ROLE OF WOMEN IN AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

Transcription

1 ROLE OF WOMEN IN AGRICULTURAL SECTOR INTRODUCTION ** AVINASH PAL & RAJESH KU. PATHAK Mahatma Gandhi said that India lives in villages and agriculture is the vertical backbone of the country. Most of the third world countries economy is based on agriculture. Agriculture is a major part of our country's economy. The means of livelihood of 70 percent people are based on agriculture. Structural adjustment under the terms of the loan and first five year plan were loaded with policy issues which affected the farmers and women worker of the country's agricultural sector. Our country has a wide and very old setting of agriculture of about 10 thousand years. At present in terms of agriculture production the country holds second position across the world. The agricultural production in India encompasses field crops, fruit crop, plantation crop, livestock, forestry, fishery etc. So overall it is a huge industry which recruits or engages 52 % of overall manpower of India. The rural population of our country is mostly dependent on agricultural activity. Despite of the fact that there has been steady slump in the contribution of agriculture in country GDP, Indian agriculture continues to remain the leading industry in the country contributing vastly in the socioeconomic growth of India. States like Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and West Bengal are the leading states in terms of agricultural contribution of the country followed by the rest. Thus agriculture in India is the key industry and in recent times with implementation and initiatives of various government policies, NGO s and private agencies immense growth is recorded in this industry. The scenario of agriculture has completely changed with change in time but from centuries one thing that didn't change is the visualization of women as key labour in this industry. While men went out hunting in search of food, women started gathering seeds from the native flora and began cultivating those of interest from the point of view of food, feed fodder, fibre and fuel. Women have played and continue to play a key role in the conversation of basic life support systems such as land, flora and fauna. They have protected the health of the soil through organic recycling and promoted crop security through the maintenance of varietal diversity and genetic 64

2 resistance 1. Thus we can define the women's participation and their situation in the present economic growth under two distinct headings. 1. Positive scenario The women play a significant and crucial role in agricultural development and allied fields including in the main crop production, live stock production, horticulture, post harvest operations, fisheries etc. The nature of women's involvement in agriculture, no doubt, varies greatly from region to region. Even within a region, their involvement varies widely among different ecological sub-zones, farming systems, castes, classes, and stages in the family cycle. Women also performs numerous labour intensive jobs such as weeding, hoeing, grass cutting, picking, cotton stick collections, separation of seeds from fibre. Women also expected to collect wood from fields. This wood is being used as a major fuel source for cooking. Some of the examples of women's participations in agriculture sector are below 2 - Livestock is the primary subsistent activity used to meet household food needs as well as supplement farm incomes The majority of farms own some livestock. The pattern of livestock strength is mainly influenced by various factors such as farm size, cropping pattern, availability of range-lands including fodder and pasture. Women earn extra money from the sale of milk and animals. Mostly women are engaged in cleaning of animals, sheds, watering, and milking the animals. It is evident that the women are playing a dominant role in the livestock production and management activities. Poultry farming is one of the major sources of rural economy. The rate of women in poultry farming at household level is the central in poultry industry. Even though rural women are not using modern management techniques, such as vaccination and improved feed, but their poultry enterprise is impressive. Every year, income from poultry farming has been rising. 1 (last visited on at a.m) 2 (last visited on at a.m) 65

3 Mainly women are engaged in agricultural activities in three different ways depending on the socio-economic status of their family and regional factors. They are:- Paid Labourers Cultivator doing labour on their own land Managers of certain aspects of agricultural production by way of labour supervision and the participation in post harvest operations. Now we have entered into modern era where use of technology is so much. Every work method became scientific. Women are using technology and very scientific method to increase the efficiency and productivity in the agriculture sector. Some of the examples are; Navdanya is a women centred movement for the protection of biological and cultural diversity. It is a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 17 states in India. Navdanya has helped set up 111 community seed banks across the country, trained over 5,00,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and helped setup the largest direct marketing, fare trade organic network in the country. Navdanya has also set up a learning centre, Vija Vidyapeeth (School of the Seed / Earth University) on its biodiversity conservation and organic farm in Doon Valley, Uttarakhand, North India. Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic engineering, defended people's knowledge from Bio piracy and food rights in the face of globalisation and climate change. Kavita Devi has spent 50 years farming the way her elders taught her. Until recently, that meant working other people s land in the north eastern Indian village of Gosaibigha in exchange for 10 pounds of rice once a season. But since July, twice a month she s been joining about 30 women neighbours in saris who file into a makeshift movie theatre in a buffalo shed, where they watch videos from a battery-powered, handheld projector shown on a fuzzy brown blanket hung on a wall. In the videos, which run for 8 to 10 minutes, women from nearby villages demonstrate ways to boost rice yield by spacing the seedlings farther apart and using compost instead of fertilizer. They look very successful, Devi says later. I would like to be one of them. Since July she s been leasing a small patch to plant her own crops. 66

