SOIL Report 2008 - ACCESS Development Services

Chapter IThough urban population is less than 30 per cent of the total, in states like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtraalmost half of the total population lives in urban areas. Urbanisation has been accompanied by its ownpitfalls - it is estimated that a quarter of the population in large cities lives in slums. In a city like Mumbai,a majority of 60 per cent of the population live in slum and slum-like housing. In a recent study, Mahajanet al 11 , have identified ‘the triple constraint’ on urban livelihoods – skills, space and services. The urbanpoor are largely unskilled manual workers, short of living and working/vending space and have verylimited access to financial services as well other civic services such as water, sanitation, electricity andtransportation.5. What are the main constraints on livelihoods?The Sustainable Livelihoods (SL) framework mentioned earlier helps indicate the types of constraints thatcould exist in the livelihood sector. These can be capital constraints: human, natural, financial, physical,and social. Other constraints can be related to the context – demographics, markets, institutions, andpolicy. Each constraint interacts with the others in order to set a livelihood context.5.1 Environment constraints – crowds, cattle and carrying capacityThe eco-systemof the Indiansubcontinentis being usedbeyond capacity.1.1 billionhumans andapproximately4.7 millioncattle all liveoff the 320-million hectareof landmass.Perhaps we need to begin by acknowledging that India has one of the highest densities of population persq km, and certain parts of India, particularly the Indo-Gangetic plain, have four times higher densitythan the national average. In addition to the biotic load caused by Homo sapiens, the eco-system has to putup with a very high cattle load. Thus 1.1 billion humans and approximately 4.7 million cattle 12 (as per1992 figures) all live off the 320-million hectare of landmass, of which no more than three-quarters ishabitable. Thus the eco-system of the Indian subcontinent (including Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladeshat least) is being used beyond capacity.In livelihood terms, this shows up first in terms of the small landholding size. Of the 116 millionoperational holdings in India, over 80 per cent are below two hectares, and in practice fragmentedfurther. The holdings are so small in some areas that let alone a tractor, it is hard to turn around a pairof bullocks. Coupled with this small size are other drawbacks – only about a third of the cultivated areais irrigated, and only 27 per cent of all farmers have access to credit from formal sources, as per NSS59th Round. In irrigated areas, with good credit supply, such as Punjab, the farms suffer from micronutrientdeficiency as the same paddy-wheat crop cycle has been practiced for decades, with only NPKfertilisers. In other areas, such as Vidarbha, farmers have been growing cotton using increasing amountsof pesticide, which meet with more and more pest resistance to a point where the farmer loses hope,and in some cases commits suicide.In vast areas of the heartland of India, farming is rainfed, and the yields unsteady depending on thevagaries of the monsoon and its seasonality. For example, only 10 per cent of Jharkhand’s cultivatedarea is irrigated. Moreover, shrinking grasslands due to overgrazing and dwindling tree cover now fail tostem the rainwater run-off, which earlier used to feed thousands of streams. Agriculture becomes lessand less adequate and reliable as a livelihood in such adverse environmental circumstances.28The same is true of the millions of hectares of forest areas of India, which at one time had dense canopyand tremendous bio-diversity. Today, the tree cover is thin, the number of species much less, and thenumber of people who eke out a living, manifold. The image of the tribal, living off the Mango, Mahua,Tendu, Imli and Sal trees is a romantic one, as even tribals living at the periphery of dense forests get nomore than 15-30 days of collection of non-timber forest produce. When the forest is gone, livelihoodis gone.11Mahajan, Vijay, VR Prasanth, Preeti Sahai and Sathyanarayana, “Urban Livelihoods in India – The Triple Constraint of Skills, Space and Services”,BASIX, Hyderabad. 2007.12Source: Department of Agriculture and Cooperation Ministry of Agriculture28