Title:
Tensions in the Life of Tenant Farmers in Rural South India
A small mixed-methods
research project led by Wendy Olsen under the Global Poverty Research Group.
Oct 2006 – April 2007
Research Question: What
are the variations in the mixture of choice and constraint factors that are
felt to influence people’s decisions about their work, occupational status, and
land management, among the people in rural Andhra Pradesh villages who are
renting in land?
Background: In India a shrinking but still substantial
number of rural people rent land (Olsen, 2006 forthcoming). As tenants, their families divide their time
between unpaid domestic work, tenancy work, other informal sector work and paid
work. Young people also have to decide
whether to stay in formal education or to exit schooling in order to work more
hours. Poverty influences many of these people, although not all tenants are
poor. Approximately 15% of rural people
are in tenant households, and 8% of the land is rented at any one time (1999 national
data). A recent policy shift establishes Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes for
200 districts (later to be rolled out to all rural districts), but this change
has not taken into account alternative forms of employment including tenancy as
a potential source of income for poor people.
Arguments among specialists (e.g. Agarwal, 2003; Jackson, 2003) suggest
that women may be a target group deserving to be encouraged to grow crops on
rented land, and this debate will be competing with the Rural Employment
Guarantee Scheme discussions over the next 5 years in India. Other countries with large rural sectors will
be watching to see which policy (labour guarantee, or encouragement to increase
access to land) is more effective in the Indian test case.
Decisions made by
tenants are bound to reflect a mixture of background factors. A realist model of the causal factors would
note the contextual factors, major mechanisms (including choices) and the
outcomes that result. This project is not about choosing to rent land, but
rather about a variety of other choices that arise in the context of doing
farming on the land. Some respondents
will own a little land, whilst others will be landless. The selection of respondents will be aimed at
maximizing contrast between them – jobless vs. employed; male vs. female; old
vs. young – whilst also sticking to the original focus.
Theoretical models of
decisionmaking for such people are of three main types. In economics the models
tend to portray ideal-typical households with idealized people in them, and
then to fit survey data to these models.
The new home economics is a typical approach used in economics. In political economy the models are more
class-based and broad-brush, and tend to assume that the people of one social
class act in ways consistent with the motives and interests of that class. It is important, in political economy models,
to recognize the structural constraints that exist for people in the poorer
social classes. Already we can see in
this literature a diversity ranging from the methodological individualist to
the collectivist. A third set of models
promoted by some feminists see the household’s outcomes as a result of
interpersonal bargaining.
Innovative Methodology Proposed: These models are not meant to be mutually exclusive, since they may all
really apply in a given situation. In
the present research however a more retroductive question is being asked: what are the mental models that people use
when they actually make decisions? How
do these cognitive or habitual approaches vary from person to person; are there
patterns or types or styles? Do people’s
practices reflect their habitus and
practical habits, as Bourdieu would suggest (Bourdieu, 1999; Bourdieu and Nice
apply this framework to poverty in France), or is there a point where conscious
diversion from habit takes over? These
sorts of retroductive questions were asked by Margaret Archer in a qualitative
realist study of 20 British respondents (2003; see also Archer, 2000). Archer depicts the respondents as falling
into 3 ideal types. These range from the
communicative reflexive people to the meta-reflexive people, and huge
personality differences were summarized through archer’s use of ideal types. Her research challenges others to ask whether
there is any cross-cultural applicability of the notion of having a small set
of major types of people. Archer’s work
deals mainly with work and occupational choice but can be applied in the rural
tenancy setting, too. In India, the
tenant often combines working on rented land with several other occupations,
mostly informal but also including paid casual labour or formal salaried
employment.
A debate about reverse
tenancy notes the existence of well-off tenants in India who are not poor and
do not do casual paid labour. A
background paper for this research will describe the frequency of tenancy among
each quintile of India’s population. (See
Olsen, 1996 and 2004, for further background.)
More importantly, research on work outcomes (ie decisions) has shown
that poverty is a major factor among others that appear to influence the
work—self-employed, domestic work, or paid labour – that people do (Olsen 2005;
Olsen and Mehta, mimeos, 2005).
By looking at the work
outcomes and asking ‘why and how do these outcomes emerge’, I want to look into
the processes that lead to the work outcomes.
