THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 81

given the loss of wages to machines, and given the small plots cultivated by the poor strata, there is little likelihood that anything short of land refOrm could reverse their fOrtunes. 64

Poverty

It is in the nature of large bureaucracies, of which the state is the outstanding example, to create a series of quantitative measures by which to define goals and to measure the extent to which they have been achieved. Thus it is that the human misery known as poverty is signified by numbers-a certain amount of cash per household, a certain number of calories ingested each day. While we shall have ample occasion later to explore the meaning of poverty-how it is experienced and understood-the gross numerical description of poverty does provide something of a baseline from which to begin.

The figures presented in table 3.6 are based on the official poverty-line income and show how the income of various tenure groups has changed since 1966 in relation to that standard.

The remarkable and sobering fact is that much of the gain made between 1966 and 1974 had been largely undone by 1979. Not even the initial boom in prices and production had raised small farmers, whether owners or tenants, above the poverty line, and by 1979 they were once again far below. Average tenants and owner-operators had improved their incomes appreciably but many, if not most, were still below poverty-line incomes. At a bare minimum there were 33,oqo "officially" poor households in Muda in 1979.6' These households

64. There is some dispute about how the poverty level has been established, with some claiming that it should be set lower fur rural areas where the cost of living is lower. Without pretending to judge this issue, I believe it is clear that there may be strong political reasons fur the government to set the poverty level reasonably high in order to justify certain programs aimed at attracting Malay votes. Quite aside from the question of what an appropriate poverty level might be, it should be added that, given the official level, the estimate of 30 percent is quite conservative. This is the conclusion reached by the most thorough recent study of poor households in the Muda region, in which households interviewed in 1972-73 were reinterviewed a decade later. The study confirms that half or more ofMuda's population is still below the official poverty line and the "downstream" employment created by double-crop- ping has gone largely to wealthier households, not to those who need it most. See the excellent preliminary report by Sukur Kasim, "Evolution of Sources of Income in the Muda Irrigation Project (1972/73-1981/82)" (Paper presented at Conference on Off-Farm Employment in the Development of Rural Asia, Chengmai, Thailand, August 1983, mimeo.).

65. This very conservative figure is derived by adding the numbe~; of small farm households to that of nonfarming wage laborers. Of course a small percentage --of small farm households are in fact above the poverty line. By the same token, however, a fair number of average tenants and owner-operators with farm sizes above 3 acres are below the poverty level.

82 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

TABLE 3. 6 • Net Income of Various Tenure and Farm-Size Categories as Percentage of Rural Poverty-Line Income

NoTE: Rural poverty-line incomes per household, per month, are as fOllows: 1966- M$148; 1974-M$215; 1979-M$267. If one were to make adjustments in these figures both fur the actual yields and reductions in paddy prices due to moisture content, on the one hand, and fur the new fertilizer and new support price (1981), on the other, small owners and tenants would remain, on average, well below the poverty line (72 percent and 52 percent, respectively), and average tenants and average owner-operators would be slightly above (109 percent and 126 percent). Only ownertenants would be well above at 213 percent.

represent the intractable poverty problem of the region. They remain poor despite double-cropping, despite the fact that Muda is a privileged area in terms of soils, despite a dense network of institutions created to serve paddy farmers, despite government programs committed to eradicating poverty, despite recent increases in paddy price and fertilizer subsidies-in short, despite thirteen years of intensive agricultural development.

The fundamental problem, of course, lies in the inequities of landownership and farm size existing at the outset of the scheme. The gains from the new seeds, irrigation, and double-cropping are at best distributed in accordance with the control of productive assets. Small farmers simply did not have the land or capital that would have allowed them to raise their incomes dramatically. Longterm rentals, rising land prices, and the revocation of tenancies further limited their access to land. What they did have in abundance was labor. Before com- bine-harvesting, this asset was in largepart responsible for raising their incomes. But the mechanization of harvesting together with rising production costs and consumer prices gradually eroded their modest gains.

Institutional Accers

Along with the changes in production, farm size, tenure, and mechanization associated with. the green revolution has come something of an institutional revolution as well. Nowhere is this more striking, as noted earlier, than in state control over water release and increasing participation in milling, marketing, credit provision, and fertilizer distribution. The main institutional vector of this transformation has been the Muda Agricultural Development Authority (MADA) and its twenty-seven local offu:es, each with its own Farmers' Association (Per- satuan Peladang). The main function of these local offices has been to distribute

THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE • 83

credit to its membership fur tractor rental costs, fertilizer, pesticides, and transplanting. As many as 15,000 farmers (roughly 25 percent of the farm households) have benefited from these services. Far from remaining merely passive recipients of services, the Farmers' Associations, both individually and collectively, have become active and vociferous spokesmen fur the interests of paddy farmers. They have come to constitute the functional equivalent of a paddy producer's lobby, which has consistently brought pressure to bear through annual resolutions, petitions, and delegations fur changes in policy that would benefit their membership. The competitive political atmosphere, especially in Kedah, contributes to their influence, and all but one or two of the local bodies are controlled effectively by members of the ruling party.

