State, Society and the Environment in South Asia by Stig Toft Madsen

Author:Stig Toft Madsen [Madsen, Stig Toft]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138982925
Google: __4PvgAACAAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-31T04:55:58+00:00

Structural Asymmetries between the Rural Rich and Poor

The size distribution of income has an impact on patterns of natural resource use because differences in income are related to differences in economic opportunities among households. These differences can be identified with respect to a wide range of social, economic and political criteria. As they concern unequal opportunities for action, they are termed structural asymmetries. The causes of structural asymmetries are complex: while some can be traced directly to income inequality, others have to be viewed together with income inequality as joint effects of a common cause.

Agrarian society in India displays a wide spectrum of both incomes and economic opportunities across households and individuals. Economic opportunities may differ even among households with identical incomes. For the extreme ends of the income distribution, however, there is a set of socioeconomic characteristics which is related unambiguously to income.

In order to identify linkages between income distribution and environmental degradation on a general level, the following analysis concentrates on the two extreme ends of the rural income distribution. Households at the lower end are termed ‘poor’: they comprise all households whose income is below the Indian poverty line for rural areas (i.e. Rs 49.09 per capita per month at 1973–74 prices).3 The households at the upper end are termed ‘rich’. In principle, they could be identified empirically by a ‘wealth line’ defined in analogy to the poverty line. Viewed from an institutional perspective, it is the big landowners (> 4 ha), moneylenders and large traders who constitute this group. Absentee landlords who reside in the cities are considered members of the rural rich.

There is always a problem in broad generalizations about the poor. It has been warned that these generalizations reflect rather the prejudices of researchers and development agencies than the true situation of the poor (Chambers, et al. 1989; Chambers 1994). In the analysis that follows in the next section, these generalizations will be used as abstractions which enable us to analytically describe some mechanisms of environmental degradation considered typical for India.

Table 7.1 contains a typology of the relevant structural asymmetries between the rich and the poor. The criteria of comparison have been grouped into four classes which comprise resource endowments, positions in markets, political economy variables and derived variables.

As far as resource endowments are concerned, it is well known that poor households are endowed with less land, natural resources and capital than the rich (Chambers, et al. 1989). Furthermore, the productivity of their assets is lower at a given level of labour input: the poor own less productive soils and capital. Closely related to this is the fact that the resources owned by the poor are more vulnerable to ecological degradation. The poor settle and practise agriculture on steep slopes that are prone to erosion, or they live in low-lying areas close to rivers which are subject to floods. In times of drought, their wells dry up earlier than those of the rich.

Table 7.1 Structural asymmetries between rural rich and poor

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