Concluding Discussion
The three
cases whose data extracts are presented here illustrate both individual and
collective agency.
Bangarappa has
family connections which, although limited, have recently helped him to get a
cow and thus to have regular work. Later, this cow will produce milk to
generate a regular income. Otherwise, Bangarappa is very poor and socially
excluded. His work watching the cow precludes him from doing other forms of
wage labour.
Hydamabee
used considerable personal freedom in choosing a love marriage with a Hindu
man. She engages in reflexive consideration of her varied and autonomous work
relationships.
Eswaramma
(pseudonym) gave a good interview with D. Aktawallah but we are now having
difficulty matching up her household questionnaire with her personal interview
and photo. There are 3 women called
Eswaramma in one small area of Yetavakili village. Revisits showed up only
empty houses due to their long working hours. All 3 Eswarammas are out all day, and so
are all the other adults n their households. By working from 4 pm till 8 pm, we
were able to catch some other people but we didn’t catch up with
Eswaramma so far to sort out the matching of household data and personal
interviews. We think that this is a
photo of the front of the new government
house she and Muniramaiah own – pretty impressive for an off-road village
(dish photo). Her other photos is
in front of her old hut which is still in use.
Another
woman interviewed, Radhamma, acted extremely shy around us, since we are strangers.
Radhamma claims to have very little control over her employment decisions. She
tends to follow norms commonly found in the Dalit community. As a result, her
options seem rather narrow, but she has recently joined a women’s
self-help group and so there are prospects for change in her future.
All four respondents
are very poor, and Bangarappa does not even have electricity. Yet these are all people
from above the ‘lowest’ (poorest and with lowest status) class in
these villages – the kuulies without land. They illustrate the prevalence of
tenancy among kuulie workers as a way of managing the work relationship. It various ways the tenancy arrangement
allows the worker to give some priority to certain work, to work unsupervised,
to take some autonomous decisions, to manage time independently of others on an
ongoing basis, and to earn food instead of money.
These four
people’s efforts to work for a decent wage reflect their impulse to
improve their lives within a context of having very few economic or social
resources compared with others in their area. Their limited access to land - mediated
by the local land tenancy arrangements – is compounded by the ongoing
shortage of water for production of crops.
One can almost imagine them struggling to move upward in the income
distribution, but never really getting very far (compared with their
neighbours).
When fish
are caught and placed on a riverbank, they struggle to get back into the water;
they flap and flip and wriggle.
This may be a suitable metaphor for the efforts made by these
worker-farmers to get better off. Some
succeed, as our photo of a Government House With TV Dish suggests. Others fail, as Bangarappa’s lack of
electricity tends to suggest. Like
fish, too, these workers don’t find it very easy to talk with outsiders
about their work arrangements. (A
famous book about
But the
difference is that, unlike dying fish, these people are living human beings
with schemes and plans and options.
Many mentioned the
A study of
social mobility in these 2 villages is now underway, since panel data on social
class are being developed for the 40 from which these 3 cases are drawn, and
also for another 80 households in the two study villages. The panel data arise from a 1994-5
study, whose sampling frame is being reused at present.
Bangarappa,
Eswaramma, and Hydamabee are thus struggling for a better life in ways that
maintain their self-respect. In
this context, family support, social protection and collective action are
important. Bargaining of
individuals for higher wages occurs in a context of social discussion about
wage differentials. Migration to
other areas for wage labour is an important source of upward movement in wage
demands. Government ‘works
programmes’ are also setting up important events that mark new wage
negotiations and new wage levels.
Full details will be presented at the Conference of the Global Poverty
Research Group, July 2006, in
Web-based
Data Extracts Compiled by Wendy Olsen and Vincent Ortet
January
2007
