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The key is to not put all eggs in the single basket of state-led programmes and to ensure that other spaces for women’s activism are preserved.

The vibrancy of the Indian women’s movement is acknowledged worldwide. However, its gradual transformation has received much less attention. Over the years, its thrust has moved from serving as the beacon for the nationalist movement to a rights-based civil society movement to a state-led movement for economic empowerment. What does this portend for the future of the Indian women’s movement?

Three phases
“When woman, whom we call abala (weak), become sabala (strong), all those who are helpless will become powerful.” This clarion call by Mahatma Gandhi to the 1936 All India Women’s Conference was the hallmark of a nationalist movement that relied on women to serve as its face. The political history of the Indian women’s movement is written in photographs of wave after wave of women satyagrahis being arrested during the salt satyagraha and the Quit India movement; Mrinal Gore and her women protesters carrying rolling pins and protesting against the price rise; Chipko, one of the earliest ecofeminist movements in the world broadcasting pictures of women clinging to trees to protest logging; and, Nirbhaya, Shaheen Bagh and Sabrimala protests of more recent years. Some were overtly aligned with political parties, others sought to reshape political discourse but were not affiliated with party politics.

However, these images of protest are not the only ones that characterise women’s activism. While public mobilisation is highly visible, the quiet revolution of the 1970s probably did as much to enhance attention to women’s specific needs as street protests. For example, the Self Employed Women’s Association began to unionise women in the informal sector leading the advocacy for reforms in legal and social protection for women workers; feminist advocacy highlighting sex-selective abortion and discrimination in inheritance patterns led to legal reforms; and women’s formal and informal collectives have worked hard to reform and implement laws against sexual harassment in the workforce and in public spaces. Arguably, the greatest success of this mobilisation came when the 73rd Amendment to the Constitution was passed, reserving one-third of seats in panchayat and leadership positions in local bodies for women.

The latest epoch in women’s activism is distinct from the strident politics of protest and quietly organised rights-based movements. The government has invested heavily in building and supporting Self Help Groups (SHGs). The Economic Survey notes that today there are about 1.2 crore SHGs in India, most of which are all-women. These SHGs are typically supported and mentored by Community Resource Persons paid by the state. SHGs function mainly as thrift and credit institutions, where members deposit small amounts of savings per month and can borrow in an emergency. In some cases, they also support entrepreneurship through bank loans.

These different strands of the women’s movement — political movements, grassroots organising for legal and policy reforms, and state-led organisations for economic empowerment — each have addressed various dimensions of women’s lives. The question is, should one be privileged over others?

A glass half-full or half-empty?
Women’s incorporation in the nationalist movement set the stage for the acceptance of women’s leadership in politics. While some of this leadership rested in familial connections, many women leaders of modern India do not owe their positions to fathers or husbands. Most of these leaders focused on pressing issues of the day, which generally did not include women’s empowerment. Nonetheless, their very presence created space for women’s increased participation in electoral politics, setting the stage for grass-roots mobilisation.

Civil society mobilisation around legal and policy reforms directly affecting women’s lives tried hard to remain non-partisan and build a rights-based agenda as a bulwark against persistent patriarchal institutions. However, this right-based agenda ultimately sought to reform state policies and legal institutions. In contrast, and possibly in response, over the past two decades, the state chose its distinct path to mobilising women.

About 12 million SHGs, consisting of 10-15 members each, are organised under the aegis of government programmes in the Indian countryside. They replaced women’s groups under the older programme, Mahila Samakhya, which was explicitly designed to mobilise women and sensitise them about their rights. Evaluation of Mahila Samakhya by researchers from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad noted the programme’s success in mobilising women but highlighted its relative ineffectiveness in enhancing vocational skills and entrepreneurship. This is a deficiency the current generation of the SHG movement, in close connection with the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), seeks to address.

Evaluating the current version of state-sponsored programmes under the NRLM by Imago and 3ie teams paint a mixed picture. Reliance on high-interest loans from moneylenders has declined. In some states, there is a slight increase in incomes (largely men’s wage incomes), often because NRLM participation was layered with MGNREGA. However, there is limited evidence of increased incomes due to entrepreneurship or women’s empowerment within the household. Participation in SHGs was, however, related to increased involvement in gram panchayat meetings, creating a potential for greater political power.

Developing synergies
These diverse phases of the women’s movement in India present an exciting challenge. Does the state’s intrusion in women’s movements weaken civil society-led programmes? Can the state-led movement transform women’s lives by taking economic empowerment programmes to scale? Perhaps the answer lies in the distinction between women’s practical and strategic needs. If the state-led movement can effectively enhance women’s access to income-generating activities, it can serve women’s practical needs and improve their economic power. Increased economic power will set the stage for serving their strategic needs, including reshaping discriminatory laws and policies and disrupting patriarchal forces within the household.

However, most of the activities of SHGs are limited to micro-credit. Unless this massive mobilisation of women is supported with other programmes that provide enhanced livelihood opportunities, they will remain toothless. Nevertheless, there are some silver linings. In some parts of the country, SHGs under the NRLM have been able to use funds under MGNREGA to build income-earning assets for women, such as cattle sheds and poultry sheds. In other areas, women’s cooperatives run by SHGs have been able to supply meals and products to various government-run programmes. When convergence with other government programmes that build infrastructure or procure goods and services can be achieved, SHGs can enhance women’s incomes substantially.

