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India is a land of villages as around two-third of the total labour force in the country lives in rural areas. The majority of the Indian rural workers are agricultural labourers. They possess virtually no human and physical assets and derive their livelihood from wage paid manual labour in agricultural activities. They constitute the most neglected class in rural structure. Their income is low and employment is irregular. Since, they possess no skill or training, they have no alternative employment opportunities. They are not organized, so they cannot fight for their rights. Because of all these reasons their economic lot has failed to improve even after six decades of planning (Raju, 2017). Since Independence, the state has been aware of the challenges being faced by agricultural labourers. Though the primary aim of the planned economy initiated in 1951, was to raise standards of living amongst the weaker sections of society, especially agricultural labourers, even then their impoverished condition remains same. Punjab with its predominantly agricultural economy was one of the states of India which adopted the New Agricultural strategy in the 1960s. Because of this new agricultural strategy, Punjab has made tremendous progress in the production of food grains leading to increased levels of self-sufficiency. But Punjab’s agricultural labour did not reap any benefits or see an improvement in their living conditions despite their significant contribution to the Green Revolution (Bharti, 2011). The wage rate which they are expecting to increase because of increase in their demand has not increased. The reason lies in huge inflow of labourers in Punjab from other states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. There were other setbacks, too. Due to the increased use of farm machinery and weedicides, the demand for human labour in the farm sector decreased significantly since the late 1980s (Sidhu & Singh, 2004).This has resulted in a drastic cut in labour absorption in agricultural sector. Moreover, formal sectors of the economy, both industrial as well as service sectors have not held good prospects for absorbing the surplus rural labour force. Therefore, it has been realised that non-farm activities in rural areas can become the primary source of employment and earnings for rural labour force during the slack seasons. But, most of employment opportunities in non-farm sector are temporary and casual in nature. The increasing casualization is a cause of concern as workers in this category may not get regular work and are more likely to be low-paid resulting in higher incidence of poverty. (Papola and Sharma, 2005). Over the period of time, there has been a moderate shift of rural workers from agriculture to non-agriculture until late 1980s and virtual stagnation in early 1990s (Biradar and Bagalhoti, 2001). The new economic policy has not made any significant impact on the conditions of rural labourers. All the indicators related to the well being of rural labourers have indicated that the new economic policy has worsened the lives of rural labour instead of improving (Jha, 1997).

The review of existing studies gives an indication of the objective of the mentioned study. A careful review of related literature is indispensable to provide ideas, explanations, to avoid the risk of duplicating the same study already undertaken, to suggest methods of research and interpretation of results etc. An attempt had been made by Lanjouw and Shariff (2004) to assess the contribution of the non-farm sector to the income of rural labour households across population quintiles. The analysis showed that the shares of casual non-farm wage income for poor, middle and top quintile were 16, 15 and 2 per cent, respectively. In contrast, regular non-farm wage income shares had risen sharply with the income quintiles i.e. only 4 per cent among the poorest quintile to as much as 21 per cent for the richest. Non-farm income shares were the highest in Himachal Pradesh, north-east states, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The share of income from casual wage employment was the highest among the poorest quintiles, while for the rich quintiles the share of income from regular wage employment was the highest. Singh (2009) conducted a study on agricultural labour in Punjab. The study depicted that non-viability of farming had forced a large number of marginal farmers to join the rank of the agricultural labourers or as industrial workers in Punjab. There was decline in demand for labour in farm sector while on the other hand; there had been large scale unemployment and substantial immigration of labour in Punjab. The rural labour households in Punjab showed the existence of indebtedness, low level of literacy rate and uncertainty and causality in employment. The author suggested that measures like provision of housing facilities, non-farm employment opportunities in rural areas, implementation of debt waiver, MNREGA scheme and social security measures, provision of an eight-hour work, weekend holidays, minimum wage rate, revision of wage rates during inflation, provision of life and health insurance schemes should be adopted for improving the economic position of rural labour households in Punjab. An attempt had been made by Pal and Singh (2014) to analyse the socio-economic conditions of the women labour households in rural Punjab during 2010-11. The authors found that the majority of respondents i.e. 72.89 per cent were illiterate. About 99 per cent of sampled women labourers belonged to backward classes. Their houses were in very bad condition. The average annual income of sampled women labour households was Rs. 40841.77. The women labour households received more than 58 per cent of their total income by hiring out labour in agriculture. Annual consumption expenditure of an average sampled household was Rs. 46708.21. An average women labour household had incurred an annual deficit of Rs. 5866.44. About 95 per cent of the sampled women labour households were under debt. A study conducted by Reddy (2015) examined the extent to which the phase of economic growth and structural change influence rural labour wage rates at the national level and among developed states. The study depicted that at all India level, the growth of wage rate was negligible during 1995-2006, but the growth rate of wage rate was higher than 5 per cent for both the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors during 2006-12. The states such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana had higher wage rates. On the other hand, states such as Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, west Bengal and Maharashtra had lower wage rates and higher rural poverty. The lowest wages were found among unskilled labourers. Singh and Singh (2016) attempted to examine the employment pattern among agricultural labourers in rural Punjab. The author found that the agricultural labourers were the victims of social, political and economic exploitation and discrimination. Almost 43 per cent population of the agricultural labour households were illiterate and 82.52 per cent belonged to scheduled castes category. Their income was too low to meet even the basic requirements for decent living. The majority of them were living below poverty line and about three-fourth of these households were indebted. The authors suggested that measures like development of subsidiary occupations, establishment of agro-based industries, employment generation programmes like MGNREGA, strict implementation of a minimum wage act, cooperative farming and abolition of forces of discrimination should be adopted for improving the socio-economic conditions of agricultural labour households. The present literature has shown that the condition of rural labour in Punjab is very miserable. The capacity of Punjab agriculture to absorb human labour has been declining over the period of time. On the other hand, there has been increase in the proportion of rural labour households due to increase in population growth and non-viability of small and marginal landholdings. This situation has lead to the problem of poverty and indebtedness among rural labour households. Although, government has taken many measures to improve the position of rural labour, but the benefits of these measures have reached towards them marginally. Unless and until their problems will not be solved, there will be no solution of many national problems like unemployment, underemployment, poverty etc. The present study makes an effort towards this direction.

