Commercialisation of agriculture and famines

Detail

1. What commercialisation of agriculture means

• Commercialisation of agriculture means farmers stop growing mainly food crops for their own family and start growing crops for sale in the market.
• Under colonial rule, the purpose was not to make Indian farmers richer. These crops were raw material for British industries, for example cotton for the Lancashire mills and jute for sacks.
• Railways (section 8) spread the change:
• Railways connected the villages to the ports.
• This made it cheap to move raw cotton and jute out to Britain.
• Villages that had fed themselves now depended on markets, so village self-sufficiency broke down.

2. Cash crops

• Cash crops are crops grown for sale, not for the farmer's own use.
• Main colonial cash crops:

Crop	Main use / destination
Jute	Sacks and packing material; Bengal
Cotton	British textile mills
Indigo	Blue dye for British cloth; Bengal, Bihar
Sugarcane	Sugar
Opium	Exported to China
Tea	Plantations in Assam and the hills

3. NCERT's verdict: little gain for the farmer

• Some areas had higher yields of cash crops.
• This hardly helped farmers. The output went to British industries back home, and the farmer got a low price for it.
• Only a small section of farmers changed their cropping pattern.
• Most tenants (farmers who rent land), small farmers and sharecroppers (farmers who pay the landowner a share of the crop as rent) did not change. They lacked:
• resources: money for seed, manure and irrigation
• technology: better tools and methods

• incentive: the landlord or moneylender took most of any extra income

• So commercialisation happened alongside agricultural stagnation, not real farm growth.

4. "Forced" commercialisation

• Forced commercialisation means peasants moved to cash crops because they were pushed, not because the market offered them a better chance.
• Driver 1: revenue in cash
• Land revenue had to be paid in money, not in grain.
• So the peasant had to grow something he could sell quickly for cash.

• The revenue deadline was fixed, so he often sold just after harvest, when prices were lowest.

• Driver 2: debt

• Peasants borrowed from moneylenders to pay revenue and meet daily needs.
• Moneylenders demanded repayment in cash crops, or bought the crop cheap in advance.

• This held the peasant in a debt trap and kept him on cash crops.

• Driver 3: coercion by planters. Indigo is the key case.

• Planters persuaded or forced ryots (peasant cultivators) to sign contracts to grow indigo instead of food crops on the best part of their land [4].

• Ryots were paid less for indigo than they could earn from rice or other crops [4].

• Indigo Revolt (1859-60), Bengal:

• It began in March 1859 as a non-violent strike. The ryots of a village in Nadia district agreed to stop growing indigo [4].

• It spread to other indigo districts of Bengal. At first many zamindars supported it, because they resented the planters' growing power [4].

• Champaran Satyagraha (1917), Bihar:

• Under the Tinkathia system, a tenant was bound by law to grow indigo on 3 out of every 20 parts of his land for the landlord [5].
• Champaran was Gandhi's first satyagraha (non-violent resistance) campaign in India, and it succeeded in changing government policy [4].
• The reforms were written into the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918. It abolished tinkathia and let tenants grow crops of their choice [5].

5. Effects of commercialisation

• Less land under food crops, so less food was grown for local use.
• More exposure to world prices. When cotton or jute prices fell abroad, the Indian peasant's income fell too, but the revenue demand did not fall.
• Weaker food security. Food security means that everyone always has enough food at prices they can afford.
• These effects were a direct cause of famines (section 6).

6. Famines: the extreme outcome

• Famine means a severe shortage of food in a region that causes mass hunger, disease and death.
• Famines were frequent under colonial rule because of mass poverty and poor infrastructure.
• After independence, food security measures, from the Green Revolution to public food stocks, made large famines a thing of the past.

Famine	Key facts
Bengal, 1770	Under East India Company rule. The Company's harsh revenue policy is seen as a direct cause: high land revenue demands were strictly collected even during mass starvation [6]. Nearly one-third of the population died [6] (NCERT: "about a third").
Great Famine, 1876-78	South and west India: Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Mysore [7]. It led to the Strachey Commission.
1896-97 and 1899-1900	Widespread famines that came in the same years as plague.
Bengal, 1943	During the Second World War. About 3 million people died of hunger or disease [2]. There was no major fall in food production [2].

• Wartime policy made the 1943 famine worse:
• British authorities stockpiled food for troops [2].
• They exported large amounts of food to British forces in the Middle East [2].
• They took away boats, carts and elephants in Chittagong, where a Japanese invasion was expected. This cut local transport and livelihoods [2].

