Corporate village – A solution to rural poverty

By Ubaya Warnakulasooriya

According to the Central Bank, a fourth of our population is still trapped in poverty. Of them 3.3% or about 700,000 people are said to be poor absolutely. Among the absolutely poor, about 400,000 people are known to be living in the villages bordering the forest reserves and other remote and difficult areas. 

In the villages bordering the forest reserves, hardly a week passes by without media making news out of a villager being trampled to death by a wild elephant or a wild elephant killed in retaliation. In the other remote and difficult areas, village life is equally miserable with the young and the old having to trek the rugged footpaths through the jungles and wade their way across the rivers or rivulets to get to the lonely roads to catch a bus to go to school or the hospital in the nearest town.

The crops, their only means of livelihood, are often affected by floods, droughts and pestilence. Come harvest time, the villagers are seen clashing with the authorities over low prices and slow sales of their produce.

This vicious cycle that begins with the problems inherent in the fragmentation and haphazard allocation of land to the poor legally or otherwise has to be broken and the dignity restored to their lives.  However, it is a distant dream as long as our rural development strategies are driven by self-centric, short-term political interest dubbed in various catchy titles to evoke sensation and deceive the nation. 

Regime after regime, swarms of government servants have been recruited only to be unproductively busy about dispensing subsidies and handouts, attending meetings, workshops and conferences headed by politicos costing the public billions of rupees annually which the politicians from top to bottom go to town with, as if the land and money they dole out are their family endowments. 

It is therefore time here and now to introduce a catalytic difference to this wretched system of rural poverty alleviation dominated by the politicians and save this colossal waste of land, money and human effort. 

As an old ordinary senior citizen, I would like to visualise a scenario where the Government decides resolutely to enable a transformation from subsidy dependent, insecure household farming to large scale-organised-profitable commercial farming particularly in these areas by the private corporates. 

The Government, for this purpose, may invite, induce and incentivise private corporates who would bring in investment needed for science and technology, research and development and management into this particular segment of agriculture in the country. They would decide what, where, when and how to grow, avoid waste and find markets here and abroad for their produce. Just one for instance, it shouldn’t be a big do to turn the farm fodder into processed elephant feed so that these animals may not be compelled to ransack the villages searching for food.

The private corporates I believe, in addition to farming will turn these impoverished villages into sort of holiday resorts by building cottages, chalets and cabanas where there are mud huts now. They will fence out the villages from the forest reservations with impenetrable thorny hedges using natural or synthetic materials, build watch towers and introduce sky transportation systems such as cable cars or monorails to connect the village with the nearest town. 

As regards the lands for such expansive farming, let the villagers while holding the ownership, lease out their small holdings to these corporates for long tenors say, over 15-20 years or so. This means a regular monthly income for them by way of lease rentals which may be determined according to a Government valuation.

The villagers may be given the option to work either in the same company as salaried employees or engage in any other vocation of their choice. If they opt to work for the company they would be entitled to enjoy the benefits under the country’s labour laws. There may be other benefits such as free meals and transport too. The company may even let these villagers own non-voting company shares in which case they may be able to earn annual dividends as well.  

There may be several quoted companies having financial strength, marketing and technical expertise interested in large scale agri-business depending on the extent of land available to them. If the politicians are truly sincere about the wellbeing of the poor, here is an opportunity to promote such initiatives and persuade the villagers hitherto tormented by fears and anxieties, to give up their wretched village habitats and move to the nearest town where the Government would provide them with decent community housing say, in two- or three-storeyed apartment complexes which will no doubt give them a new lease of life liveable with amenities; water, electricity and sanitation and also the access to schools and hospitals, etc. 

The biggest advantage of such an exercise is that it will end further endless shredding of village land from father to the children. If successful, initially as pilot projects in a selected couple of villages on these lines “the corporate village” will have a ripple effect on the other poor farming communities across the country.

It’s a sad commentary of our times that only a few would appreciate that poorer the village higher the share of costs to the nation as a whole. Higher the productivity of the village larger the share of gains to everybody. Higher the attraction to the nearby town lesser the tendency for migration to the city. 

Let’s consider these simple truths and not waste but make maximum use of large amounts of financial aid and technical assistance forthcoming from donor agencies for modernisation of agriculture by bidding bye to the ancient path and chartering a radically new path with a view to enhancing productivity and reducing poverty of the farming population in the impoverished, uneconomical, inefficient and politically corrupt administrative unit called the village in this country which has long been sustained on various subsidy schemes.