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1.0The Story of Village Palampur
The most significant economic sector in India is agriculture. Half of India's workforce is employed in the agriculture industry, which generates 18% of the nation's GDP. "This Chapter explores a small village and the diverse agricultural and non-agricultural pursuits undertaken by the villagers to support themselves."
2.0Introduction
Farming is the main activity in Palampur, whereas several other activities such as smallscale manufacturing, dairy, transport, etc. are carried out on a limited scale. Palampur is well-connected with neighbouring villages and towns. An all-weather road connects the village to Raiganj a big village, 3 km from Palampur and further on to the nearest small town of Shahpur. Palampur resembles a village of the western part of the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Transport - Starting from bullock carts, tongas, bogeys to motor vehicles like motorcycles, jeeps, tractors, and trucks can be seen on the roads of Palampur.
This village has about 450 families belonging to several different castes. The 80 upper caste families own most of the land, their houses, some of them are quite large, are made of brick with cement plastering. The SCs, comprise one third of the population live in one corner of the village, in much smaller houses of mud and straw. Most of the houses have electric connections. Electricity powers all the tubewells in the fields and is used in several types of small business. Palampur has two primary schools and one high school, a primary health centre and one private dispensary.
3.0Organisation of production
The aim of production is to produce the goods and services that we want. There are four requirements for production of goods and services. (a) First requirement is Land, and other natural resources such as water, forests, minerals. (b) Second requirement is Labour people who do the work. Some are highly educated while some other workers are required who can do manual work. (c) The third requirement is Physical Capital, i.e., the variety of inputs required at every stage during production. Tools, machines, buildings can be used in production over many years and are called Fixed Capital. Raw materials (such as yarn for weavers) and money in hand (for buying and making payments) are called Working Capital, these are used up in production. (d) Fourth requirement - Knowledge and enterprise to put together land, labour and Physical capital and produce an output. This is called Human Capital.
A person who puts land, labour and capital together is called Entrepreneur. Every production is organised by combining land, labour, physical capital, and human capital, which are known as factors of production.
As we move in the story, we will thoroughly compare about first three factors of production.
4.0Farming in Palampur
(a) Land is Fixed
Farming is the main production activity in Palampur. 75 per cent of the working people are dependent on farming for their livelihood. They could be farmers or farm labourer. Since 1960 in Palampur, there has been no expansion in land area under cultivation. There exists no further scope to increase farm production by bringing new land under cultivation. The standard unit of measuring land is hectare, though in the villages you may find land area being discussed in local units such as bigha, guintha etc. One hectare equals the area of a square with one side measuring 100 Metres.(b) Ways by which one can grow more from the same land
Crop Rotation: During the rainy season (kharif) farmers grow jowar and bajra. These plants are used as cattle feed. It is followed by cultivation of potato between October and December. In winter season (rabi), fields are sown with wheat. From the wheat produced, farmers keep enough wheat for the family's consumption and sell the surplus wheat at the market at Raiganj. A part of the land area is also devoted to sugarcane which isCrop Rotation harvested once every year. Sugarcane, in its raw form, or as jaggery, is sold to traders in Shahpur. Well-developed system of irrigation: Electricity came early to Palampur. Its major impact was to transform the system of irrigation. People saw that the electric run tube wells could irrigate much larger areas of land more effectively.
The first tubewell were installed by the government and soon farmer started setting them privately. As a result, by mid-1970s the entire cultivated area of 200 hectares was irrigated. Multiple Cropping: To grow more than one crop on a piece of land during a year is known as multiple cropping. It is the most common way of increasing production on a given piece of land. All farmers in Palampur grow at least two main crops; many are growing potato as the third crop in the past fifteen to twenty years.
Use of modern farming methods: One way of increasing production from the same land is by multiple cropping. The other way is to use modern farming methods for higher yield. Yield is measured as crop produced on a given piece of land during a single season.
Till the mid-1960s, the seeds used in cultivation were traditional ones with low yields. Traditional seeds needed less irrigation. Farmers used cow-dung and other natural manure as fertilizers. All these were readily available with the farmers who did not have to buy them.
The Green Revolution in the late 1960s introduced the Indian farmer to cultivation of wheat and rice using high yielding varieties of (HYV) seeds. Compared to the traditional seeds, the HYV seeds promised to produce much greater amounts of grain on a single plant. HYV seeds, however, needed plenty of water and chemical fertilizers and pesticides to produce best results.
Farmers of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh were the first to try out the modern farming methods in India.
The farmers in these regions set up tubewells for irrigation, and made use of HYV seeds, chemical fertilisers, and pesticides in farming. Some of them bought machinery like tractors and threshers, which made ploughing and harvesting faster. They were rewarded with high yields of wheat. In Palampur, the yield of wheat grown from the traditional varieties was 1300 kg per hectare. Now there was a larger increase in production of Wheat and Rice. With the HYV seeds, the yield went up to 3200 kg per hectare. Farmers now had greater amounts of surplus wheat to sell in the markets.
List of Agricultural Revolutions in India: -
(c) Will the land sustain?
