Problems of Agrarian and Industrial unrest – UPSC

• Agrarian and industrial unrest is the collective discontent of farmers, farm labourers and industrial workers over shared grievances, voiced through protest and at times open conflict.
  • The stress falls on collective frustration and disillusionment among these groups, more than on any one dispute.
  • The main issues are minimum wages, insecure employment and social amenities.
• Unrest has continued in both sectors through the planned era that began in 1951, and since.
• It has a clear geography.
  • Farm distress gathers in rainfed and debt-prone belts such as Vidarbha, Marathwada and northern Karnataka.
  • Mass farm protest has been strongest in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
  • Labour disputes cluster in industrial belts such as Mumbai, the Hugli basin, Gurugram–Manesar and Sriperumbudur.

Agrarian Unrest

Farm Suicides

• Apart from labour unrest, the gravest sign of farm distress is the toll recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in its yearly report on accidental deaths and suicides.

• Trend: the farm-sector count peaked at 11,290 in 2022 within the last five years, and has fallen slightly since.
  • Labourers now outnumber cultivators, a pattern that began in 2021. They made up about 56% of the 2024 total.
• Who: in 2018, the great majority of the farmers who died were men.
• Where (farm sector, 2024):
  • Maharashtra 3,824 (36.26%) and Karnataka 2,971 lead.
  • Madhya Pradesh 835, Andhra Pradesh 780, Tamil Nadu 503 and Chhattisgarh 486 follow.
  • Maharashtra has also been the State with the highest number over the longer record.
• All occupations (2018): the five leading States were Maharashtra (17,972), Tamil Nadu (13,896), West Bengal (13,255), Madhya Pradesh (11,775) and Karnataka (11,561).
  • Among Union Territories, Delhi, the most populous, reported the most (2,526), followed by Puducherry (500).
• Running totals: a 2013 compilation of the Bureau’s records put the farm toll since 1995 at 2,70,940. A later count reached 3,33,407 with the data for 2016.
• Reasons: the Bureau’s report does not give reasons for these deaths. Studies of distress point to several pressures acting together.
  • Crop failure leaves a farmer unable to repay loans, which is why crop insurance matters. Deaths have been reported among cotton growers even in farming regions counted as prosperous, in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Punjab.
  • Unremunerative prices and lasting debt are the charge most often made. Punjab and Maharashtra show that high farm output alone does not remove them.
  • Rainfed tracts add monsoon risk and thin markets, as in the dryland belts.

Causes of Agrarian Unrest

• Feeling of relative deprivation: rural people compare their incomes and amenities with those of richer farmers, other regions and towns.
• Foreign invasion, atrocities and exploitation: a long historical legacy. Colonial land revenue under zamindari, ryotwari and mahalwari deepened debt and passed land to moneylenders.
  • Rural society split into landlords and rich peasants on one side, and tenants and labourers on the other.
• Destruction of cottage industries of the farmers: the loss of rural crafts removed a second income and pushed more people onto land.
• Exploitation of tribal communities: land loss and dependence on moneylenders, in forest and hill tracts.
• Coercion to grow commercial crops: the colonial pressure to grow cash crops such as indigo in place of food.
• Increased burden of debt:
  • Moneylenders supplied 68.6% of rural credit in 1950-51 and 43% in 1975-76, so the farmer’s dependence has eased but not ended.
  • The national survey of 2018-19 found 50.2% of agricultural households indebted, with an average outstanding loan of ₹74,121.
• Thin price protection at the farm gate: poor storage, weak roads and pressing debts force distress sales soon after harvest, and middlemen take a large part of the final price.
• Small and fragmented holdings: the average size fell from 2.28 hectares in 1970-71 to 1.16 hectares in 2010-11, leaving most farms too small to absorb family labour.
• Insecure tenancy: where tillers are not owners, they have little reason or means to invest. The land reforms reduced tenancy but fell short on ceilings and security.
• Uneven gains from the Green Revolution:
  • It sharpened inequality between regions and between large and small farmers, and so added to social and economic tension.
  • It set up three lines of rural conflict: large against small farmers, owners against tenants, and employers against farm workers.
  • Mechanisation cut work for landless labourers, with Punjab and partly Haryana the exceptions.

• Unemployment on the land:
  • Employment exchange registers grew from 4.37 lakh in 1952 to over 42 million in 2011, of whom an older estimate put about 30 million as directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture.
  • Older accounts therefore placed unemployment higher in agriculture than in the industrial and tertiary sectors.
  • The Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2025 puts open unemployment at 3.1% overall, 2.4% in rural areas and 4.8% in urban areas. Low rural figures sit beside seasonal work and underemployment.

