Enlightened thought leaders struggle as they recognise debilitating limitations in the current path of the economy. They see that the centralised model will not work for much longer. They are prepared to experiment with environmentally sustainable, decentralised modes.

The primary objective of decentralised ventures should be to turn on its head the shenanigan that large, centralised mega enterprises will provide pockets of employment to thousands of workers in a select few rural centres. In the arithmetic of these abstract, hidden, and often invisible owners, the countryside is nothing more than a footprint to service their urban consumers.

The attempt is to reinvent an alternate, decentralised avant-garde economic model intrinsically belonging to the rural landscape and her people. The aim is that these decentralised units will confer ownership and provide a superior caste-class identity to hundreds of CSU Members, even when employment generated at each such unit is for just a few. The vision is to confer a sense of self to thousands of rural poor through a hundred such decentralised units in as many Gram Panchayats.

This economic philosophy is not merely au contraire, but also inimical to the current form of unfettered capitalism which has led to centralised ventures. This, in turn has birthed a polity that imposes centralised prescriptions to standardise every single facet of life and living as universal solutions.

Large and centralised enterprises certainly do have their place in a balanced national economy, but they cannot be unfettered under the guise of “ease of doing business”.

A strong participatory democracy should place checks to ensure that an economy doesn’t usurp roles and functions outside the ambit of production. With the caveat that local economies that give everyone an opportunity to enterprise are not destroyed with faux arguments of efficiency and productivity.

Socio-political responses and indignant protestations are aplenty. But here we need to discern a viable economic response. The climate crisis, depletion of natural resources and rapid unemployment were, till very recently, the concern of only scientists, economists and activists. This has changed in the recent past.

ADATS, along with Sunder Raju (Atria Power) and Mahesh Jain (Integra Microsystems), two enlightened business leaders with a futuristic mindset, met from June 2022 to explore the possibility of setting up Decentralised Business Units (DBUs) at the Gram Panchayat level. These DBUs would be owned and managed by Coolie Sangha families to serve the needs of farmer families in a 5-10 km radius in an environmentally sustainable and commercially viable manner.

Class identity is not determined by per capita income alone. The rural poor will not magically transform themselves into a middle class in money terms. DBU shareholders will earn hardly enough to climb the numbered ladder.

As Owners, they will have neither the income nor living standards of a conventional middle class. Shareholders alone, and even the wider population of Gram Panchayats, will not have the reach — population coverage, socio-political presence, et al — to play any influencing, let alone transformative role to shape socioeconomic realities.

In our scheme of things, given the style and structure of the DBUs, along with its driving economic rationale, they will have an owner-customer relationship that just cannot be emulated by conventional capitalism, even with clever changes in management nomenclature. DBU owners will share a face to face, intimate and symbiotic relationship with their erstwhile adversaries, middle class farmers who they will now serve. The interdependent nature of localised and value addition services provided by the DBUs also makes this relationship a continuous one.

Provided they forge a strong alliance, DBU shareholders and farmer clients can together play the progressive role that the middle class once played in early capitalism, in another part of the world, vis-à-vis the functioning of democratic institutions.

Way more than providing resources, technology, knowhow and skills, fostering such alliance and expanding their reach to enable such a transformative role will be the acid test for civil society and enlightened corporates, those who have chosen to accompany as a critical intelligentsia.

Along with a consultant well versed in both, contemporary business practices as well as the rural economy, proficient in the local vernacular, and experienced in setting up farmer production ventures, ADATS Field Staff and Coolie Sangha functionaries together undertook an exhaustive and time-consuming market survey in mid 2022 to identify a viable product/service and prepare a business plan for the first such DBU.

They first visited main villages in seven Gram Panchayats to discuss the economic rationale behind decentralised units, owned and managed by Coolie Sangha Members, to provide products and services to an immediate vicinity of a 5-10 km radius.

Together they studied cropping patters, yields and marketing, especially of Irrigated Dryland (ID) crops, covering 17,345 acres belonging to 7,817 farmer families in 75 villages. It was a very revealing experience since ADATS predominantly works with landed and landless agricultural labourers, and the vast majority of farmers with irrigation are not Coolie Sangha members.

They studied the functioning of 2 Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) yards — a huge one for tomatoes and another for all other vegetables. They held in-depth discussions with farmers as well as APMC licensed Agents. A former Director of the Bagepalli APMC gave an in-depth account of overall finance, functioning and malfunctions.

Farmer families with some irrigation decide to grow a particular vegetable of 45 to 100 days duration. This is not an informed choice based on anticipated market price. It is influenced by season, surrounding farmers, and ad hoc advice received from Local Traders on tenuous market forecasts.

Truth be told, families with some water sources are enticed by temptation more than any other factor. They have invested heavily on irrigation and are desperate to put the capital to work. They know that growing vegetables requires additional investment, continuous presence, intensive care, and a big market risk, as opposed to field crops that need only limited interventions and occasional visits to their fields. Nevertheless, even if one out of three tomato, beans, carrot, or beetroot crop finally fetches a good price, it more than makes up for two losses. In monetary terms, it is lakhs versus hundreds and thousands.

