Agricultural Labour

Causes of Agricultural Labour’s Growth:

The causes operating to bring about the growth of the class may be
broadly up us follows:
1. Increase in population: Rising population is causing load on the
agriculture because the numbers of dependent persons increase while size
of land remains same.

2. Decline of cottage industries and village handicrafts. There was a

rapid decline of cottage industries and village handicrafts during the
British period, but modem industries were not set up to take their place.
These people were forced to seek employment as agricultural workers in
the" countryside.

3. Uneconomic holdings. The process of subdivision and fragmentation of

holdings has continued unabated for a long period of time. This has rendered a
large number of holdings uneconomic.

4. Increase in indebtedness. The moneylenders and mahajans often

advance loans with the purpose of grabbing the land of small farmers.
They adopt various malpractices like charging exorbitant rates of interest,
manipulating accounts, etc., and once the small and marginal farmers fall
into their trap, it becomes very difficult for them to get out.

5. Spread of the use of money and exchange system. Whereas,

previously land was often given to the tenants to cultivate (from whom
landlords obtained rent in the form of a portion of the produce), the
present practice is to employ agricultural workers to do the job. These
workers are paid wages.

Now the million dollar question is that those who are producing liquor, those who
are producing, Gutkha/ pan Masala/Cigarettes and other injurious products all
are billionaire then why those are feeding the whole world are counted among
the poorest people in the whole world?

(i) Displacement of means of subsidiary occupations whereby

existence solely on an uneconomic unit of land becomes
impossible;
(ii) Growth of absentee landlordism; and
(iii) The extension of money economy to rural areas in
replacement of payment in kinds;
(iv) Disintegration of village communities of the pre-nineteenth
century;
(v) Disintegration of the peasantry;
(vi) a severe agricultural depression in the late twenties ; and
(vii) 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.