maternal grandmothers house]I was a grown man, and none of the villagers recognized me. I came backand [my wife and I] made our own house and started living here. OneRajput boy was very helpful to me. Now he is at Adra colony because hehas been attacked by leprosy. He helped me in many ways. We collectedwood for fuel and for making houses. Having only rice with us, he worked

for his meals. He has done more for me than my own father.One year after returning to Bajnagarh,43 I started going to pub. I lastwent thirteen or fourteen years ago. By then I had been going to pubcontinuously for nine years. I first went after having

changing meaning eat to earn

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