Unseasonal rain might aggravate farm labour shortage

A study says MGNREGA should be tweaked to address shortage

The recent bout of heavy unseasonal rain in many parts of the country could aggravate the shortage of farm labour and also push up wages, for which the Centre needs to make some structural changes like altering the provisions of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

The provisions could be altered to include agricultural activities like weeding, irrigating, sowing, cutting and harvesting into its ambit and introduction of seasonal calendars at gram panchayat level, experts and government officials said on Wednesday.

According to a recent study by industry association Ficci and KPMG on the status of labour in Indian agriculture between 2004-05 and 2011-12, though the total size of India’s labour force increased by around 10 million, the size of agriculture workforce declined by 30.57 million people, the first period when there was a reduction in absolute numbers.

“The share of agriculture workforce in India’s total workforce declined from 56.7 per cent to 48.8 per cent during the same period,” the report said.

It not only indicates that fewer people are being added to the workforce in agriculture but also highlights the net migration to other sectors.

The report said shift towards MGNREGS and general decline in agriculture wages in comparison to wages in secondary and tertiary sectors are some of the major reasons for this fall in farm labour in absolute terms.  

Though rural wages have outgrown urban wages since 2006-07 to 2012-13, but it has been mainly due to wage growth under MGNREGS. On a segregated basis, close to 79 per cent of this drop in farm labour has been in just five states of Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal and Rajasthan, while all the other states constitute the rest.

“UP, Maharashtra, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal, which at present have substantial coverage under labour crops could face severe shortage in the coming years,” the report showed.

Crop-wise, labour scarcity has been maximum in paddy, followed by wheat, cotton, sugarcane and groundnut.

The basic reason for this decline, according to the study, is falling remunerations.  Wages of non- farm professions like carpentry, drivers, blacksmiths, etc., are at least 15-20 per cent higher than agriculture wages, while industrial wages is at least 1.5 times more than the agriculture, which clearly explains the preference for these sectors, the Ficci-KPMG report showed.

“The share of the primary sector in rural employment reduced from 71 per cent to 64 per cent between 2005-06 to 2011-12, the secondary sector, which largely comprises of construction, gained from this and its share went up from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, while a small proportion also went to tertiary sector,” the report showed.  

In Punjab, alone during the same period, the share of primary sector in rural employment went down by 8 per cent, while that in secondary sector grew by 11 per cent.  In Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Haryana, between, 2004-05 to 2011-12 more than 15 per cent of the workforce moved out of agriculture.

The shortage of farm labour has also escalated its costs and data showed that input costs like labour and fertilisers have increased at a higher pace than any other item leading to spike in overall cost of cultivation.

Apart from MGNREGA reforms, the Ficci-KPMG study also highlighted measures like freeing the land lease market to expand the size of holdings, investment in research to improve per hectare yields, encouraging custom hiring model to boost mechanization in farms and reforming the Agriculture Produce Marketing Act, which can address this vital problem.