ON A SURVfiY OF FAMINE CONDITION 73
pose absolutely no threat to the new landlords. It is true that the new landlords do not own vast stretches of land like the old ones. But in this era of the 'green revolution* it is not at all necessary to own big tracts of land in order to produce more. There is less of feudalism in the new system, for it is basically capitalism itself!
It is this 'new landlordism' that is interested in preserving the semi-feudal set-up of the countryside and its concomitant, the accelerating wheel of scarcities and famines. Such a retrogressive ruling class fattens on the intensifying travail of the rural poor and the increasing bankruptcy of the nation. More than half a crore of people are toiling on a pittance on the scarcity works all over Maharashtra. Dhulia district, the last and the tenth to be declared an 'intensive scarcity5 area has more than a lakh and a quarter people on the scarcity warks, ranging from a hundred labourers to many thousands on one site. This is the only time when the rural poor, connected with primitive and individual means of production and the most unorganised section of the Indian people, are amenable to militant organisation like the industrial workers. When the 'scarcity5 is over, they will carry a new outlook back to their villages. It is they who in alliance with industrial labour can change the present reactionary social set-up. The strikes and demonstrations by 15 lakh scarcity workers on 16 May and the sympathetic strike of a million industrial workers on 15 and 25 May are harbingers of a new era in Maharashtra.