Notwithstanding the high incidence of disguised unemployment in the farm sector, farmers still face a harrowing time trying to get adequate labour during the sowing and harvesting seasons. In many rural areas this has forced farmers to abandon farming and give away their land to the share-croppers.

No doubt, there is large-scale migration of labour, from the poorer States to the richer ones. However, because many State governments offer foodgrains at highly subsidised prices to the BPL category, people work as per their will. In such a scenario farm mechanisation is the only plausible proposition. But, as rightly stated in “Farms vote for machines” ( Business Line , April 23), the uneconomic land-holding size renders mechanisation impossible for about 80 per cent of the farmers.

Here, consolidation of land-holdings of a cluster of farmers would be the right way to go. High food price across the globe being a reality, it is high time the small and marginal farmers are integrated in a manner to enable economies of scale in their farm operations.

H. Dash

Farm labour

The NREGA scheme is meant for the jobless rural people. To utilise the human resources properly, this should be made applicable to people who do not have jobs during the off season. It should not encourage laziness among the citizens. Hence, the labourers should enrol themselves at the respective local bodies and this local body should distribute farm work to the right people.

After allocating the enrolled people to the farmers, the remaining idle people only should be given the benefits of the NREGA scheme.

This will definitely eliminate the shortage of labour in rural areas. Mechanisation is the one of the answers to reduce the cost of labour; inflation in labour cost is partly due to the NREGA scheme, where some of the citizens are preferred to go for lighter jobs without hardwork.

V.V. Rao

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