Record Details

Rural Non-Farm Employment and Rural Transformation in India, Working Paper Series No. 57

OAR@ICRISAT

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/10392/
 
Title Rural Non-Farm Employment and Rural Transformation in India, Working Paper Series No. 57
 
Creator Reddy, D N
Reddy, A A
Nagaraj, N
Bantilan, M C S
 
Subject Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
Agricultural Economics
 
Description This study attempts to assess the changing structure of rural production and employment in the last
two decades and its implications on rural labor market. The rural labor market has undergone profound
structural transformation with labor moving from agriculture towards non-agricultural activities.
Currently, non-farm sector is no longer a residual sector, but an emerging driver of rural development
and transformation, contributing 65% to the rural Net Domestic Product in 2010. There has been
an absolute decline in labor force in recent times with a decline in agriculture employment for both
male and female laborers and this decline in female workforce is much higher than male workforce in
agriculture. The key drivers of changes include inter alia – higher growth in non-farm sector specially
infrastructure and construction, coupled with improved transportation and communication, differential
wage rates, improved literacy and Government programs. Such change in employment structure also
led to occupational shifts among different social groups with increased dependence of SC on rural nonfarm
employment mainly construction work, and reduced dependence on agriculture. Tis significant
movement of rural labor from farm to non-farm activities and migration from rural areas to cities,
especially by male workers to relatively higher wage work, has led to tightening of the labor market.
Thus labor scarcity has emerged as one of the major constraints to increasing agricultural production
in India. This has several implications on agriculture in terms of rise in farm wage along with other
rising input costs pushing the cost of production. Labor market also witnessed some structural
transformation such as the disappearance of bonded and attached labor and changing contractual
arrangement of rural labor. Casual labor is predominant but increasingly shifting from daily wage to
contractual work with increasing bargaining power of labor. Based on empirical results of the study a
number of policy interventions are suggested such as development of labor saving technologies and
machines to mitigate labor scarcity, inclusive farm mechanization program, especially for women and
youth, strengthening rural-urban connectivity, social protection to migrant labor and capacity building
programs for skill augmentation.
 
Publisher ICRISAT
 
Date 2014
 
Type Monograph
NonPeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Rights —
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/10392/1/Rural%20Non-Farm%20Employment%20and%20Rural%20Transformation%20in%20India.pdf
Reddy, D N and Reddy, A A and Nagaraj, N and Bantilan, M C S (2014) Rural Non-Farm Employment and Rural Transformation in India, Working Paper Series No. 57. Working Paper. ICRISAT, Patancheru, Hyderabad.