The present paper is based on primary data. For the purpose of data collection, multi-stage stratified random sampling is used. According to the level of agricultural productivity in the state, the whole state has been divided into three zones namely low, medium and high productivity zones. The Mansa district from low productivity zone, S.B.S. Nagar from medium productivity zone and Ludhiana from high productivity zone has been selected on random basis. One village has been chosen from each development block of the selected districts. Thus, in all, twenty two villages have been selected from three districts. One-tenth of the households from the total number of rural labour households of the villages under study have been selected randomly for the survey. Thus, in all, 530 rural labour households have been selected. Two detailed schedules are prepared. One is village survey schedule for taking information of villages and another is household survey schedule for seeking information relating to the socio-economic conditions of rural labour households. Various statistical tools like averages, percentages have been used for analysis.

Per Household Income

The mean values of the income earned from different sources by sampled rural labour households have been shown in Table 1. The table shows that an average sampled rural labour household earns Rs.116590 per annum in the rural areas of Punjab. However, there are considerable variations in the levels of income earned by the different categories of rural labour households in the Punjab. These variations are evident from the fact that the mean value of income for the agricultural and non-agricultural labour households is Rs.108951.09 and Rs.122401.66 respectively for Punjab.

Table 1

Levels of Income of Rural Labour Households

(Mean Values in Rs. Per Annum)

Source: Field Survey, 2015-16

By observing the various sources of income of rural labour households, we find out that the main source of income of an average rural labour household is hiring out labour in non-agriculture sector (Rs.56281.13). It is followed by hiring out labour in agriculture sector, salaries, dairying, pensions, other sources and remittances. The average income from these sources found to be Rs.41241.51, Rs.10180.19, Rs.3569.81, Rs.2841.51, Rs.1766.42 and Rs.709.43 respectively. The agricultural labour households earn the highest income (Rs.83089.52) from hiring out labour in agriculture sector followed by Rs.9235.81, Rs.7192.14, Rs.3668.12, Rs.3170.31, Rs.1831.00 and Rs.764.19 from hiring out labour in non-agriculture sector, salaries, dairying, pensions, other sources and remittances respectively. On the other hand, the non-agricultural labour households earn Rs.92073.09 from hiring out labour in non-agriculture sector, Rs.12453.49 from salaries, Rs.9403.65 from hiring out labour in agriculture sector, Rs.3495.02 from dairying, Rs.2591.36 from pensions and Rs.1717.28 from other sources.

Pattern of Income

The relative shares of income earned from various sources by the rural labour households has been presented in Table 2. The table shows that the major portion of income of rural labour households for Punjab comes from hiring out labour in non-agricultural sector (48.27 per cent). The second important source of income for rural labour households is hiring our labour in agricultural sector (35.37 per cent) followed by salaries (8.73 per cent), dairying (3.06 per cent), pensions (2.44 per cent), other sources (1.52 per cent) and remittances (0.61 per cent).