These are the very same middle peasants against whom the Coolie Sangha relentlessly struggled to rid themselves of feudal oppression. They are the ones who, a few decades back, pretended to be landlords, kept indentured labour, paid low wages, practiced untouchability, hogged all and every public works contract, and dipped into state benefit meant for poverty eradication. By and large they belong to middle castes, and own 10-15 acres of rainfed dry land 3-4 acres of irrigated dry land. Perhaps it is because they themselves were caught in the throes of a failing peasant economy that they were so violent and vicious in their opposition to the Coolie Sangha.

Be that as it may, they were the “enemies” of yesteryears who are today clientele for the DBUs.

Unlike traditional dryland farming where women are merely the workforce, growing vegetables is a family enterprise where womenfolk participate as equals. They have total authority from choice to growing to selling. In financial and other dealings with Local Traders, women are involved as equals along with menfolk. Among those who directly take their harvest to sell in the APMC market yard, many women go by themselves to engage in heated bargaining and strong verbal exchanges.

There are also families without traditional irrigation sources. Women raise small patches of greens like spinach, coriander leaves, mint and herbs using runoff from village drains, small ponds, etc. These are harvested every few days, tied into small bundles and taken on headloads to sell directly to households in surrounding villages.

Sometimes, groups of such women pool their produce and together take to the many weekly markets. Every single vegetable grower says that she finds this exciting, exhilarating and, at the same time, exhausting. Of course, they aim to make money. But they claim that they count profit in a totally different manner. They claim to have shattered their sex determined roles. They are no longer slaves and unpaid servants. The pleasure in telling her husband, early in the morning, to cook breakfast, bathe, dress and send the children to school on time, because she is taking off to the weekly market is quite indescribable. Especially the look on the man’s face, the very first time he is ordered to do so!

Some farmers scout the nurseries to themselves choose a variety and buy seedlings and support stalks to hold up tomato and beans plants. Others ask Local Traders to supply the seedlings and stalks directly to their farms.

These Local Traders own a small two tonne truck or goods auto and are colloquially known as “Tempo Owners”. They have the contacts and act as intermediary between farmers, suppliers and the market. They do not have an adversarial relationship with the farmers; they are schooled enterprising youth from the same caste-class, often distantly related. Even money transactions between them are more in the form of advances and payable-when-able hand loans.

Farmers meet a major part of the cultivation cost by themselves, and the rest through borrowings from various sources. They diligently raise the crops — prepare their fields, plant, fertilize, irrigate, de-weed, protect and raise the crop till it is ready for harvest. By then, a physical exhaustion sets in, and this determines the next steps — harvesting and sale.

Harvesting takes place in 2 ways:

• When the crop is almost ready to be harvested, the farmer calls a Local Trader who comes and checks out for himself. He assesses how many more days it would take to be just right for the market, anticipates the rate it would then fetch, how many other nearby farmers are also ready to sell, and works out an itinerary to pick up from several neighbouring farmers to get a full tempo-load.

  By 5 am, the tempo arrives with a skilled work gang to harvest, pack into crates (tomatoes) and netted bags (carrots, beans, beetroot, etc.). He then transports the crates and netted bags to reach the APMC yard by noon.

• Half the farmers themselves harvest, pack and transport to the APMC yard without calling the Local Trader. When volumes are sufficiently big, the wholesale Trader (licensed APMC Agent) sends his own crates and tempo.

In both cases, after purchase, licensed Agents manually sort/grade the vegetables at the APMC yard using their own work gangs. These big wholesale Traders are genuinely excited with our plans to automate sorting/grading with an optical sorter and assure us that they will give the farmers a much better price.

Apart from a physical exhaustion after raising the crop, harvesting choice is also influenced by the type of vegetable and volume.

• Large quantities of a soft produce like tomatoes, for example, are difficult for some farmers to themselves harvest, crate and transport, especially when elderly couples do not have young hands at home. Moreover, tomatoes need multiple harvests at several intervals.
• Hardier vegetables like carrots, beetroot and beans, for instance, can be netted and stacked, one on top of another without any damage and transported to the APMC yard in a rented truck or auto, often provided by the licensed APMC Agent.
• But the harvesting of root vegetables like carrots, beetroot and potatoes needs specialised skills since they can very easily be damaged while digging out from the soil. Even a small scratch can lead to spoilage/wastage.

Often times the specialised work gangs are “attached” to Local Traders in ways that we will explain further down.

And finally, the price:

• Based on quantity and a highly subjective, heavily skewed, and hotly argued assessment of quality, the “pickup rate” is determined. Even then, it is conditional to what the Local Trader thinks he will get in the APMC yard. He gives about half that estimated amount to the farmer and the remaining is paid after a few days, once again amidst frayed tempers and seriously flawed accounting.
• Others take the gamble to try for the best possible price directly from the wholesale licensed Agents at the APMC yard.