However, when viewed holistically, the SHG movement is neither fish nor fowl. Its potential for enhancing women’s incomes has been underutilised. Simultaneously, by its vast expansion, the movement has carved into the base of women members who historically fuelled grassroots civil society movements and undermined these movements. Sometimes it has also been used as a political weapon by ruling governments — for example, the ruling CPI(M) government’s use in Kerala of SHG women in constructing a human wall during the Sabarimala protests in the State.

The silver lining is that regardless of the outcome, the growth of SHGs has brought a large number of women into the public arena. If a strong civil society-led women’s movement continues to thrive, this enormous army of SHG members may be able to draw strength from government programmes that empower them economically and civil society institutions that empower them socially and politically to create a formidable force for India’s development. The key, however, is to not put all eggs in the single basket of state-led programmes and to ensure that other spaces for women’s activism are preserved.

Sonalde Desai is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland and Professor and Centre Director NCAER-National Data Innovation Centre. Views are personal.

Small farmers lack access to tools, as the tractor-dominated farm machinery sector suffers from demand, supply constraints

India is simply not producing the sort of farm machinery that our small and marginal farmers want or can readily use at a price which appeals to them. Farm machinery comprises equipment used at various stages of farm operations like seed bed preparation and soil working, seeding and planting, plant protection, and harvesting and threshing. Increased farm mechanisation can help improve agricultural productivity and yields.

We used available literature and secondary data to analyse the sector in the recently released NCAER White Paper on ‘Making India A Global Power House in the Farm Machinery Industry’. Both the production and consumption of farm machinery for the agriculture sector specifically (leaving out allied activities) are dominated by tractors.

On the production side, India’s farm equipment market, according to a study referred to in the report, is 7 per cent of the global market, with more than 80 per cent of the contribution in terms of value coming from tractors. Since there is no dedicated National Industrial Classification code for the farm machinery industry, we had to use 7-digit product classification codes and club the relevant codes together to define the industry. It formed 0.6 per cent of overall manufacturing, dominated by tractors. The tractor sector is a pyramid-shaped industry with large-scale manufacturers at the top, followed by small-scale manufacturers and village-level craftsmen at the bottom.

Ownership of tractors is largely limited to a few States like Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand. As on June 2018, only 4.4 per cent of cultivator households in India owned tractors, and 5.3 per cent owned either power tillers, crop harvesters (power driven)/combine harvesters or threshers, or laser land-levellers. About 63.5 per cent of farmers rented machinery (‘Situation Analysis of Agricultural Households’), but the data does not distinguish between power and non-power farm machinery.

There are challenges both on the demand and supply sides. On the demand side, the challenges to the adoption of farm machinery are small and fragmented land-holdings, a large number of small and marginal farmers, the practice of subsistence agriculture, diverse soil conditions and cropping patterns, lack of timely access to farm power, tedious acquiring process of subsidised farm machinery, high cost of equipment, poor quality of equipment, inadequate after-sale services, credit constraints and lack of awareness.

On the demand-side, we need to improve the credit access of farmers, sensitise the banking industry, improve extension programmes and awareness and address skill shortages on usage.

India has a trade deficit in the non-tractors farm machinery market. It exhibited lopsided trade patterns where 53 per cent of the imports in this industry are coming from China whereas exports are more diversified. India is, of course, a leader in tractors. On the supply side, the non-tractors farm industry is rendered uncompetitive in terms of scale, innovation and prices.

On the supply side, it is imperative that R&D in the non-tractor farm machinery is promoted so that we produce what Indian farmers need. There’s a need to boost FDI and exports, improve ease of doing business, create a level-playing field for Indian manufacturers, improve and maintain the quality of farm machinery, and address skilled worker shortages. Also, data quality on both the consumption and production sides needs to be enhanced. India has no sustainable/working system for the exchange/transfer of new designs or technology developed by research institutes with manufacturers/ fabricators or feedback on market requirements from manufacturers to research institutes.

Second, Indian manufacturers are handicapped as Chinese products enjoy both consumption and production subsidies in China and are sold through various DBT portals in India. In contrast, Indian producers receive no production subsidy.

Business hurdles
Third, doing business isn’t easy — not getting repayments on time, poor logistics, inconsistent policy implementation, etc., are problem areas. While these problems are not unique to this industry, given the nature of the products — heavy machinery, that is — it affects the inventories and working capital of firms, which, in turn, affects small firms that are dependent on larger firms for business.

Firms incur large costs for the testing of equipment; the testing centres are located far away and transportation costs are high. In addition, there are problems with the test results of farm machinery. Often, the same machine is repeatedly tested for several dimensions, and the validity of the test is for a relatively short duration.

Fourth, there is a shortage of skilled workers on the production side. Fabrication of agricultural tools and machinery is often done by semi-skilled workers without proper tools. In the case of small-scale fabricators, there is no qualified supervisor to look after quality parameters.

