The worth of an agricultural wage day

Being unorganised, rural and particularly agricultural labour constitutes a relatively vulnerable segment of the work force. Rural and agricultural labour is generally deprived of the benefits of collective bargaining and lacks the protection of labour enactments which their counterparts in the organised sectors of the economy can fall back upon during times of work uncertainty, or calculated mismanagement. Agricultural labourers however have to live with casual employment, frequent changes of employers as well as places and wide fluctuations in the pay.

All-India average daily wage rates in agricultural occupations during 2014-2015 for children, women and men. Based on data compiled by the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour, Government of India

Farming remains at the centre of rural Indian life, even as more men and women today seek out non-farm work. Using data from the MGNREGA records, the proportion of men aged 15–59 working solely in agriculture fell from 41% in 2004–05 to 31% in 2011–12. The decline for women was smaller, from 40% to 35%. Many men and women combine farm work with non-farm labour, whether or not they participate in MGNREGA.

The labour scenario in a rural area is influenced by a number of factors such as its topography, natural resources, population growth, pressure on land, level of economic development, level of utilisation of resources and the institutional factors, namely, land tenure systems and inheritance laws.

Rural wages are considered to have risen steadily between 2004–05 and 2011–12, but the increase has been greater at higher wage levels compared with lower levels. MGNREGA records show that men’s daily wages for agricultural work grew by 50% between 2004–05 and 2011–12, women’s by 47%. Overall, growth in rural wages is higher in states and districts whose populations have greater participation in MGNREGA but it is important to note that MGNREGA plays only a modest role in wage increases.

Taking national averages, about a quarter of rural households participate in the programme, about 60% of these would like to work more days but are can’t get MGNREGA work. This widespread ‘rationing’ of work affects about 29% of all rural households, but percentages vary between regions. Households in the lowest income quintile worked only 23 days a year when they were allocated work.

The information base on the working and living conditions of this segment of labour market is scanty. The only major source of reliable information on socio-economic conditions of the rural labour is the Rural Labour Enquiry conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) every five years. Consumer Price Index Numbers for Agricultural and Rural Labourers, released by the Bureau every month, provides a basis for minimum wages in agriculture under the Minimum Wages Act,1948.

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A beginning to Monsanto’s end

Enough is enough. Just under a year from now, the Monsanto Tribunal will sit in Den Haag (The Hague), Holland, to assess allegations made all over the world against Monsanto, and to evaluate the damages caused by this transnational company.

The Tribunal will examine how and why Monsanto is able to ignore the human and environmental damage caused by its products and “maintain its devastating activities through a strategy of systemic concealment”. This it has done for years, the Tribunal has said in an opening announcement, by lobbying regulatory agencies and governments, by resorting to lying and corruption, by financing fraudulent scientific studies, by pressuring independent scientists, by manipulating the press and media. As we know in India, that is only a part of its bag of very dirty tricks; others are even more vile.

The history of this corporation – representative of a twisted industrial approach to crop, food, soil, water and biodiversity which we today collectively call ‘bio-technology’ – is constitutes a roster of impunities. Like its peers and its many smaller emulators, Monsanto promotes an agro-industrial model that is estimated to contribute a third of global greenhouse gas emitted by human activity, a lunatic model largely responsible for the depletion of soil and water resources on every continent, a model so utterly devoted to the deadly idea that finance and technology can subordinate nature that species extinction and declining biodiversity don’t matter to its agents, a model that has caused the displacement of millions of small farmers worldwide.

In this demonic pursuit Monsanto – like its peers, its emulators and as its promoters do in other fields of industry and finance – has committed crimes against the environment, and against ecological systems, so grave that they need to be termed ecocide. In order that the recognition of such crimes becomes possible, and that punishment and deterrence at planetary scale becomes possible, the Tribunal will rely on the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ adopted at the United Nations in 2011, and on the basis of the Rome Statue that created the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2002. The objective is that Monsanto become criminally liable and prosecutable for crimes against the environment, or ecocide.

“Recognising ecocide as a crime is the only way to guarantee the right of humans to a healthy environment and the right of nature to be protected,” the Tribunal has said. Since the beginning of the 20th century Monsanto has developed a steady stream of highly toxic products which have permanently damaged the environment and caused illness or death for thousands of people. These products include:

* PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl), one of the 12 Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) that affect human and animal fertility.
* 2,4,5 T (2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid), a dioxin-containing component of the defoliant, Agent Orange, which was used by the US Army during the Vietnam War and continues to cause birth defects and cancer.
* Lasso, an herbicide that is now banned in Europe.
* RoundUp, the most widely used herbicide in the world, and the source of the greatest health and environmental scandal in modern history. This toxic herbicide, designated a probable human carcinogen by the World Health Organization, is used in combination with genetically modified (GM) RoundUp Ready seeds in large-scale monocultures, primarily to produce soybeans, maize and rapeseed for animal feed and biofuels.

The Tribunal has: Corinne Lepage, a lawyer specialising in environmental issues, former environment minister and Member of tne European Parliament, Honorary President of the Independent Committee for Research and Information on Genetic Engineering  (CRIIGEN); Olivier De Schutter, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Co-Chair of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food); Gilles-Éric Séralini, professor of molecular biology since 1991, researcher at the Fundamental and Applied Biology Institute (IBFA); Hans Rudolf Herren, President and CEO of the Millenium Institute and President and Founder of Biovision; Vandana Shiva, founder of Navdanya to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade; Arnaud Apoteker, from 2011 to 2015 in charge of the GMO campaign for the Greens/EFA group at the European Parliament; Valerie Cabanes, lawyer in international law with expertise in international humanitarian law and human rights law; Ronnie Cummins, International Director of the Organic Consumers Association (USA) and its Mexico affiliate, Via Organica; Andre Leu, President of IFOAM Organics International, the world umbrella body for the organic sector which has around 800 member organisations in 125 countries; and Marie-Monique Robin, writer of the documentary (and book) ‘The World According Monsanto’, which has been broadcast on 50 international television stations, and translated into 22 languages.