“Luddite” is a word used with a disparaging connotation to brand people as anti-technology. In his book Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, the economist Yanis Varoufakis writes that the Luddites, workers who protested against the loss of their jobs to the new steam-powered looms by destroying the machines in 19th century England, are among history’s more misunderstood protagonists. He posits that ‘their quarrel was not with the machines themselves…they were opposed to the fact that so few owned the machines. It was the social arrangement, not the technology they objected to.’
Take the skilled handloom weavers of the storied Kanjeevaram silk sarees. India’s quest to become a modern market economy is forcing them to quit a financially unviable occupation in search of jobs that do not require the application of their craft, but help them lead slightly better lives nonetheless. They did not destroy the power looms that outcompete them by cranking out cheap fabric at scale; they respect the “rational” decisions of the consumers who won’t be able to differentiate between a hand-woven cloth and a machine-made one. They are only disillusioned by a social order that is making it increasingly impossible to entertain any hopes of passing on knowledge accumulated over centuries to the next generation.
Aparna Karthikeyan
Nine Rupees an Hour: Disappearing Livelihoods of Tamil Nadu
Context (October 2019)
The cruel socio-economic arrangement that devalues the skills of some, while disproportionately rewarding the skills of others is unsparingly scrutinised and laid bare in Aparna Karthikeyan’s diligently researched and faithfully written book Nine Rupees an Hour: Disappearing Livelihoods of Tamil Nadu. The book is not a polemical tract though. It contains illuminating and moving narratives about a wide array of extraordinary everyday people who lead spirited lives, even as they linger on to their vanishing livelihoods. The author has brought to bear her excellent story-telling ability to ask a searching question: what kind of society allows its most creative craftspeople to wither away in the name of “creative destruction”?
There are ten different stories in the book about ten diverse but closely linked livelihoods, and each one is a gem. At one level, these micro-narratives coalesce into a carefully painted macro picture of rural Tamil Nadu. But at its core, the book is a reliable register of the ‘dreams and defeats, triumphs and tears’ (p. xi) of people who shoulder the burden of doing physically demanding and economically unrewarding skilled work. More often than not, such work is yoked to caste, and therefore it carries social stigma. This is best illustrated in the story about the palm-tree climbers. The prevailing misconception that palm-tree climbers continue to engage in tapping toddy, which is banned in the state of Tamil Nadu, makes them face humiliation in institutional settings such as banks, schools and hospitals.
The author tells the story of the farm economy, which has suffered both societal and policy neglect for decades, through the lives of three women farmers: Podhumani, Chandra and Poovayi. By doing so, she upends the conventional understanding that a farmer is almost always a male: “Women in India own around 13 per cent of farmland and do over 70 per cent of the agricultural work…They work twelve to thirteen hours more per week than men in the developing countries of Africa, Asia and the Pacific; yet, their contributions are often ‘invisible’ and unpaid’” (p. 19). Implicit in this gender bias in our understanding is an economic reasoning that is ridiculously circular: we measure what we value and we value what we measure. Both farm and family run on the energies of women who labour all day.
The story of Soundaram Ramasamy, the only woman bull-keeper in the Kangayam region near Coimbatore, is not only narrated engagingly, but also offers the readers a peek into the workings of the larger cattle economy. In fact, each story is rooted in the specific local context, and is situated within the wider national context in such a way that one gets the taste of a layered political economy critique of our idea of “development”. With the arrival of the Green Revolution, the role of cows and bulls in the farm economy diminished, and the White Revolution accelerated the replacement of indigenous breeds of cattle with exotic breeds, thanks to the rapidly increasing market demand for milk and milk products. The negative fallout of the twin blows to the cattle economy has now been aggravated by the extremely ill-advised and insidious bans on cow slaughter. As a result of these conscious policy decisions, we are staring at a triple crisis – of farm, of biodiversity and of environmental sustainability.
When it comes to the stories of the makers of nadaswaram and sickles, women weavers of the Pathamadai mats (who earn just nine rupees an hour) and performers of folk art forms, what is striking is the meticulous detail with which the author describes the complexity and arduous labour that inform their craft. These women and men take immense pride in their vocation, but their aspirational children who have seen their parents suffer a great deal to make ends meet seek gouravam (pride) in landing white-collar jobs in cities. They are too aware of the ugliness of the rural caste order to romanticise the caste labour their parents were forced into at a very young age. Migrating to urban centres has been a “great escape” for many from the clutches of feudalism in Tamil Nadu, which happens to be the most urbanised state in India.
The inferior treatment meted out to the craftspeople and folk artistes stems from a dogmatic notion of culture that is coloured by caste and class prejudice. Hanne M. de Bruin, a Dutch national who did her PhD on kattaikkuttu, and is married to P. Rajagopal, a chief exponent of the art form, asks the author: “Why are we not invited to theatre festivals in the city? To Chennai’s December music season? Why are we paid a pittance, compared to a classical musician, who might earn ten times more than what we do?” (p. 220). Even in the case of classical art forms, whether one makes it big depends largely on ‘which family you’re born in, whether you have a support system’ (p. 130), says Nrithya Pillai, Chennai-based Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher. Sakthivel, the nadaswaram maker from Narasingampettai, rues that while the players of the instrument have received awards and enjoy superior lifestyles, there has not been any significant improvement in the lives of its makers. The relationship between the makers and players of musical instruments is a highly unequal one, with the players always enjoying the upper hand. Carnatic music vocalist and author T.M. Krishna has chronicled the dynamics of such relationships in his recent book Sebastian & Sons: A Brief History of Mrdangam Makers.
Aparna Karthikeyan. Photo: Facebook
Some of the livelihoods that feature in the book would have found a place in the framework of constructive village work that was propounded by Gandhian economic thinkers like J.C. Kumarappa. They wanted to build a non-violent and just social order predicated on decentralised village republics. What was remarkable about Gandhian economic thinking was its unwavering attention to the moral, material and ecological consequences of economic actions. It eschewed both possessive individualism and coerced collectivism.
To borrow a phrase from Rajni Bakshi, the “civilizational Gandhi” who lived and died for satya and ahimsa, knew violence was inherent in a system that subordinated human beings to machinery, killing creativity and individual autonomy. For a very long time, scholars have attempted to draw attention to the manifestations of Gandhi’s idea of ahimsa in his economic vision. Ethics and economics are inseparable in that vision.
Farmers, artisans and petty producers who have been dispossessed in both stock and flow terms in a “post-reform” India are being relegated to the sidelines as the country chugs along to become a “modern” capitalist economy. The author appeals to the collective conscience of her readers by asking them a trenchant question: “Forced to sell their agricultural land, compelled to migrate to overcrowded cities, having little choice but to join the lower rungs of the labour market, heavily disadvantaged by a lack of formal education, isn’t this too, a violence?” (p. xvii). We would do well to remember that capitalist transitions across the world have been characterised by many forms of coercion and violence. The human cost of such a transition when it happens on a subcontinental scale is simply unimaginable.
The institutions that underpin any society are products of social engineering; they are not natural or inevitable. We can create spaces where traditional livelihoods thrive without the stigma of caste attached to them. We can ensure that farmers and weavers receive marketing support and remunerative prices for their output. We can build an environment where folk art forms compete with classical art forms on an equal footing. Things can be different, because they have been.
Raghunath Nageswaran has an M.A. in Economics from the University of Madras, India. His principal area of research interest is the political economy and economic history of post-independence India. He is a freelance writer and can be contacted at raghind@gmail.com.