Retroduction is used to ask ‘why and how have these observed data come
about’ (Danermark, 2001; Olsen, 2004). Retroducing
from the secondary data will require qualitative data, and a small scope is
planned for this initial foray. 35
interviews covering a range of types of people, often in the same household
(see methods below) will be transcribed and analysed in detail. Using
a translator and sub-contractor with substantial research experience in Telugu
language, I will ask these sorts of questions:
Were there any doubts about decisions that were made about the renting
of land?
How and when was the crop choice made last time, for putting crops on
the tenanted land?
Basically why do you rent land?
(or why do you not want to, if you have doubts about renting it?)
Do you have discussions about the use of the water on the rented
land? With whom; what issues arise? What is your view about it?
Etc. (see appendix 1 containing
the first draft of the interview plan)
It is through the lens
of these explicit discussions that we can hope to gain insight into what is
actually, really, but often privately happening in families when their work
strategies are decided upon.
Literature Review (in Brief)
In the three models
mentioned earlier, considerable assumptions are made about people working in
their own best interest and how this interacts with the nuclear or joint
household’s best interests. Most models
don’t explore the detail of how the actual decisions emerge. In this study, I want to stress the
complexity of the routes to a given outcome (Byrne, 2002 and 2004). More than one causal mechanism can lead to
the same outcome. Secondly I would urge
that gender differences in interests within a household can lead to conflict
and tension. The individual’s interest
would be seen (by an outsider) as different from the household’s best interest,
and people inside have to navigate these conflicting interests as best they
can. Longterm planning enters indirectly
into the causal framing of a current (apparently short-term decision). Gender difference in the dowry and exogamy
behaviour, with women likely to leave home for marriage, creates a difference
in the factors shaping girls’ formal schooling and hence their work
patterns. A full study of occupational
choice isn’t feasible here, but a review of the literature on occupational
choice of young people in India will be conducted.
Methodology
The research begins
with its literature review and the analysis of secondary data (NSS 55th
round) on tenants’ declared range of work patterns. These data are notoriously inaccurate and
badly recorded in the area of tenancy itself.
Labour patterns of those declaring tenancy will not give an accurate
picture because there are many tenants who probably have not given accurate
records of their land use to the NSS interviewers. Nevertheless where tenancy is recorded, it is likely to be associated
with valid records of the labour use of real tenants. In causal terms the NSS data are instances,
and can instantiate arguments about the causal mechanisms leading to tenants
doing paid, informal, domestic or no work.
What we are missing is the full range of such cases, since there is very
likely to be underreporting.
Then using realist
assumptions the research moves into a qualitative stage. 35 interviews are planned to occur in Telugu
and to be recorded. Selection of respondents from an existing
village survey in which 1994-95 household income details were recorded gives a
detailed background from which to work in framing the questions. (It also increases rapport and trust, since
there were no negative consequences of being in the 1994-5 survey.) After translating each interview into English,
an analysis of discourses of choice will be conducted.
The village venue is
two contiguous villages of Ramasamudram Taluk of Chittoor District, southern
Andhra Pradesh, India. These villages
were surveyed previously, and in each village 60 households were selected randomly
for 1994-1996 research which used both interviews and a questionnaire survey
(ESRC data archive study number 3927). From
these 120 households there were at that time 35 tenant households. Of these, about half held some land of their
own. Many were poor, although not as
poor as some landless non-tenant families.
In these villages, the
sampling will include 4 women from households that own some land (besides the
house plot) and who do paid labour; 4 women from households that own some land
but who do not do paid labour; 4
women from households that are landless, who do paid labour; and 4 women from
households that are landless, and who do not
do paid labour (e.g. shopkeepers).
Furthermore 4 men of each group will be interviewed. A wide range of ages 14-50 will be included
amongst these people. A further 3
interviews will be with interested parties who want to tell their stories to
the researchers.
This quota sampling
method creates great contrasts between respondents. Some can come from the same household
however, and couples may, if they wish, be interviewed together. A revisit to each household to check on the
data and to augment the initial interview is planned, subject to funds (Hollway
and Jefferson, 2000). Some tenants are
not at all poor, and others are very poor, so the study will lead to
commentaries on how poverty appears to be affecting people (and whether they
mention that poverty affects them). This
case study illustrates the co-incidence of ‘causes’ and ‘reasons’ as mechanisms. Furthermore, baseline data gives an idea of
the ‘liabilities’ and ‘capabilities’ that are enabled by the assets held by
each household or each person. Agarwal
would argue that a person’s fallback position affects their bargaining
position, but this is quite hard to measure and we are not trying to fit the
data into a bargaining model at this time.
