The Chaudhary’s Theory Of Land And Mobility

The first of three proposed volumes spanning Charan Singh’s long and chequered political career (1937-87), this book focuses on his years in the Congress. It locates him within the post-independence period when many historic decisions with long-term import for India’s development were taken. Equally interesting is the politics of the period—the relative place of agriculture and industry, corruption, communal politics, and the relationship between national and state politics. Against this backdrop, Singh stands out as a man of integrity, with reasoned ideas on development.

Singh has been deified, but mainly to claim his legacy. Paul Brass describes him as a “flawed” leader who achieved much, but less than he hoped for. This was partly because of his relentless drive for power and his contempt for most of his associates and rivals. Politically ambitious, he held clear views on most aspects of state policy. Which raises the question: how does one pursue both power and policy in a “rough and tumble” representative system? It’s a question that still hasn’t gone away.

Divided into six parts, the book covers Singh’s personal life, ideas and career, blurring the line between biography and the political history of north India. What has resonance today are three interrelated aspects revealing Singh’s vision and legacy. Charan Singh was an active participant in the post-independence debate on industry versus agriculture. Drawing inspiration from Nehru’s main rival, Sardar Patel, he presented through his writings an original and sophisticated alternative development strategy to the Nehruvian strategy of heavy industry. He stood for an agrarian system based on small but viable, independent peasant proprietors, and medium and small industry. This was well portrayed in his book, Joint Farming X-Rayed, written in 1959 in opposition to the Nagpur Resolution of the Congress to introduce large-scale cooperative farming.

Consequently, as Brass argues, Charan Singh emerged as the spokesman for the middle farmer and individual ownership. However, scholars have argued that sheltering under the term “kisan”, Singh upheld the interests of the kulak class and created a successful rich-farmer party, the BKD, that challenged the Congress in UP. Others have held that Singh did not offer anything to the marginal or landless peasant. In fact, the mobilisation of the prosperous peasants as a class was reinforced by their simultaneous effective mobilisation by Singh—himself a Jat leader—as a backward caste. This has contributed to a conflictual political legacy in UP: the elite castes remain influential, but while opposing them, both the backward and lower castes themselves are upwardly mobile, competing for land, jobs and reservations.

Charan Singh took advantage of his position as a Congress minister to uphold the interests of prosperous farmers. As leader of the agriculturist faction in opposition to C.B. Gupta (who stood for urban and industrial interests), he made repeated threats to resign on grounds of principles—but usually when assigned a portfolio unrelated to agriculture. In the years under review, he did not have the following that would allow him to resign, but he did six years later. The volume provides fascinating details about the inner working and weaknesses of the Congress party/government. Despite corruption, casteism, electoral malpractices and collusions with criminals, basic values were more respected then.

Singh’s ideas and the period in which he worked are worth revisiting. Many disturbing features in our democracy have continued and flourished: factionalism, corruption, communalism and criminalisation of politics. More fundamentally, with farmland being sought for corporates, the question of agriculture vs industry has resurfaced with India’s globalising economy. A development strategy based upon small farms in the face of pressure for commercial/contract farming and industrialisation seems impossible. This is also because agrarian movements which drove mass politics in the Hindi heartlands have lost force. It’s clear that both a cleaning up of politics and a new equation between agriculture and industry is required.

(Sudha Pai is a professor of political studies and author of seven books on politics in north India)