Rural Distress and Uncivil Social Networks in Eastern India: Circular Migration of Orissa-Telangana Brick Kiln Labour

Abstract

Rural distress, especially in Eastern India, has been in focus for various reasons. Apart from being a significant challenge for the existing development model, Eastern India has come to be marked by communal tensions, on the one hand, and radical left political movements, on the other. Analysts have pointed to the interconnection between the nature of the economic relations and the political conditions.

While successive governments and policy frames have long experimented with traditional developmental interventions, the hoped-for outcomes are nowhere to be seen. Governments have been satisfied with their statistics showing decline in absolute poverty levels and relief from appalling conditions of deprivation. However, the local-level social reality within some sub-regions of Eastern India, especially the KBK region (Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput), defies all the claims of the current development model. Here the distress-ridden nature of social reality in the region is borne out even in official statistics.

While officialdom has been in a denial mode regarding its policy failure, it is important to grasp that the rural production systems themselves (and the coordination within them between the labour markets, credit markets, product markets, input markets, etc.) seem to constitute a structural constraint on progress. The social, political and economic power of the beneficiaries of the development mode almost engulfs governance structures. The ‘development process’ has approached the reality of distress in an almost cynical fashion.

The distress-driven migration stream from Balangir in Orissa to Medak and Ranga Reddy districts of Telangana provides a window to gain insights about the present development process. The present paper, while studying this migration, focuses on the conditions in the place of origin. There we find explanations for the chronic reproduction of rural distress and un-free labour relations. These are part of the ‘uncivil’ social networks in conditions of informality and inter-locking of markets. These networks extend beyond the rural economy.