7. Famine Commissions and Famine Codes

Commission	Year	Note
Strachey Commission	1880	Set up after the 1876-78 famine; led to the Famine Codes
Lyall Commission	1898	After the 1896-97 famine
MacDonnell Commission	1901	After the 1899-1900 famine
Woodhead Commission (Famine Inquiry Commission)	1944	On the Bengal famine; its Final Report came out in 1945 [8]

• Indian Famine Code (1883):
• It graded food shortages by how severe they were [3].
• It listed the steps governments had to take once a famine was declared [3].
• Its approach was relief works that gave people wages, plus free food for those unable to work.

8. Amartya Sen's entitlement approach

• Source: Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (1981). It appears in NCERT's "Work These Out".
• Entitlement means a person's command over food: the food they can get through wages, their own crops, or selling their assets.
• Core idea: a famine is a collapse of the poor's entitlement, not only a fall in food supply.
• Sen called Bengal 1943 an entitlement failure. Economic forces reduced the ability of some groups to buy food, even though food was available [2].
• Chain of events in Bengal, 1943:
• War spending pushed up inflation (a general rise in prices), and rice prices shot up.
• Wages of landless labourers, fishermen and artisans rose far less.

• Their real wage fell, and they could not buy food even though it was in the market.

• Formula and worked example (illustrative numbers):

• Real wage = Money wage ÷ Price of food
• Before: wage ₹1 a day, rice ₹0.50 a kg → 1 ÷ 0.50 = 2 kg of rice a day
• During the famine: wage rises to ₹1.25, rice rises to ₹2 a kg → 1.25 ÷ 2 = 0.625 kg a day

• The money wage rose 25%, but food command fell by about 69%. The labourer starves even though rice is on sale.

• Lesson: the FAD (Food Availability Decline) view explains famine only by a fall in food supply. Sen showed this is not enough; income and prices matter just as much.

9. Links to other sections

• No all-weather rural roads (section 8): relief grain could not reach villages in the monsoon.
• No public health system (section 7): hungry people died of cholera, malaria and plague, so famines killed more people.
• Commercialisation plus cash revenue plus debt: the peasant had no food reserve and no savings, so a single bad season could become a famine.

Prelims Hooks

• Commercialisation of agriculture means a shift from food crops to cash crops for sale. Under colonial rule it was mostly "forced", driven by cash revenue, debt and planter coercion.
• Indigo Revolt (1859-60) began in Nadia district, Bengal, as a non-violent strike by ryots [4].
• Tinkathia = growing indigo on 3/20 of the land in Champaran. It was abolished by the Champaran Agrarian Act, 1918 [5].
• Champaran (1917) was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India [4]. It was not his first satyagraha overall, which was in South Africa.
• Famine Commission → Code pairing: Strachey (1880) → Famine Code (1883) [3]. Lyall 1898, MacDonnell 1901, Woodhead 1944 (Bengal).
• Bengal famine 1943: about 3 million deaths, with no major fall in food production [2].
• Bengal famine 1770: under East India Company rule. Nearly one-third of the population died, and harsh revenue collection made it worse [6].
• Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines (1981): the entitlement approach. A famine is a collapse of the poor's command over food, not only a fall in supply.
• Trap: "Commercialisation raised incomes of most Indian farmers" is false. Only a small section changed crops, and the gains went to British industry.

Mains Points

• Commercialisation was forced, not market-led. Cash revenue, moneylender debt and planter coercion (the indigo contracts and tinkathia [4][5]) pushed peasants into cash crops. The result was lower food security, not rural prosperity. This is useful for GS-I/III answers on the colonial drain and agrarian distress.
• Famines were policy failures more than nature's failures. Revenue was collected strictly in 1770 [6]. In 1943, food was stockpiled and exported, and boats were confiscated, even though production had not fallen [2]. This supports Sen's view that entitlements, not food supply, decide who starves.
• Link to policy today: Sen's lesson shaped India's approach to food security. It explains the focus on purchasing power (wage employment such as MGNREGA) and public distribution of cheap grain, and not only on raising output. The Famine Code's idea of relief through wage works is an early form of this.
• Institutional lesson: the Famine Commissions (1880-1944) and the Famine Code (1883) [3] show a slow move from ad hoc relief to rule-based relief. A GS-II/III answer can contrast this with today's rights-based approach and argue that democracy and a free press help prevent famine (Sen's argument).