Agricultural labourers: Most important input in Indian agriculture

India is a global agricultural powerhouse. The country has some 195 m ha under cultivation of which some 63 percent are rainfed (roughly 125m ha) while 37 percent are irrigated (70m ha). While agriculture’s share in India’s economy has progressively declined to less than 15% due to the high growth rates of the industrial and services sectors, the sector’s importance in India’s economic and social fabric goes well beyond this indicator. India’s food security depends on producing cereal crops, as well as increasing its production of fruits, vegetables and milk to meet the demands of a growing population with rising incomes. To do so, a productive, competitive, diversified and sustainable agricultural sector will need to emerge at an accelerated pace. Labour is the most important input in increasing production in traditional agriculture. Agricultural labourers are socially and economically poorest section of the society. They are the poorest of the poor in rural India. The poverty syndrome among agricultural labourers needs to be read against such a background of prolonged rural underdevelopment, assetlessness, unemployment, low wages, under-nutrition, illiteracy and social backwardness constitute the poverty syndrome among agricultural labourers. The agricultural labourers are one of the most exploited and oppressed classes in rural hierarchy. It is one of the primary objects of the Five Year Plan to ensure fuller opportunities for work and better living to all the sections of the rural community and, in particular, to assist agricultural labourers and backward classes to come to the level of the rest.