Socio-Economic Conditions of Agricultural Labourers in Punjab

Agricultural labourers are one of the most important components of the agricultural development of a country but it is contentious if the development in turn benefits the agricultural labourers. The following study was conducted in the year 2016-17 among 300 agricultural labour households in different agro-climatic zones of Punjab. The data pertaining to caste structure, family composition and other parameters was collected to enquire into the socio-economic conditions of these labourers in Punjab which indicate that 69.33 per cent of the agricultural labour households belonged to scheduled castes, 32.12 per cent of the sampled respondents were literate among which 64 per cent of the family heads were illiterate. Almost 88 per cent of the labourers were living in the pucca houses, whereas the average number of rooms was 2.37. In terms of the economic viability on an average 72 per cent of the population are non-earners and 28 per cent earning population carry the burden of these non-earners and the dependency ratio worked out to 2.56. About 84.11 per cent of households were indebted. The study recommends that there should be some employment guarantee schemes and loan waiver plans, specifically for the agricultural labourers to enable them to come out of the clutches of indebtedness and improve their level of living.