Liberalisation, rural labour markets and the mobilisation of farm workers:The Haryana story in an all-India context

In India, the new economic policy, especially after 1991, has been associat ed with a contraction of public spending on economic and social infrastruct ure, with technological and structural changes which have caused a decline in the employment generating capacity of economic growth, a widening of the gap between farm labour productivity and labour productivity in all other sectors and a substantial rise in the number of rural people living in abso lute poverty. In Haryana, a Green Revolution state, which enjoyed exception ally high agricultural and industrial output growth rates during the 1990s, employment contracted or stagnated in both agriculture and manufacturing, and poverty soared. Simultaneously, during the 1990s, there was a significa nt awakening of rural Haryana wage workers as a class, but it is not clear how much this development had to do with worsening labour market conditions . Much of it may be attributable to the way in which the Haryana agricultur al workers' union was organised during this period. Some of their most succ essful mobilisations involved joint action, either with the All India Kisan Sabha and other left-led peasant and agricultural workers' organisations, or with a union representing industrial and other non-farm workers. It is n oteworthy that whatever victories were won, were won largely through the in termediation of governments - central, state or local. No major agricultura l workers' union victories were recorded in Haryana which emerged from dire ct confrontations of agricultural labourers with their employers.