Introduction of Village Palampur:
Farming is the main activity in Palampur, where as several other activities such as small scale 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 and further on to the nearest small-town of Shahpur.
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 the majority of land, their houses, some of them are quite large, are made of brick with cement plastering.
The SCs, 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 tube wells in the fields and is used in various types of small business.
Palampur has two primary schools and one high school, a primary health centre and one private dispensary
Organisation 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:
- Land – Other natural resources such as water, forests, and minerals.
- Labour – Some are highly educated while some other workers are required who can do manual work.
- Physical Capital –
Fixed capital – Those materials which can be used in production over many years are called fixed capital. Ex – Tools, machines, buildings etc.
Working Capital – Raw materials and money in hand is called Working Capital.
Ex – Money, Raw materials etc.
- Human Capital – The skills, knowledge and qualifications of a person, group or workforce considered as economic assets is called Human Capital.
Entrepreneur – A person who puts land, labour and capital together is called Entrepreneu
Factors of production – Every production is organised by combining land, labour, physical capital and human capital, which are known as factors of production.
Farming in Palampur:
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.
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.
Ways by which one can grow more from the same land:
Crop Rotation – The practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons is called 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 is 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.
As a result, by mid-1970s the entire cultivated area of 200 hectares was irrigated.
Multiple Cropping – Cultivation of different types of crops in the same piece of land at same or different time 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 modem farming methods:
One way of increasing production from the same land is by multiple cropping.
The other way is to use modem 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 relatively 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 also 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 tube wells 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.
With the HYV seeds, the yield went upto 3200 kg per hectare.
Farmers now had greater amounts of surplus wheat to sell in the markets.
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Will the land sustain?
Land being a natural resource, it is necessary to be very careful in its use.
Modem farming methods have over used 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 tube well irrigation are some of the negative outcome 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 farmers are now forced to use more and more chemical fertilizers and other inputs to achieve the same production level.
This means cost of cultivation is rising very fast
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, ie 150 families, most of them dalits, have no land for cultivation 240 families cultivate small plots of land less than 2 hectares in size.
Small plots are cultivated by small farmers.
On the other hand, more than half the area of the village is covered by plots that are quite large in size.
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.
Who will provide the labour?
Faming 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 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.
There is also a wide variation in the duration of employment.
A farm labourer might be employed on a daily basis, or for one particular farm activity like harvesting, or for the whole year.
The minimum wages for a farm labourer set by the government is Rs 115 (as per April 2011) per day. But a labourer gets only Rs 80.
There is heavy competition for work among the farm labourers in Palampur, so people agree to work for lower wages.
Problem of Migration:
Farming is a seasonal occupation.
For landless labourers, this means that they do not get work in certain months of the year.
They often migrate to cities in search of livelihood.
Many landless labourers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrate to Punjab to work as farm workers.
The Government had introduced the employment guarantee programme called MNREGA.
Under this programme, one member of each rural family is given 100 days employment in a year.
This programme has helped in reducing the migration from many villages.
The capital needed in farming:
Most small farmers have to borrow money to arrange for the capital.
They 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 than 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.
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 need.
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 were in need of a loan.
These savings are also used the working capital for the next season.
Thus, they are able to 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.
Non-Farm activities in Palampur:
Only 25 per cent of the people working in Palampur are engaged in activities other than agriculture.
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 grow during the rainy season.
The milk is sold in Raiganj, the nearby large village.
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.
The shopkeepers of Palampur
Not many 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.
Transport: a fast developing sector
There is variety of vehicles on the road connecting Palampur to Raiganj.
Rickshawallahs, Tongawallahs, jeep, tractor, truck drivers and people driving the traditional bullock cart and bogey are people in the transport services.
They carry people and goods from one place to another, and in return get paid for it.