Land being a natural resource, it is necessary to be careful in its use. Modern farming methods have overused the natural resource base. Loss of soil fertility due to increased use of chemical fertilizers and reduction in the water-table below the ground because of continuous use of groundwater for tubewell irrigation are some of the negative outcomes of Green Revolution. Chemical fertilizers may escape from the soil and pollute groundwater, rivers, and lakes. Chemical fertilizers can also kill bacteria and other micro-organisms in the soil. This means some time after their use the soil will be less fertile than ever before. Continuous use of chemical fertilizers has led to degradation of soil health. Punjab farmersDegradation of land due to the use of Chemical fertilizers & Pesticides are now forced to use more chemical fertilizers and other inputs to achieve the same production level. This means cost of cultivation is rising very fast.
(d) How is Land distribution between the farmers of Palampur?
Not all the people engaged in agriculture have sufficient land for cultivation. In Palampur, about one third of the 450 families are landless, i.e., 150 families, most of them Dalits, have no land for cultivation of the remaining 240 families cultivate small plots of land less than 2 hectares in size. Small farmers cultivate small plots. On the other hand, more than half the area of the village is covered by plots that are quite large. There are 60 families of medium and large farmers who cultivate more than 2 hectares of land. A few of large farmers have land extending from over 10 hectares or more.
In 1960, Gobind was a farmer with 2.25 hectares of unirrigated land. With the help of his three sons Gobind cultivated the land. Though they didn't live very comfortably, the family managed to feed itself with a little bit of extra income from one buffalo that the family possessed. Some years after Gobind's death, this land was divided among his three sons. Each one now has a plot of land that is only 0.75 hectare in size. Even with improved irrigation and modern farming method, Gobind's sons are not able to make a living from their land. They must look for additional work during part of the year.
(e) Who will provide the labour?
Farming requires a great deal of hard work. Small farmers along with their families cultivate their own fields. Thus, they provide the labour required for farming themselves. Medium and large farmers hire farm labourers to work on their fields. Farm labourers come either from landless families or families cultivating small plots of land. They are paid wages by the farmer for whom
Agricultural labourers in India they work. Wages can be in cash or in kind e.g., crop. Sometimes labourers get meals also. Wages vary widely from region to region, from crop to crop, from one farm activity to another (like souring and harvesting) There is also a wide variation in the duration of employment. A farm labourer might be employed daily, or for one farm activity like harvesting, or for the whole year. The minimum wages for a farm labourer set by the government are Rs 300 (as per March 2019). But a labourer gets only Rs. 160. There is heavy competition for work among the farm labourers in Palampur, so people agree to work for lower wages.
(f) The capital needed in farming
Most small farmers have to borrow money to arrange for the capital. They borrow from large farmers or the village money lenders or the traders who supply various inputs for cultivation. The rate of interest on such loans is very high. They are put to great distress to repay the loan. Large farmers charge them high interest rate, have to work for the large farmers during the busy harvesting time and that also at a rate much lower then, the minimum wages set by government. This leads to overall exploitation. In contrast to the small farmers, the medium and large farmers have their own savings from farming. They are thus able to arrange for the capital needed.Savita is a small farmer. She plans to cultivate wheat on her 1 hectare of land. Besides seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides, she needs cash to buy water and repair her farm instruments. She estimates that the working capital itself would cost a minimum of Rs 3,000. She doesn't have the money, so she decides to borrow from Tejpal Singh, a large farmer. Tejpal Singh agrees to give Savita the loan at an interest rate of 24 per cent for four months, which is a very high interest rate. Savita also has to promise to work on his field as a farm labourer during the harvest season at Rs 100 per day. As you can tell, this wage is quite low. Savita knows that she will have to work very hard to complete harvesting on her own field, and then work as a farm labourer for Tejpal Singh. The harvest time is a very busy time. As a mother of three children, she has a lot of household responsibilities. Savita agrees to these tough conditions as she knows getting a loan is difficult for a small farmer.
(g) Sale of surplus farm products
The small farmers have little surplus wheat because their total production is small and from this a substantial share is kept for their own family needs. So, it is the medium and large farmers who supply wheat to the market. The traders at the market buy the wheat and sell it further to shopkeepers in the towns and cities. Large and medium farmers use the earnings from the surplus products as savings, which can be used for lending to small farmers, who needed a loan. These savings are also used the working capital for the next season. Thus, they can arrange for the capital for farming from their own savings. Some farmers might also use the savings to buy cattle, trucks, or to set up shops.5.0Distribution of families in Palampur:
6.0Non-Farm activities in Palampur
Only 25 per cent of the people working in Palampur are engaged in activities other than agriculture.
(a) Dairy
- the other common activity Dairy is a common activity in many families of Palampur. People feed their buffalos on various kinds of grass and the jowar and bajra that grows during the rainy season. The milk is sold in Raiganj, the nearby large village.(b) Small scale manufacturing in Palampur
Less than fifty people are engaged in manufacturing in Palampur. Manufacturing in Palampur involves simple production methods are done on a small scale. They are carried out mostly at home or in the fields with the help of family labour. Rarely are labourers hired.(c) The shopkeepers of Palampur
Few people are involved in trade in Palampur. Shopkeepers of Palampur buy various goods from wholesale markets in the cities and sell them in the village. They sell a wide range of items like rice, wheat, sugar, tea, oil, biscuits, soap, toothpaste, batteries, candles, notebooks, pen, pencil, even some cloth.(d) Transport:
a fast-developing sector There are variety of vehicles on the road connecting Palampur to Raiganj. Rickshawallahs, tongawallas, jeep, tractor, truck drivers and people driving the traditional bullock cart and bogey are people in the transport services. They ferry people and goods from one place to another, and in return get paid for it.7.0MIND-MAP
The Story of Village Palampur