However, there are considerable variations in the pattern of income of the different categories of rural labour households in Punjab. The agricultural labour households earn the highest income (76.26 per cent) from hiring out labour in agriculture sector followed by 8.48, 6.60, 3.37, 2.91, 1.68 and 0.70 per cent from hiring out labour in non-agriculture sector, salaries, dairying, pensions, other sources and remittances respectively. On the other hand, the non-agricultural labour households earn 75.22 per cent from hiring out labour in non-agriculture sector, 10.17 per cent from salaries, 7.68 per cent from hiring out labour in agriculture sector, 2.86 per cent from dairying, 2.12 per cent from pensions, 1.40 per cent from other sources and 0.55 per cent from remittances.

Table 2

Pattern of Income of Rural Labour Households

(Percentage of Total Income)

Source: Computed from Table 1.

Per Capita Income

The average family size of the sampled rural labour households is 5.18. The average family size is 5.12 and 5.23 for the agricultural labour and non-agricultural labour households, respectively. Since the family size across the different categories varies, it becomes necessary to look into the per capita income levels of the different categories of sampled rural labour households. The per capita income earned by the different categories of rural labour households is given in Table 3. An average rural labour household earns per capita income of Rs.22507.72 annually. The per capita income is Rs.21279.51 and Rs.23403.76 for the agricultural labour and non-agricultural labour households respectively.

Table 3

Per Capita Income of Rural Labour Households

(In Rs. Per Annum)

Source: Computed from Table 1

The per capita income from hiring out labour in agricultural sector is the highest (Rs.16228.43) for agricultural labour and the lowest for non-agricultural labour households (Rs.1798.02). The per capita income from hiring out labour in non-agricultural sector is the highest (Rs.17604.80) for non-agricultural labour and the lowest for the agricultural labour households (Rs.1803.87). So far as the per capita income from dairying, pension, remittances and other sources is concerned, it is the highest for agricultural labour and the lowest for non-agricultural labour category.

Distribution of Per Household and Per Capita Income

The extent of inequality in the distribution of income of sampled rural labour households has been monitored on the basis of per household income and per capita income for each docile group after arranging the same in the ascending order. Gini coefficients have also been calculated to justify the pattern of distribution. Gini coefficient conveys better distribution if it is close to zero and shows worse distribution if it is close to unity.

Household Income Distribution

The distribution of total household income among the different categories of the sampled rural labour households is reflected in Table 4. The table shows that the bottom 10 per cent of rural labour households share only 6.81 per cent of the total income earned by the all sampled households. The top 10 per cent households appropriate 14.65 per cent of the total income of all the sampled rural labour households. It is evident from the table that the bottom 50 per cent households account merely 44.89 per cent of the total income of the rural labour households, whereas top 20 per cent households account for nearly 26.4 per cent of the total income for all sampled households.

Table 4

Distribution of Household Income of Rural Labour Households

                  

 Source: Field Survey, 2015-16.

A similar picture emerges from the different categories of sampled rural labour households. The bottom 10 per cent of the agricultural and non-agricultural labour households claims 6.60 and 6.99 per cent of the total income. On the other hand, the top 10 per cent households from agricultural and non-agricultural labour households appropriate 15.33 and 15.24 per cent of their total income respectively. The agricultural non-agricultural labour households shows some fair distribution of income. The values of Gini coefficient for all sampled rural labour households, agricultural and non-agricultural labour households are 0.10, 0.14 and 0.12 respectively.

Distribution of Per Capita Income

The data showing the distribution of per capita income of rural labour households is represented in Table 5. The table shows that the bottom 10 per cent of rural labour household share only 6.66 per cent of the total per capita income earned by all the sampled households. The top 10 per cent households appropriate 14.42 per cent of the per capita income of all the sampled rural labour households. The Gini coefficient comes out to be 0.12 for all rural labour households across the zones which show a better distribution of per capita income among them.

The table further reveals that the bottom 10 percent of the agricultural and non-agricultural labour households claim only 6.52 and 7.05 per cent of the total per capita income respectively. Whereas, the top 10 per cent households from agricultural and non-agricultural labour household appropriate only 13.89 and 14.70 per cent of the total per capita income respectively. The value of Gini coefficient for agricultural and non-agricultural labour households is 0.12 which conveys better distribution of total per capita income among them.

Table 5

Distribution of Per Capita Income of Rural Labour Households

 Source: Field Survey, 2015-16

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