Page 8 - Lessonnote_Change and Development in Rural Society

➢ The states invested in development of rural infrastructure like irrigation facilities, roads and
electricity, and the provision of agricultural inputs including credit through banks and
cooperatives.
➢ As for regular agricultural growth uninterrupted power supply is necessary, the recently
launched Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana is an effort by the Indian govt. in this
direction.
➢ The overall outcome of these efforts at rural development was not only to transform the
rural economy and agriculture, but also the agrarian structure and the rural society itself.
➢ As due to Green Revolution, the well to do farmers began to invest their profits from
agriculture to other business ventures, this diversification gave rise to new entrepreneurial
group who moved out of rural areas to growing towns. This gave rise to new regional elites
who became economically as well as politically dominant.
➢ This also led to the spread of higher education which allowed the new elites to educate their
children and later those children joined white collar occupations, feeding into the expansion
of the urban middle classes.
➢ In regions such as eastern U.P and Bihar, the lack of effective land reforms, political
mobilization and redistributive measures has had relatively few changes in the agrarian
structure as well as the condition of the people.
➢ The opposite is true for Kerala as it has undergone a different process of development. The
rural in Kerala is a mixed economy that integrates agriculture with a wide network of sales
and services.

Circulation of Labour

▪ Another significant change in rural society that is linked to the commercialisation of
agriculture has been the growth of migrant agricultural labour.
▪ As traditional bonds of patronage between labourers or tenants and landlords broke down.
▪ As the seasonal demand for agricultural labour increased in prosperous Green revolution
regions such as the Punjab, a pattern of seasonal migration emerged in which thousands of
workers circulate between their home villages and more prosperous areas where there is
more demand for labour and higher wages.
▪ Labourers migrate also due to the increasing inequalities in rural areas which have forced
many households to combine multiple occupations to sustain themselves.
▪ As a livelihood strategy, men migrate out periodically in search of work and better wages,
while women and children are often left behind in their villages with elderly grandparents.
▪ Migrant workers come mainly from drought – prone and less productive regions, and they
go to work for part of the year on farms in the Punjab and Haryana, or on brick kilns in U.P
or construction sites in cities such as New Delhi or Bangalore.
▪ These migrant workers have been termed ‘footloose labour’ by Jan Breman, but this does
not imply freedom.
▪ Breman’s (1985) study shows to the contrary that landless workers do not have many rights,
for ex- they are usually not paid the minimum wage.