Tilling the soil even as pay drops

According to the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector8217;s report on conditions of work, there were an estimated 249 million rural agricultural workers as of 2004-05. That works out to 73 per cent of the total rural workforce of 343 million. Their share in total rural unorganised sector employment is 96 per cent. The share of the agricultural workforce has declined gradually during the last two decades with diversification of rural employment to non-agricultural activities. The situation is still one of overwhelming presence of agriculture, but the signs of economic diversification are quite strong, albeit, slow.

Across the states, the pace of decline has been sharp in Kerala, Punjab and West Bengal. However, the share of agricultural workers continue to remain high in Karnataka, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa.

While agriculture no longer dominates the Indian economy in terms of national output, it still dominates in terms of employment. There needs to be a broader and more balanced structural transformation and declining share of income needs to be accompanied by an equivalent decline in employment.