That is a question that is both long-pending, as it is also typical.
All over the world, now as well as historically, villages have always been held to be islands of simplicity, even if continuing to be wretched. Except feudal creatures, fattening themselves on the land they inherit or grab, all other villagers seem to be battling to make both ends meet. That is one reason, lured by the fruits thrown up by industrialisation and urbanisation, rural out-migration began in the 19th century, and continues unabated.
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Strong State systems, like the Chinese, seem to have managed it well. Western countries too have managed it, by a combination of mechanisation and labour shortages.
In Afro-Asia, disparagingly known as the Third World, this movement out of the countryside is largely due to uncontrolled misery in villages, unplanned growth of towns, and State systems looking the other way, hoping for the best. And India is no exception to it. In fact, the only planned city post-Independence is Chandigarh, a model of urban peace and horticultural bliss, except that it is an upper middle class habitat, from whose habitat the working class and/rural migrants are firmly excluded. That is they can work there, but not live there.
Universally, almost a fifth of the human race lives in an urbanised envelope. But in different environments. Some in swanky cities, some in hovels and ghettos, some even in drain pipes and on the river and sea beaches. And, naturally, the spatial spread in countries and across continents varies. USA and the Western countries have more than half in cities and towns, and even the rest in villages that look like pools of urban delight. Even in Afro Asia, the spread is uneven. Afghanistan, Yemen, Nepal, Mali, Niger, Somalia et al will have 80% in the villages. While China will have fifty-fifty.
The variety goes on, but the common thread is that lack of job opportunities, low incomes, awful lack of civic amenities, a distressful neglect of healthcare and educational infrastructure drives villages out to seek a better future.
Speaking on a personal note, my great-grandfather left his village in Nadia District of Bengal, to find shelter in Dum Dum, and make trips to Calcutta to teach Bengali to gori MemLog. Having acquired new found comfort, the family never went back. This personal note is added to show rural out-migration in India began two centuries back, and goes on unabated. All of us urbane people had toots in villages going back just four or five generations.
The stark, irrefutable truth is that villages have no future for the poor. Neither rising incomes, nor growing life standard infrastructure.
In a nutshell, life beyond the village world has always seemed an undoubtedly better prospect, no matter if the urban slums are littered with disease and stench. There is at least the lure of the lucre, a daily wage of Rs 200+ being unquestionably superior to the stagnating incomes and regular joblessness of the village.
At last count, the 2011 Census shows, on a national scale, two-thirds of Indians stuck in villages, with a high of 85-90% in the politically important Hindi belt, and a low of 50% or less in upwardly-mobile Kerala, aided no doubt by villagers going out of village/town/even country to earn much more, and send a meaty surplus back home. What is even today is called the money order economy, even though digital transfers have replaced the money order.
The problem is not only about an agriculture growth that seems to have peaked to a plataeu. The problem is not just about rural occupations not diversifying quickly enough to move upwards to a vibrant horticulture or aquaculture. It is also about lack of adequate healthcare. It is also about neglect of rural schooling. It is also about falling standards in rural policing. Equally, it is about the fading away of rural artisan ship and crafts, on account of poor marketing and a non-sustainable incomes/wages matrix.
Verily, rural out-migration is caused by stagnation incomes, complemented by woefully inadequate health and schooling facilities.
VillageNama is deeply concerned about this state of a continuously languishing village society, going down in most sectors.VillageNama will do regular research (both field-based as well as library-substantiated) to highlight this rural world. And to provoke the city-based intellectual as also the policy-makers to think, and think hard.
Alok Sinha,
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A TV news panelist and presently our Chief Contents Officer, spent more than two decades in the rural sector during his 35 years in the IAS. Demo Magazine Article Title