Agrarian Movements Since Independence

• During the post-independence period, the main movements were:

Farm Laws and the Minimum Support Price (MSP) Demand

• The laws: Parliament passed three farm laws in September 2020.
  • The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act allowed sale outside regulated markets, free of market fees.
  • The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act gave a framework for contract farming.
  • The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act eased stock limits.
• The positions, as each side put them:

• Events, in order:
  • From November 2020: farmers camped at the borders of Delhi.
  • 12 January 2021: the Supreme Court stayed the laws and set up a four-member committee.
  • 19 November 2021: the Prime Minister announced repeal.
  • 30 November 2021: the Farm Laws Repeal Act, 2021 withdrew them.
  • December 2021: the Delhi sit-ins ended.
  • 2022: the Centre formed a committee on minimum support price under Sanjay Agrawal. It had given no interim report two years later.
  • 13 February 2024: a second round began, with farmers halted at Shambhu and Khanauri on the Punjab–Haryana border.
  • 26 November 2024: Jagjit Singh Dallewal began a fast at Khanauri.
  • February 2025: a central team of ministers led by Shivraj Singh Chouhan held talks in Chandigarh, without agreement.
  • 19 March 2025: Punjab Police cleared both sites and detained farm leaders.
  • 6 April 2025: Dallewal ended his fast and said the campaign would continue.
  • 12 February 2026: the Morcha backed the trade unions’ general strike.
  • September 2026: a coalition of 32 farm organisations held a week-long sit-in at the Chandigarh border, seeking a legal price guarantee on 22 crops, loan waivers and an end to old water agreements.
• The price argument:
  • Government formula: since the 2018-19 Budget, support prices are set at one and a half times A2+FL, which counts paid-out costs and family labour.
  • Union demand: C2+50%, the level the National Commission on Farmers under Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan proposed in 2006. C2 also counts imputed rent and interest on capital, and so gives a higher price.

Causes of Rural Unemployment

• Unchecked growth of population: rural families carry surplus labour, and the supply of workers exceeds demand.
• Seasonal employment:
  • Demand peaks at sowing and harvesting, and the rest of the year is a lean period.
  • By one estimate, Indian cultivators work only 180 days a year, and dependent labourers for even less than six months.
• Small size of holdings: small farms cannot absorb all family workers, and a cultivator may remain without work for four to six months a year.
• Technological unemployment: tractors, harvesters and other machines have spread in the agriculturally developed areas, and they displace farm workers.
• Illiteracy and inadequate education:
  • Uneducated or semi-educated youth struggle to find jobs in the secondary and tertiary sectors.
  • Farm work carries low social status, and some semi-educated youth regard it as below their dignity.
• Leadership seen as dishonest or weak:
  • Education and awareness have risen in rural society.
  • Young people without work, skilled and unskilled alike, grow agitated when they judge their leaders to have failed them, and this adds to protest.

Unrest and Remedial Measures

• In many parts of the country, agrarian unrest has at times shaken administrations and governments.
• Naxalite movement: long described as a serious threat in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and parts of West Bengal.
  • The Home Ministry’s count of affected districts fell from 126 in 2014 to none under its revised classification after the 31 March 2026 deadline. Its roots lay in land and forest grievances of the tribal belt.
• Solutions:
  • Self-employment in allied rural work: awareness of openings in modern scientific farming, small-scale industries, agro-industries, forest-based industries, dairy and poultry farming.
    • Village arts and crafts also count: handmade paper, pottery, leather goods, dyeing of textiles, carpets and rugs.
  • Development initiatives: infrastructure, technology and farmer-friendly policies can raise farm growth and income.
  • Co-operative farming and consolidation of holdings: through land pooling, farmers gain in buying inputs and selling produce. Co-operatives have often underperformed, so the design matters.
  • A competitive, stable, unified national market for better prices.
• Government measures:

