“A day of agricultural work earns around Rs 250, but women earn even less, sometimes around Rs 100,” said Kranti Azad, 27, a farmer from Devlaha village in Ayodhya, 135 km east of Lucknow. . “But now that those who work in the cities are back, women’s daily incomes have almost fallen to Rs.50.” Like Azad, millions of women for whom agriculture is the only source of income in rural India are now grappling with reduced savings and lost livelihood opportunities.
Although the pandemic has caused a recession in India, agriculture has managed to grow, with the Reserve Bank of India describing the sector as “light pointIn the economy. But despite unreduced agricultural production, jobs and farm incomes have fallen with a to augment in disguised unemployment, experts say.
Why is this happening? National containment announcement in March 2020 led to an exodus of millions of migrant workers from cities to villages, add to the overcrowded and agriculture-dependent rural economy of India. This jobs crisis has disproportionately affected women farm workers in rural India, field reports from Uttar Pradesh show.
Women in rural India have few employment options except the erratic, low-paying farm jobs we have had reported in April 2019. Over the decades, India has witnessed a “feminization” of agriculture, ie increased participation of women. More than three-quarters (75.7%) of women in rural India are engaged in agriculture, according to the Periodic labor force survey 2019-’20. Within the sector, there has also been a to augment the number of women working on farms owned by others; and a decrease in the number of women farmers.
In this story, IndiaSpend and Khabar Lahariya report by Ayodhya and Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh on how reverse migration and the increased availability of able-bodied men in villages led to lower demand for female agricultural workers in migrant origin states .
Loss of income
In the village of Devlaha in Ayodhya, Kranti, 25, lives with his parents and works on a small plot owned by his father. As the produce is barely enough to feed the family, she also works on other farms in the village. Since the 2020 lockdown, she hasn’t been able to find much work.
“Last year, when the lockdown was announced, the men who were working in the cities went home and resumed the farm work we were doing,” she said. “We had to sit at home with no income. ”
His family of three’s monthly expenses are almost 5,000 rupees, but Kranti only manages to earn about half. With no income and increased spending caused by inflation and medical expenses incurred during the pandemic, Kranti had to use what little his family had saved in the past.
Every farmer we spoke to told us a similar story.
In Mahoba district, southern UP, Chandi Bai works on his family’s 10 bigha farm in Ladpur village. She also increases her income by working as a paid farm laborer. Chandi Bai complained about declining demand for labor and falling wages.
“When the migrant workers returned, others in the village stopped finding work,” she said. Khabar Lahariya. “We used to earn Rs 200 – Rs 250, but now it’s less.”
Chandi Bai and her family are struggling to survive because they don’t have enough savings. “How can I save? Just vegetables for one meal cost up to Rs 50, ”she said.
Kunwar Bai, 50, a farmer from Ladpur, said she and other women are often turned away by farm owners who choose to employ male returning migrants in place.
Reverse migration has also resulted in lower remittances and increased spending, we have found.
No other opportunities
“The agricultural system in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where large numbers of migrant workers come from, depends on remittances,” said Ranu Bhogal, Policy Director, Research and Campaigns, Oxfam. India, a non-profit organization. organization. “With the foreclosure and the sudden drop in remittances, there has been a significant cash shortage.”
Kranti Azad’s family has 10 members, a few of whom worked in cities until the lockdown was announced last year. Their return meant that she had to take on more household chores even as family income declined. The household’s monthly expenses are now Rs 7,000 but its total income does not exceed Rs 4,000.
“Return migrants certainly affected women’s employment opportunities, even more so for those who depended entirely on agriculture for wage labor,” said Seema Kulkarni, member of the national facilitation team at Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch, an informal forum that focuses on the rights of women farmers. Return migration also meant that families did not need to hire labor – they had enough farmers within their families.
Even among women, it is those who are single who have been made more vulnerable by this crisis, Kulkarni reported.
