The monsoon and the market

 By Tanya Matthan - 28th October 2019

 In a cliché repeated every June in the popular press, commentators claim that the monsoon is the country’s true finance minister, shaping the fortunes of millions dependent on agriculture across India. In the central Indian region of Malwa, this axiom translates locally as, ‘I’ll pay you when my soybean comes’. Through the monsoon season, when cash is in short supply, the promise of the short-duration soybean crop forms the basis of everyday economic transactions. Alongside the farmer, the mechanic, the shopkeeper, and the moneylender hope for a good monsoon so that the rural economy, run almost entirely on loans and farm incomes, can run smoothly. Soybean is the language in which credit is sought – alternating between, ‘I have no soybean and I need the money’ to ‘We can pay you back quickly, we planted vegetables and not soybean’. Traders, too, hope for a good harvest to boost rural consumption. The rhythms of the monsoon are deeply intertwined with the rhythms of the market.

Yet the monsoon, already capricious and hard to predict, is becoming more variable and extreme due to global climate change. Rainfall patterns are now marked by intense drought as well as heavier rainfall within a shorter time span. This June, following several years of poor rain, Malwa farmers were overjoyed at its abundance: just the first weeks witnessed more rainfall than last year’s entire season. Then the rain simply stopped. The skies cleared and the earth scorched.

Seated under a neem tree, a central village meeting point, the patel (traditional village head) looked worried as he discussed this break in the monsoon. ‘Bazaar me bhi sannata hai (there is silence in the market)’, the Patel rued. ‘There are no customers. Sahukar udhar bhi nahi de raha (even the moneylenders have stopped giving out loans). They know that if the crop fails, nobody can repay their debts.’

When the monsoon revived, twenty days later, it did so with a fury rarely seen in central India. Village elders comment that they had never seen this kind of rain – heavy and continuous – in their lifetime. Even the soybean that survived the long dry spell stood submerged in waterlogged fields.  

Arriving into an economy already in recession, the reverberations of the rain are felt acutely in market towns. In rural Malwa, a predominantly agricultural region, where nearly everyone has or works on farms, any damage to the soybean monoculture has widespread effects. These impacts are likely to worsen in the coming decades. Indeed, the Economic Survey (2017-18) forecasts a possible 15-18% decline in agricultural revenue due to extreme weather patterns.

In Maksi, a small market town servicing dozens of surrounding villages, businesses along the main street – selling groceries, shoes, saris – have fewer footfalls. Even as Navratri (an important Hindu festival) approaches, traders comment that, despite the festive season, the market has no chamak (sparkle). ‘Our main customers are farmers. If they don’t have money, we don’t either. The rainy season is already bad for business – nobody has cash because there is no work. The money from the previous season [ending in March] dries up. The market only picks up when soybean is sold.’

This looks unlikely with the season’s crop losses reported to be as high as fifty per cent. As one shopkeeper told me, while deftly counting notes, packing almonds, and surveying shopping lists, ‘There’s only a crowd today to buy puja-paat ka saman (ritual items). There were two things people can’t live without – food and religion. Look around, all the other shops are empty.’

The only consolation now is that the replenished aquifers promise high yields for the winter crop. Until then, the refrain in the market is: I’ll pay you with my gehu-channa (wheat and gram).

Tanya Matthan is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines agricultural risk as an object of governance, speculation and claim-making in rural central India.