Critical Analysis of the Government Schemes and its Impact With Specific Reference to Human Resources Issues in the Unorganized Sector in Rural Areas

Author Name(s): Dr. Anup R. Ranade
Author Email: ranadea@rknec.edu

Abstract

India although being a primarily agrarian economy, is still facing a lot of severe problems in its agricultural sector. In the present research paper a study has been done on the reasons for the distress in the agricultural sector. It was found that scarcity of labour and highly expensive labour force is the main reason for agriculture being no more viable activity at present. The reasons behind the existence of labour problem has been studied. It was found that this problem was not due to scarcity or shortage of labour in te market that the problem existed. The rural areas in the country are not sparsely populated and nearly 65 % of the Indian population lives in villages. The labour shortage had occurred because of implementation of two schemes by the Government of India in rural areas. The MGNREGA and the Antodaya Anna Yojana being implemented by the administration compositely results in a situation where potential labourers are unwilling to work beyond a certain limit and this limit is too little to suffice the demand for labour in the farm sector.

Keywords MGNREGA, Antoday Anna Yojana, Government Schemes, Subsidies, Labour Shortage, Agriculture

Introduction

India has been primarily an agrarian economy. Of lately the tertiary sector i.e. the service sector has shown exponential growth and hence has contributed greatly to the reduction in the levels of unemployment [1]. It has surpassed the secondary sector or the Industrial sector in terms of generating employment long ago. It has even surpassed the production sector in its share in GDP [2]. India has witnessed a technological revolution in recent years, which has resulted in India becoming a very attractive market for various service providers.

Conclusion

The NREGA and Antoday Anna Yojana are good initiatives taken by the Government to improve the condition of the poor labourers. However, this unforeseen conflict of interests has arisen, which has hampered operations of crores of farmers of India, and is possibly going to cause severe damage to profitability in the agricultural sector, pushing more and more farmers towards debt and losses. Hence it is suggested that NREGA and Antoday Anna Yojana be made conditional, with the condition that, the beneficiary of these schemes must have worked for certain minimum number of hours per month, ` say 5 hours x 5 days x 4 weeks = 100 hours, in order to be eligible for the scheme. Such a condition would encourage all the labourers to work for more hours, thus solving the problem of labour scarcity. Any step taken, to solve the problem may have its own drawbacks and may lead to its own ill effects. This however does not mean that we stop taking steps. Its important to identify timely, the ill effects and take corrective measures to control the damage. A system slowly evolves through this exercise, over a period of time. The problems get slowly minimized as a result of continued efforts and steps taken. Farming is a crucial activity in a traditionally agrarian economy like India. Although today Indian economy is making huge strides in the field of technology, manufacturing, and services industry, still in a well populated nation like India, agriculture has an important role to perform in maintaining balance and stability in the economy. A chronic shortage of an important factor of production like labour in the rural economy is already having a very detrimental effect on it. The fact that the problem exists in a highly populated country is in itself very surprising. The reason for development of such a problem of scarcity in abundance is due to the combined effect of the two Government Schemes MNREGA and Antoday Anna Yojana. Both the schemes need a few tweaks\ in order to fix this chronic problem of scarcity of labour.

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