The level of farm mechanisation in India, at 40-45 per cent, remains low compared to the rest of the world. In the US, it stands at 95 per cent, Brazil 75 per cent, and China 57 per cent. A variety of factors affect the probability of ownership of farm machinery in India — age and education of the head of the household, possession of a bank account by any one of the family members, possession of Kisan Credit Card (KCC), geographical terrain, farmers’ training, size of land area, social capital of the household, the distance from the household to the market and extension service, agricultural wages and presence of irrigation.

Other factors also may affect farm mechanisation like feminisation of the agricultural workforce (as per PLFS 2020-21, 40 per cent of the agricultural workforce are women), aspirations of rural youth, increasing cropping intensity and contract farming.

In sum, the market for farm machinery and equipment remains distorted.

Bhandari is Professor, and Joshi a Fellow, at NCAER. Views are personal

There is plenty of blame to go around for the current debt situation. Debtor countries that borrowed unsustainably; large creditor countries, especially China, and private creditors, who lent recklessly on opaque and unfair terms; and multilateral organisations that failed to monitor and warn of the unsustainable amount of debts being raised, are all to be blamed.

In their recently concluded meeting in Bengaluru, India, G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors identified debt vulnerability in low- and middle-income countries as an urgent issue to be addressed.

As per the joint debt sustainability assessment by the IMF and the World Bank published in November 2022, more than half of the 70 Low-income Countries (LICs) are either in debt distress or face a high risk of experiencing that condition. The average debt burden of countries in distress was a staggering 90 per cent of GDP in 2019, increasing further by almost ten percentage points of GDP in 2021.

Countries in distress have raised nearly half of their total public debt externally. In 2019, external public debt raised by LICs totalled $340 billion. Of this, about half was owed to multilateral institutions, a third to bilateral creditors (predominantly G20 countries), and the rest to the private sector. China is by far the single largest bilateral creditor, accounting for half of all the bilateral debt extended by G20 countries.

There is plenty of blame to go around for the current debt situation. Debtor countries that borrowed unsustainably; large creditor countries, especially China, and private creditors, who lent recklessly on opaque and unfair terms; and multilateral organisations that failed to monitor and warn of the unsustainable amount of debts being raised, are all to be blamed.

“The Common Framework for Debt Treatments”, agreed upon by the G20 in November 2020, was intended to expedite necessary debt restructurings, including by bringing the Chinese government and private creditors to the table. Yet more than two years later, only three countries, i.e., Chad, Ethiopia, and Zambia, have applied for relief through the Framework, and no material relief has been extended as yet.

Ways therefore need to be found to both chip away at the current stock of debt, while simultaneously ensuring that future debt is raised in responsible ways.

The World Bank and IMF have suggested that distressed debtors seeking relief under the Common Framework should receive statutory protection from asset seizures by national courts when suspending debt service payments.  This will help to relieve immediate debt distress and encourage more countries to apply for relief.  Such protection needs to be implemented by creditor-country governments through legislation or an executive order.  The G20 can adopt a resolution to this effect.

Efforts to restructure problem debts tend to be stymied by lack of complete information on the debtors and creditors. Further, the increasingly diverse and fragmented nature of the creditor base heightens free-rider problems and complicates debt restructuring. In 2021, the OECD launched a “Debt Transparency Initiative” encouraging private creditors to provide comprehensive information on their loans and investments, but few private creditors have hitherto participated. G20 governments can make this a regulatory requirement.

In addition, future debt raised by LICs should be derisked. This can be done by the wider inclusion of collective action clauses in sovereign bond contracts.

The G20 countries, for their part, should include climate-resilient debt clauses in their own bilateral, regional and multilateral lending to climate-sensitive LICs in order to deepen the market and reduce adverse signalling. They could use regulation to persuade and incentivise private creditors to do likewise, and subsidise the interest premium for such contingent lending through multilateral institutions. A standard template for such bonds will pave the way for a more homogenous liquid market and reduce the transactions cost of issuance.

Many low-and middle-income countries have no choice but to borrow in foreign currencies, which exposes them to financial risk and economic dislocation from exchange-rate volatility.  Hedging instruments at the relevant maturities and affordable cost would help to mitigate these dangers.  Developing such markets for additional countries and currencies would be a significant step toward reducing financial fragility. A G20 agreement to provide the funding needed to scale up hedging significantly would help to address the currency mismatch problem causing financial fragility.

Multilateral institutions ought to do more timely and effective debt assessments under realistic scenarios. Although it may be hard to predict a once-in-a-century pandemic and its after-effects, other risks can be modelled, including those to growth, interest rates, commodity prices, or exchange rates. Building local capacity for preparing countries’ own debt assessment tools would be useful as well.

Debtors as well as creditors have responsibility here as well.  Countries seeking debt relief also need to be held accountable. It would be fair to all concerned to call out the serial seekers of debt relief. But the ball is now in the creditors’ court.  Collective ownership of the problem by China, multilateral agencies, the private sector, and the debtor countries themselves, and a holistic solution will ensure faster debt restructuring and better debt sustainability.