Nearly 40 percent of Muda's farmers have at one time or another joined a Farmers' Association, but this membership is by no means a cross-section of Muda's peasantry. Table 3. 7 reveals just how skewed participation is. Farmers cultivating less than 2.84 acres (4 relong) comprise nearly half the farm population but only 12.4 percent of Farmers' Association members. At the other end

TABLE 3. 7 • Relationship of Distribution of Farm Sizes, Farmers' Association Membership, and Production Credit Recipients

of the scale, larger farmers planting 5. 7 acres and above are only 23 percent of the farm population but make up fully 47 percent of the membership. The domination of these associations by well-to-do farmers is typical of most such bodies in the Third World. 66 It has come about not so much because of any systematic official policy but rather from the policies pursued by their elected leadership. 67

66.As Norman Uphoff and Milton Esman note, "if such organizations become institutionalized, they would be as instruments of the large and middle farmers, while small farmers would be thrown back on traditional links of dependency on

patrons or be compelled to rely wholly on their own meagre resources." Local Organization for Rural Development: Analysis of Asian Experience (Ithaca: Rural Development Committee, Cornell University, 1974), 66.

67.Originally, membership and annual subscription fees were nominal (M$3), but as members began to subscribe to equity shares, new members were required to purchase a block of shares equivalent in value to the amount held by members of long standing. It is now rare for membership to cost less than M$30 and it often runs as high as M$100. For small farmers, whose production credit allowance, given their acreage, might be less than M$100, this provision is an effective bar to entry.

84 • THE LANDSCAPE OF RESISTANCE

Credit distribution is even more skewed toward the well-to-do than membership. Large farmers operating more than 5. 7 acres are less than 23 percent of the farm population, yet they constitute more than 60 percent of the credit recipients and of course a much higher share of the actual credit extended. Small farmers, who are nearly half Muda's population, constitute a mere 6 percent of those who get subsidized credit. Those who are most in need of credit on easy terms are denied access, while those who could borrow from banks or finance inputs from their own savings are provided for in abundance. Increasing rates of delinquency in repayment, moreover, indicate that many large farmers have managed to turn the loans into outright subsidies. 68 The accumulated bad debts have gone unprosecuted because the debtors, drawn largely from the ranks of local, ruling party stalwarts, are well-nigh untouchable. To this extent, MADA, the ruling party, and the Kedah state government are hostages to the interests of the relatively prosperous strata of farmers which the green revolution has helped create and solidify.

As the economic distance between rich and poor has grown, so has this privileged class's access to influence and credit. If the interests of paddy farmers are heard at all, they are increasingly the interests of larger farmers. On some questions, such as paddy support prices or fertilizer subsidies, this may make little difference, for the interests of rich and poor will largely coincide. But on many other issues-mechanization, agricultural wage policy, credit eligibility, land rents, land reform-their interests are sharply conflicting. The vise-like grip with which large operators now control the Farmers' Associations means both that the vital interests of Muda's poor are systematically excluded even from the policy agenda and that those who have already profited most from the green revolution will continue to have things their own way. 69

These facts about agricultural "progress" are all too familiar from analyses of the green revolution elsewhere in Asia. As Keith Griffin has concluded:

Even were they to join, the annual deduction of at least M$15 for compulsory share purchase from their credit allowance makes joining less attractive than the familiar alternative of credit from shopkeepers. Compiled from USM-MADA Land Tenure Study, 68, and Zakaria Ismail, "Institutional Short-term Production Credit Programme in Muda Scheme," MADA Monograph No. 38 (Alor Setar: MADA, n.d., probably 1977), 24.

68. Ho Nai Kin has provided evidence of increasing delinquency up to 1977 in "Implementation and Supervision Problem of Institutional Padi Production Credit in MADA's Farmers' Association," MADA Monograph No. 35 (Alor Setar: MADA, 1978), app. 2. There is also evidence to suggest that delinquency is more characteristic of large farmers than small farmers. See Mohd. Noh Samik, "Delinquent Loanees" (Alor Setar: MADA, Bahagian Pertanian, n.d.).

69. For a convincing analysis of state agricultural policy in the Third World and its consequences fur income distribution, power, and development, see Robert H. Bates, Markets and States in Tropical Africa (Berkeley: Univ. of CalifOrnia Press, 1981).