Dalit farmers may fail to benefit from agricultural sops announced by govt

passed down in terms of higher wages,” Ashwini Deshpande, a professor at the University of Delhi’s School of Economics, said in an email. “On the whole it would be safe to say that, by and large, these policies do not touch agricultural labour.”

Wages for agricultural labourers have not increased in the last four years, according to Himanshu, a professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi. This, even as the Centre and states have introduced policies meant to alleviate farmer distress — loan waivers, crop insurance, and increased MSP, which ensure that farmers make a profit on their produce. “Even if big farmers or medium farmers have access to the minimum support price, it is not necessary that they will pass on that benefit to agricultural labourers,” Ghosh said.

“In fact, there is no such study which shows that agricultural labourers are going to be affected from an increase in the minimum support price or even from farm loan waivers.”

Landlessness among Dalits has deep historical roots.

For centuries, Dalits were expressly prohibited from owning land. Even if reforms after Independence have helped level the playing field, economic and social pressures over the last two decades have increased the proportion of landless farmers across all social sectors (Chart 2).

“The land is limited. As the population is increasing, pressure on land is also increasing,” Himanshu said. “It is expected that some increase would happen in the level of agricultural labourers over time.”

Regardless of caste or class, life is generally harder for landless farmers, according to Jayshree Sengupta of the Observer Research Foundation’s Economy and Development Programme.

“There is more incidence of suicides among agricultural labour than farmers/cultivators because they do not have access to any type of formal institutional loans and loan waivers have bypassed them. Around 70% of labourers are in debt,” Sengupta said in an email.