Relevance: Sociology: Rural and Agrarian transformation in India: Problems of rural labour, bondage, migration.
Rural labour are the workers in villages or rural parts of the country, remote part of the country who does not have any source of income other than selling their labours to earn money or piece of bread. they do not possess land or capital and do not have any kind of control over land and capital. They are solely dependent on daily wages which they gross through working physically engaging full day in the tough physical work. they works in agricultural or non-agriculture occupations in return for wages in cash or kind.
Rural Labour suffers with lot of miseries and have huge number of problems:
Security of tenure: There is a huge trouble faced by rural labour when there is come a question related to security of their tenures.
Wages: concern of wages as what they receive in their hands at the end of the day is much more less then what they put through out the day. Incomes of this workforce is significantly low, and within this there is discrimination and equal remuneration problem which comes forward as women are paid significantly low in comparison to man. there is a huge pay gap which Indian rural workforce witnesses. Women of rural parts of the India performs significantly more including working for wages and completing all household chores.
Bonded Labours: Labour which remain in bondage for specific period for debt incurred are called bonded Laboures. They mostly discharge their lives completing all the duties asked to perform by debt giver. These form of labour spent their lives in terms of bondage. There are several factors which contribute to bondage, national commission on rural labour spelled out factors responsible for it 1) Economic Factors 2) Social factors 3) Religious factors 4) etc.
Economic Factors : Economic factor is an emblematic factor responsible for emergence of bondage labour like Extreme poverty, inability of people to find the work, Inadequate annexation of land and capital by superior families. Natural Calamities like draught , flood etc. which creates a lot of economic instability for the poor people contributes to bondage labour emergence. Inflation and rising price of basic commodities which are consumed on daily basis.
Social Factors : In india social ceremonies are burden for an economical unstable household or for those who are dependent on daily wages. people or a particular class who are dependent on daily wages it is very hard for them to married their children because of economic instability as marriage ceremony carried a lot of expenses with it so these social ceremonies creates a lot of debts on these domain of people and this lead them to engage in bondage labour. apart from this factors such as caste based discrimination, lack of concrete social welfare scheme, unequal education system etc.
Religious factors: dividation of Varna system in vedic period, it is considered that religious authorities supresses them and enforced them to serve people of high caste. Religious factors are also responsible for bondage labour class emergence. etc.
Hence in the hope of better opportunities better wages and security people of this migrate with hopes and aspirations of better work better payment. and this brings migration people leaves rural parts , remote parts where they undergone serious exploitation by superiors and head their journeys for a better ‘TOMMOROW’ which never comes ! how long it will happen people will exploited according to their caste class and culture? how long it will take to end bondage labour ? Are we get so faltered that we can not answer these questions. if there is an answer for it what it will be !