causes of agriculture labour
Answers
Under the Indian Constitution, everyone will have to be given equal opportunity in education, employment, etc.
Agricultural labour may be divided into two categories:
(i) Landless labourers, working for others;
(ii) Small peasants with very little land but who devote much time working for others.
In category (i) of landless labourers, there are some who are attached permanently to some estates and when the latter are sold away, the labourers are passed on to the new owners. They do not normally receive wages in cash but are generally paid in kind. They have 10 labour for their masters and cannot shift from one to another.
They have to provide ‘beggar’ or forced labour. The Kamay in Bihar, the Pannaiyal in Tamil Nadu, the Colis in Maharashtra, the Shalkari in M.P., the Charkar in Orissa etc., are landless labourers of category no. (i) They are almost slaves. But this type is gradually declining. The most common type is those landless workers who are independent permanently but work exclusively for them.
Some data are available regarding the number of farm labour. The second Agricultural Labour Enquiry conducted in I960, stated that agricultural labour families constituted nearly 25% of all rural families. More than 85% of the rural workers are casual and independent serving any farmer who is willing to engage them and only 15% of agricultural labourers are attached to specific landlords.
Causes of Agricultural Labour’s Growth:
The causes operating to bring about the growth of the class may be broadly up us follows:
(i) High net growth rate of the population in this country;
(ii) Growth of indebtedness due to low income leading to transfer of land from the small owners to the creditors, resulting in the former into becoming agricultural labourers ;
(iii) Displacement of means of subsidiary occupations whereby existence solely on an uneconomic unit of land becomes impossible;
(iv) Growth of absentee landlordism; and
(v) The extension of money economy to rural areas in replacement of payment in kinds;
(vi) Disintegration of village communities of the pre-nineteenth century;
(vii) Decline of domestic industries and handicrafts;
(viii) Disintegration of the peasantry;
(ix) a severe agricultural depression in the late twenties ; and
(x) other social factors such as economic transition through which some of the criminal tribes and castes have been passing…………. all these led to the emergence of a class of landless labourers in the country.