Unemployment in disguise
The agricultural sector grew up by 3.4% and recorded record production and exports of food grains despite the slowdown, but this did not lead to an increase in farm incomes, as we have said.
Employment in agriculture increase by 7.9% (1.1 crore) between March 2020 and June 2020. This increased an additional 13 lakh by September 2020 – a total increase of 10.6% from a year ago. In July, 1.12 crore more people were employed in agriculture.
Although a spike in agricultural jobs in July is normal due to the planting season, this year’s rise this month has nearly exceeded the average employment range of 80 lakh to 1.2 crore, according to the Indian Economy Monitoring Center, a business information company that monitors employment trends in India through its Household survey on consumption pyramids.
But, these numbers hide disguised unemployment in agriculture – many of its workers do not have paid jobs, says Mahesh Vyas, CEO of the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy in an interview with IndiaSpend in August.
Madhura Swaminathan, Professor and Head of the Economic Analysis Unit at the Indian Institute of Statistics and the chairman of the nonprofit trust, the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, echoed this view.
“A lot of men have rented land and are self-employed because they don’t have non-farm jobs in the cities,” she said. “Here, the number of working days is rarely counted. You don’t have to do anything else, so you will be working in the field every day.
Almost 60% of employed women in India are engaged in agriculture, according to the Periodic Labor Force Survey 2019-2020.
“Women work the hardest in our country and I use the word ‘work’ very deliberately, where I distinguish work from employment. Women most likely work three shifts. They work in the fields, they work at home – they take care of children and the elderly – and manage the house ”, noted Vyas. “So they do a great job, but they are not employed in a successful way. “
Access to credit
During last year’s lockdown, women farmers earned less because they struggled to sell their crops: more than 90% of women surveyed in five districts of Bihar for an Oxfam India to study conducted between June and September 2020 said they lost access to the market because there was no transport.
Almost a quarter of the 711 women farmers interviewed in a Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch to study conducted in May 2020 said the same and added that they could not afford the high cost of transportation. Almost 36% of the 352 women who had taken out loans the previous year were unable to repay them.
As savings dried up with little or no income, lack of access to credit also impacted women farmers. It was therefore difficult for them to reinvest in agriculture or breeding.
The impact of the second wave was largely caused by the disease itself. Women farmers were unable to access the type of credit available in the first wave, said Kulkarni of Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch. “No one was ready to offer any cash benefit to women farmers because there was no guarantee that the person would live. [to repay the loans]. “
For women, gold and backyard poultry are wealth, Kulkarni added. “Every year, they continue to pledge their gold because the money has to be pumped back into the fields. Usually there is some clawback and they are able to claw back part of their mortgage. This year, because they said they’ve been facing these issues for over a year, they have absolutely no wealth to mortgage or pledge. “
In the Bihar study, nearly 44% of respondents said they had taken out a loan in the past six months and personal jewelry was collateral in 87% of cases.
Lack of data
While anecdotal accounts highlight the difficulties faced by women farmers, limited data and studies make it difficult to understand the extent of the impact nationally, experts said.
“Most of the studies are household-based, they target the head of the household who will be a man,” said R Ramakumar, economist and professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. “These surveys do not ask questions about inequalities within households, differences in results, etc.
Like most women farmers does not own land, they do not have access to public plans and other benefits. Only 10% of those surveyed in the Bihar study said they had used a loan under the Kisan credit card and more than half (50.4%) did not receive any assistance under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana.
The impact of the pandemic on agriculture and women farmers will be long-lasting, although it is not apparent at this time, experts said. “Agriculture is not just sowing and reaping. It is also about investing in and regularly developing land, ”said Bhogal of Oxfam.
The loan burden will continue this year, Swaminathan predicted, “It’s not a one-time effect. With zero income, how will households manage their consumption differently? There will also be an impact on input costs.
This article first appeared on IndiaSpend, a nonprofit data-driven, public interest journalism organization.