After the interviews
are translated into English they will be typed, with some words being typed in
transliterated Telugu (e.g. meemu cheetu kooruku tiisukonaamu, we took the land
as sharecropping, or ee uuruloo manamu
svantabhoomi kaadu. Bhoomi
tiisukoodaniiki guttagaa tiisukoovatsee.
In this hamlet, no one has land.
To get land you have to pay cash rents.) We anticipate having about 700 pages of text
(35 x 20 pages) which will be put into NVIVO as a series of documents. Both individuals and households will be
annotated as ‘cases’ in this data.
Analysing the data
will take two procedures iteratively.
Firstly, discourse analysis will be conducted to see what patterns of
discourse are dominant in this context (and hence, apparently, what are the rules
and norms of discourse about the topics in the interview plan). Assumptions made about discourse are
described by Olsen (in Olsen, 2006, in the chapter in a volume edited by
Carling). Since the data are oral
products of a remote village population it is unlikely that these discourses
can be compared with other primary sources, but we will try. (E.g. oral history books from Telangana can
be compared; interviews from my previous research will be compared with
these.) Secondly, the specific and
rather Western discourse of choice vs. constraint, found in the three models
that were described in the review of literature, will be explored by looking
for parallels, analogies, metaphors and similarities in the interview
texts. In other words we will test the
hypothesis that a choice discourse is present among the tenants of this part of
rural India.
Having run this test
once, we then iterate back to discourse analysis to see if a choice-centred
discourse per se can be discerned.
The same process, run once again, allows us to look for evidence of constraints
as described by Marxist writers (e.g. Athreya, 1990; Bhaduri, 1983) or as
described by feminists (Folbre, 1995; Swaminathan, 2002).
The central hypothesis
of the research design is that these discourses can be co-present in the
decisions that are made. Processes of
decision making may use habitual discourses and habits of work so that without
mentioning choice, there is nevertheless a sense of freedom whilst strategic
decisions are made. Furthermore,
however, choice is made only in conditions set by history and context, e.g.
family history; dowry and the assets owned.
As a researcher I cede much ground to both the choice school and the
constraints schools, but I want to find out which decisions reflect either one
or both. In Fairclough’s terms, we can
expect to find intertextuality. However
we want to explore the overtones and negative/positive connotations that are
associated with each co-incidence of choice/constraint. Are people angry about constraints that bind
them? Which ones, and who feels that
way?
A diagram helps
illustrate the hypothesis that I’ll be exploring:
By looking at the
process of decision making, as described retrospectively, it will be possible
to reorganize the evidence into a fresh set of cases. This set of cases is the incidents, each with
its characteristics. It is useful for
more than one respondent to talk about a certain incident or type of
incident. A series of incidents can be
described and coded with attributes which will indicate the extent of the
presence of a choice discourse, constraint discourse, or bargaining
situation/discourse. Considerable
revision of this framework of analysis is expected since the project
deliberately has a partially inductive mode of reasoning.
Finally to present the
findings a summary will place the cases into contrastive configurations. For instance, there may emerge three types of
people (as Archer described), or there may emerge gendered moral rationalities
(as Duncan and Edwards described, again for the British case, 1999). They may also (or separately) emerge several
types of incidents: those which typically
occur within a sense of free choice; those which typically are associated with
feelings of unfreedom, coercive situations, or various constraints. Furthermore some situations may be associated
with both in the sense that the constraints may be considered desirable prior
decisions of the same person or household.
The project thus
explores not only discourses in use, as presented in the interview’s rather
formal setting. It also explores the
notion of the rural person as an agent versus the household as a (metaphorical)
decisionmaker. Economists routinely
anthropomorphise the household, but this research tries to clarify the nature
of a household strategy as an emergent property based upon the individual
agency and synergistic character of discussions and behaviour within the
family.[1] In this way the research is consistent with
institutionalism (Hodgson, 2005). Because of this agency focus, the bargaining
possibilities will also be taken into account and we will look out for evidence
of conflict and how it is resolves.
Conflict both within and between households is likely to arise in some
cases. Existing interviews conducted in
1995 showed the rural people to be willing to expose their disagreements over a
number of issues.
The role of caste,
status expectations, stereotypes, obligations, traditions, rituals and duties
will be allowed for.
