Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chapter Notes
➣ This is a story about a hypothetical village called Palampur.
➣ To incorporate some fundamental principles relating to development.
➣ Small scale processing, milking, transport, etc. are carried out on a micro level
in the village.
➣ Various resources are combined to produce the desired goods and services in
the village.
Palampur’s Intoduction
(i) Palampur is a hypothetical or an imaginary village.
(ii) Farming is the main activity in Palampur; other activities are small scale
manufacturing, dairy, transport, shop keeping, etc.
(v) An all weather road connects the village to Raiganj and further to the
nearest town of Shahpur.
(vii) This village has about 450 families belonging to different castes. SCs
and STs live in one corner of the village.
(x) It has one primary health centre and one private dispensary.
(xi) The above facts show that Palampur is a fairly well developed village.
Organisation of Production
(i) The aim of production is to produce the goods and services that we want.
(ii) There are four requirements for production of goods and services. These
are known as factors of production.
(iii) First Requirement : The first requirement is land and other natural
resources such as water, forests and minerals.
(a) The second requirement is labour, i.e., people who will do the work.
(a) The third requirement is physical capital, i.e., a variety of inputs required
at every stage during production.
(a) Land area under cultivation is practically fixed. Since 1960 in Palampur
there has been no expansion in land area under cultivation.
(b) Some of the wasteland in the village has been converted to cultivable
land.
(b) During the rainy season (Kharif) farmers grow jowar and bajra, which
are used as cattle feed.
(d) In the winter season (rabi) fields are sown with wheal, which is sold at
Raiganj.
(f) Farmers are able to grow 3 different crops in a year due to the well
developed system of irrigation With tubewells.
(i) Modern farm machinery like tractors and threshers have made ploughing
and harvesting easier and quicker.
(ii) Continuous use and over exploitation has lowered the water table below
the ground.
(ii) 150 families, most of them dalits have no land for cultivation.
(iii) 240 families cultivate small plots of land less then 2 hectares in size.
Cultivation of such small plots does not bring sufficient income.
(iv) 60 families of medium and large farmers cultivate more than two
hectares of land.
(ii) Small farmers along with their families cultivate their own fields.
(iii) Medium and large farmers hire farm labourers to work on their fields
who come from landless families or families cultivating small plots of land.
(iv) Farm labourers are paid wages which can be in cash or kind.
(v) Wages vary widely from region to region, crop to crop and from one farm
activity to another like sowing and harvesting.
(vii) There is heavy competition for getting work; so many times labourers
agree to work for low wages.
(ii) Most small farmers have to borrow money from large farmers, village
moneylenders or traders.
(iv) Mostly loans are taken for buying seeds, fertilisers, pesticides etc.
(v) Medium and large farmers have their own savings from farming. They
are thus able to arrange for the capital needed.
(vi) They can get loans from banks at low rates of interest.
(i) Farmers retain a part of the wheat for the family’s consumption and sell
the surplus wheat.
(ii) Small farmers like Savita have very little surplus wheat because their
total production is very less and from this they have to retain a large part for
their own family needs.
(iii) It is the medium and big farmers who supply wheat to the market,
where the traders buy it and sell it further to the shopkeepers in the towns
and cities.
(iv) Large farmers keep their income from the sale of wheat as working
capital for farming in the next season.
Non-Farm Activities
(i) Dairy
(b) People feed their buffaloes on different kinds of grass, jowar and bajra.
(d) Two traders from Shahpur town have set up collection cum chilling
centres at Raiganj from where milk is transported to far away towns and
cities.
(i) The traders of Palampur are shopkeepers, who buy various goods from
wholesale markets in the cities and sell them in the villages.
(ii) They sell a wide range of items like rice, wheat, sugar, tea, oil, biscuits,
soap, toothpaste, notebook, pen, pencil and even cloth.
(iii) Some people who have houses close to the bus stand have used some
space to open small shops and sell eatables.
(ii) They ferry people and goods from one place to another and in return get
paid for it.
(iii) The number of people in the transport sector has grown over the last
several years.