• Uttar Pradesh organised a Bhoomi Sainik force to create work and help landless labourers towards self-sufficiency. Each Sainik received one acre of land for afforestation.
• The Adarsh Gram Yojana also gave employment to the rural unemployed.
• Doubling farmers’ income by 2022: announced in 2016 to promote welfare, reduce distress and bring farm incomes nearer to non-farm incomes.
• Later schemes: Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY), the Electronic National Agricultural Market (e-NAM), neem-coated urea and the fertilizer subsidy.
  • Crop insurance claims paid exceeded ₹1.90 lakh crore by March 2026.
• Priority Sector Lending (PSL): agriculture is a major component, with a target of 18% of adjusted net bank credit in the Reserve Bank’s direction of June 2024.
• 2018 Budget: support prices at 50% over production cost, and Operation Greens on the lines of the milk sector’s Operation Flood.
• 2019 Budget: the PM-KISAN income support, first for farmers owning up to 2 hectares. It had paid ₹4.27 lakh crore in 22 instalments by March 2026.
• 2020 Budget: Krishi Udan for farm exports on international and domestic routes, Kisan Rail in public-private partnership (PPP) mode for perishables, One Product One District for horticulture, and a focus on zero budget farming.
• State schemes: Rythu Bandhu of Telangana was replaced by Rythu Bharosa from 26 January 2025. Odisha’s KALIA was followed by CM-Kisan, announced in August 2024.

Industrial Unrest

Meaning and Forms

• Industrial unrest is the collective discontent of workers across industries over minimum wages, safety, security of employment, and welfare facilities both inside and outside the workplace (intramural and extramural).
  • In other words, it is shared frustration and disillusionment on common issues, and in practice a conflict between employers and workers.
• Workers’ forms of protest: strikes, hartals, bandhs, slow-downs, rallies and demonstrations.
• Employers’ forms of pressure: retrenchment, dismissal and lockouts.
• Effects: recession in the industry, lost production and lower national income. Poor handling of a workforce by management breeds unrest, and strikes and lockouts can close a unit for good.
• Measure: the Labour Bureau recorded 41 work stoppages in 2022, of which about 85% were strikes. They involved 2,98,019 workers and cost 10,20,722 mandays, a fall of 57% in mandays from 2021.

Causes of Industrial Unrest

• Population growth and the resulting supply of surplus labour.
• The hire and fire policy of some industrialists and employers.
• Cyclical unemployment, caused by ups and downs in trade and business.
• Large-scale migration from rural to urban and industrial areas.
• Losses incurred by industries, including poor labour relations and heavy social overheads in some public sector units.
• Slow growth of industries and competition with foreign industries.
• Lack of welfare and social security.
• Rising wages with low productivity.
• Liberalisation and globalisation:
  • One line of argument holds that the 1991 reforms favoured labour-saving technology, hurt small units and cottage industries, and widened regional gaps.
  • Their supporters point to higher investment, output and exports.
• Disinvestment disputes: workers at BALCO, Korba, struck for 67 days to 9 May 2001 against its sale. Maruti Udyog workers struck for 89 days from October 2000.
• Location decisions: labour unrest can itself push firms to reconsider a site, as with Maruti’s move towards Gujarat.

Role of Technology in Industrial Unrest

• New technology brings technological unemployment, because automation reduces the labour needed for each finished product.
• Since the Industrial Revolution, workers have had to adjust to mechanisation, which has reduced the average worker’s economic security. Each advance displaces some human labour.
• Better machines, over-production, the social emphasis on monetary success and recurring depressions together disrupt the demand for labour, and this feeds unrest.

Notable Disputes

• Manesar case: police booked 148 workers, some under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). In March 2017 a court at Gurugram convicted 31 and acquitted 117, and it gave life terms to 13. Lawyers on both sides said they would appeal.

Labour Codes

• Four Labour Codes came into force on 21 November 2025, consolidating 29 central laws: the Code on Wages, the Industrial Relations Code, the Code on Social Security, and the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code.
  • The final central rules followed on 8–9 May 2026. Several States have issued their own.
• Industrial Relations Code, 2020:
  • It replaced the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, the Trade Unions Act, 1926 and the Standing Orders Act, 1946.
  • Prior government permission for lay-off, retrenchment or closure now applies at 300 workers, up from 100.
  • Standing orders are required at 300 workers.
  • Where several unions exist, one with 51% of workers becomes the sole negotiating union.
• The positions:

• Protests: unions held nationwide protests on 26 November 2025 and a one-day general strike on 12 February 2026, with organisers claiming about 30 crore participants. They burned copies of the final rules in May 2026.
• Earlier flexibility: in 2004, Gujarat amended the Industrial Disputes Act, letting firms in its special economic zones end work on a month’s notice.
• An old precedent for truce: a three-year truce on the labour front in 1948, with tax concessions and State help, aided industrial recovery after Partition.

Remedial Measures

• An older view holds that unrest cannot be solved unless the growth of population and the supply of labour are checked.
• Industrial unrest may be reduced appreciably through emphasis on:
  • Creation of self-employment opportunities.
  • Higher productivity and income levels of the working poor.
  • A shift from relief-type employment to building durable productive assets.