Q2 of 13 Page 115

Why are the wages for farm laborers in Rampur less than minimum wages?

Small farmers along with their families mostly cultivate their own fields. Generally, they provide the labour required for farming themselves. Medium and large farmers hire farm labourers to work on their fields. There is heavy competition for work among the farm labourers in Rampur, so people agree to work for lower wages. With large farmers increasingly relying on machines like tractors, threshers, harvesters, the number of days of work available to a worker is very low in rural areas. Hence their wages are lower than minimum wages.


More from this chapter

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1

Every village in India is surveyed once in ten years during the Census, and the details are presented in the following format. Fill up the following based on information on Rampur.

a. Location: Western part of Uttar Pradesh


b. The total area of the Village: 246-hectare


c. Land use (in hectares):



 3

Talk to two laborers from your region. Choose either farm laborers or laborers working at construction sites. What wages do they get? Are they paid in cash or kind?

Do they get work regularly? Are they in debt?

 4

What are the different ways of increasing production on the same piece of land? Use examples to explain.

 5

How do the medium and large farmers obtain capital for farming? How is it different from the small farmers?