Migration of Agricultural Labor Towards Sustainable Development in India / D. Solomon Raj

Agriculture promotes economic development of the country. The first and foremost role of agriculture is its promotion of economic progress in the country by enlarging the savings of the niral sector and making them available for the development of industries. Migration of the population is a very common phenomenon. Migration means that they migrate either from one employment. Most of the Agricultural Laborers are landless or illiterates and live below poverty Line. Majority of them, own less than 4 hectares land. Their working and living conditions are pitiable. The Government has introduced many welfare schemes for them but the results are not quite impressive. But development has reached to only a small segment of agricultural laborers. Generally, the Agricultural laborers migrate to distant villages, towns or cities for employment. Being migrant laborers, they work in agricultural fields.

Agricultural is the major activity in the Indian Economy and more than 74 per cent of the total population of the country lives in the rural areas. The agricultural labors households showed faster increase of around 9 per cent over the previous survey as compared to non-agricultural labor occupation was observed to be the most popular occupation among all classes of rural labor households. The average household size was 4.48 persons at all India level, of which 1.41 persons were agricultural laborers, 0.15 non-agricultural laborers, 0.40 in other occupations and 2.52 persons with no occupation.

It was observed that the average daily earning of workers in rural labor households were generally higher than those of agricultural labor households. Therefore, an intensive study about the migration of agricultural laborers in India is taken up in order to highlight the ways and means in the process of sustainable economic development.