2 - Changing profile of rural labour

Summary

Non-agrarian work identities in Chikhligam and Gandevigam

Work away from agriculture is no new phenomenon in the village economy, and in the past landless households had also to depend on work in the non-agrarian sphere for at least part of the year. Nevertheless, work on the land was by far the principal mode of employment for the landless masses. This applied to the tribal Halpatis even more than for most other rural castes in the region. Just a few decades ago, according to the 1961 Census, 78 per cent of Halpatis depended for their living on agricultural labour, a situation that has been irreversibly changed by the progressive diversification of the rural economy. The structural shift that has taken place can be illustrated on the basis of male employment censuses which I conducted in 1962–63 and again in 1986–87 in the Halpati quarters of my fieldwork locations (Table 2.1). Against the background of an increasing workforce over a twenty-five-year period, the number of agricultural labourers has remained more or less constant in the two villages, while other sectors of employment show considerable growth. Elsewhere I have given extensive consideration to the stagnating absorption of the local landless in agriculture (Breman 1993b: 286–96).

The expansion of non-agrarian employment occurred earlier and more vigorously in Chikhligam. Even during my first visit in the early 1960s only a minority of Halpatis worked on land all the year round.