The interviews are
grounded on previous ethnographic work by both Olsen and the Indian
sub-contractor (likely to be Davuluri. Venkateswarlu; see Dacorta and
Venkateswarlu, 1999, and Venkateswarlu and Dacorta, 2001). The results will
have implications for institutional economics (Hodgson, 2005) in the specific
sense that the evolution of labour-market and land-market institutions rests
upon a foundation of human agency. This
project will help to describe how human
agents interact with each other, what assumptions they make, and what they
perceive to be problematic in the household-level strategies that result from
their habitus.
Using NVIVO a summary
diagram can be created for each main finding.
Ethical Issues: It is
intended that the interviews would be anonymised and put into the ESRC Data
Archive. Verbal consent will be obtained
for this use of the data, and for writing up the results by quoting respondents
using pseudonyms. Local help will be
obtained for setting up the pseudonyms.
The qualitative data will be linked by ID number to existing survey data
(ESRC Study Number 3927).
Appendix 2 estimates
the time costs of doing this research project.
Appendix 1
Were there any doubts
about decisions that were made about the renting of land?
How and when was the
crop choice made last time, for putting crops on the tenanted land?
Basically why do you
rent land? (or why do you not want to,
if you have doubts about renting it?)
Do you have
discussions about the use of the water on the rented land? With whom; what issues arise? What is your view about it?
What payment is made
for the water and fertilizer for the rented land? Who decides?
Comment please
In your household do
you have discussions about who goes out to work and when? Describe these
Is anyone doing
regular unpaid work for the landlord, and please describe the situation.
Why do they do this
work?
Does anyone do
irregular work, just on festival days, or otherwise, for the landlord?
Which landlord, and
why?
Do you also do this
for other employers? Who does? Why?
Think of a situation
when someone wanted to do kuulie [casual paid] work, and there was a
disagreement about it. Tell me about
that.
Think of a situation
where it is routine to do kuulie work.
Tell us who decides about that.
Describe an argument
someone had about the payment for either kuulie work, or the land rental share
or ‘gutta’ rate.
Why? Why?
Who? Where? How was it resolved?
Describe another
please.
If you are doing some
small informal work, please describe who does it and when.
Who decides when to do
it; {if difficult} when did you start doing it?
What discussion was held about deciding to do it?
Did you recently drop
any other activity? Why? Who decided?
Explain how that change happened.
Etc. prompting till some disagreements are
described, and some household-level agreements are described.
Finally:
What is the most
outstanding legal case you can think of?
-- especially in your family if any.
Was there ever a threat of a legal case in your family? Who promoted the idea of a legal case, and
what happened? What did
wife/husband/parents think of the idea.
Discuss.
When did your family
last have a quarrel. What was it
about. Tell us who took what position.
When did you decide to
have a child in this family leave school [the most recent departure from school
– it could be respondent her/himself]. Who took what position in making this
decision? Was there any disagreement,
and who said what?
Describe the view of
the child about leaving school at that age.
(What age? To do what? Is the child available to comment?) Do your children work? Why?
Why not? Doing what? Explain the pros and cons of having them do
specific kinds of work.
End.
Appendix 2:
Time Costs of the Work
Setting up interviews
by relocating respondents from the 1994-5 work:
5 days full-time equivalent.
Each interview: 1 hour plus preparation, 2 hours total.
35 interviews == 70
hours.
Total days for 35
interviews: 15 days full-time
equivalent.
Brief introductory
questionnaire for each household’s background details, landholding, and
opinions about different employment relations, 40 questionnaires X 1 hour = 40
hours. (Neff with two assistants Tejo and Actawallah)
Coding in Excel and
putting into SPSS and then into NVIVO as case attributes, 3 hours (Olsen).
Transcription into
English: handwritten version, 5 hours
per interview, 175 hours == 21 days.
Creating the typed
version, 5 hours per interview, 20 pages per interview, 175 hours === 21 days.
NVIVO software – site license for NVIVO 2 at
Coding 700 pages of text in NVIVO, each page about 5 codes plus some
attributes on cases which are put into sets of three types, 20 hours of coding
work == 3 days.
Analytical work and iconic modeling, 3 days.
Writing – minimum of 3 weeks.
Total work time: researcher 11 days (plus 3 weeks writing).
Sub-contractor 70 hours, which is 15 days
full-time equivalent.
Typist and translator 42 days in total.
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