Page 9 - Lessonnote_Change and Development in Rural Society

▪ Wealthy farmers often prefer to employ migrant workers for harvesting and other such
intensive operations, rather than the local working class, because migrants are more easily
exploited and can be paid lower wages.
▪ This preference has produced a peculiar pattern in some areas where the local landless
labourers move out of the home villages in search of work during the peak agricultural
seasons, while migrant workers are brought in from other areas to work on the local farms.
▪ This pattern is found especially in sugarcane growing areas. Migration and lack of job
security have created very poor working and living conditions for these workers.
▪ The large scale circulation of labour has had several significant effects on rural society, in
both receiving and the supplying regions.
▪ For ex- poor areas where male family members spend much of the year working outside of
their villages, cultivation had become primarily a female task.
▪ Women are also emerging as the main source of agricultural labour, leading to the
‘feminisation of agricultural labour force’.
▪ The insecurity of women is greater because they earn lower wages than men for similar
work.
▪ Women toil on land as landless labourers and as cultivators, the prevailing patrilineal kinship
system, and other cultural practices that privilege male rights, largely exclude women from
land ownership.

Globalisation, liberalisation and Rural Society

➢ The policy of liberalisation that India has been following since the late 1980s have had a very
significant impact on agriculture and rural society.
➢ The policy entails participation in the WTO(World Trade Organisation), which aims to bring
about a more free international trading system and requires the opening up of Indian
markets to imports.
➢ This led to competition among farmers. These are the indicators of the process of
globalisation of agriculture , or the incorporation of agriculture into the larger global
market- a process that has had direct effects on farmers and rural society.
➢ Many farmers in regions of Karnataka and Punjab enter into contracts with multinational
companies such as PepsiCo to grow certain crops like Tomatoes and potatoes, which the
companies then buy from them for processing or export.

Contract Farming: Contract farming systems, the company identifies the crop to be grown,
provides the seeds and other inputs as well as the Know-how and also the working capital. In return,
the farmer is assured of a market because the company guarantees that it will purchase the produce
at a predetermined fixed price. Contract farming is very common now in the production of
specialised items such as cut flowers, fruits such as grapes, figs and pomegranates, cotton, and
oilseeds. While contract farming appears to provide financial security to farmers, it can also lead to
greater insecurity as farmers become dependent on these companies for their livelihoods.