4 Technology is transforming the way women like Devi farm. In rural India, impoverished women do most of the labour using methods passed down for millennia. About 100,000 (mostly male) government and private agricultural experts roam the country to teach farmers modern techniques. But fewer than 6 percent of farmers have ever seen one, according to the World Bank, and women are often excluded from those training sessions because they lack legal rights to their husbands land. Digital Green, a non-profit founded by Microsoft researchers, is trying to change that. The group distributes pocket cameras and tripods to local women and trains them to storyboard, act in, shoot, edit, and screen videos demonstrating farming innovations. Because the villages where the women work often lack reliable electricity, it s all done via battery-powered projectors. Women who screen the videos keep track of attendee questions and monitor adoption of the practices to help directors improve later versions. Using the audience s peers as actors is particularly important, says Rikin Gandhi, Digital Green s co-founder and chief executive officer. Viewers identify with those featured in videos based on dialect and appearance, etc., to determine whether it is someone they can trust, he says. Villagers will tune out if they see items that aren t common in their communities, such as a plastic bucket or a watch. The table below (Table 1) explains the scenario of female workers across Indian States and also visualizes the percentage of women involved in agriculture as primary occupation and the rest shows that percentage that generates their income from non- agricultural activities like household industry, services etc. It can be clearly indicated that across all the states considered for our study women majorly generates their income through agriculture and agricultural activities. Exceptions were there like Punjab, Kerala, and West Bengal where women were comparatively involved in non agricultural activities. 67

5 Table 1: State-wise trend of Women Participation in Agricultural & Non Agricultural STATE TOTAL FEMALE WORKERS PERCENT OF FEMALE WORKERS IN AGRICULTURE PERCENT OF FEMALE WORKERS IN NON- AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES HIMACHAL PRADESH MANIPUR NAGALAND ANDHRA PRADESH RAJASTHAN MADHYA PRADESH KARNATAKA TAMIL NADU MAHARASHTRA GUJARAT ODISHA TRIPURA ASSAM PUNJAB BIHAR

6 WEST BENGAL UTTAR PRADESH KERELA The graph (Figure 1) below also represents women involvement in agriculture and non agricultural activities across diverse states of India 2.Negative scenario If we look to the situation of women from ancient to present, we find there has nothing changed very much. A multitude of derogatory attributes has been ascribed to women in post Vedic period. According to Manu 'a women must not be independent'. In every stages of her life she must dependent on other. In childhood, she must be subject to her father, in young stage to her husband and after the death of her husband to her sons. In this context the role of women has been visualized as a passive one,which unfortunately has guided the course of action in the past leading to their present status of socio-economic backwardness in general and neglect in the streams of development. still in the present scenario in India, the birth of a female child evokes responses which vary from feeling let down,disappointment and burdened. Anxious about the expenses that will be incurred at her marriage. this behaviour makes the female child realize that her status is secondary to that of the male child. 69

7 Considering the women participation in agriculture sector, they did not get that status which they actually deserve. Woman contribute considerably to household income through farm and nonfarm activities as well as through work as a landless agricultural labour. Given men and women different roles and access to resources, it is essential that agricultural projects take gender differences into account, Gender refers to a different roles, resources, rights, opportunities and responsibilities of man and woman in society, But still because of historic cultural barrier without a focus on gender woman's needs are most often left out. Illiteracy rate of women in India is also very high in comparison to men's illiteracy rate. It also result in negative impact on women's situation in agriculture. About 62% of women is illiterate where man's rate is 34%. due to lack of literacy the land of women is captured by most literate people by making them fool with various unlawful methods. even they don't get their compensation what they actually deserve. Agriculture is getting rapidly modern with the use of technology like tube wells, pump sets etc. these are all mechanics part of advance agriculture. there are also mechanisation in crop cultivation like use of rice hullers, combine harvester, hyv ( high yielding variety seeds) tractor etc. there are many reports which shows that improved agriculture technology accompanied by full mechanisation has negatively affected the woman from lower caste, lower income groups who were either landless or had small land. In order to generate more and more income, rural women often sell most of their own foods, eggs and poultry meat and left nothing for personal use. Due to poverty and lack of required level of proteins most of women have got a very poor health. Most of the women suffer from malnutrition. Women have very hectic life. Her work starts from dawn and ends at dusk. The daily routine work begins from house cleaning, fetching drinking water, dish washing, laundry, preparing food for family, care for children etc. She manages these activities very smartly. Even though women supply most of food production, yet her own food security is always at risk. Women farmers are frequently ignored in development strategies and policies. In most of the developing countries, both men and women farmers do not have access to adequate resources, but women's are even more constrained because of cultural, traditional, and sociological factors. Agriculture sector as a whole has developed and emerged immensely with the infusion of science and technology. But this latest emergence is not capable of plummeting the ignorance of women 70

8 labour as an integral part of this industry. In developing countries like India, agriculture continues to absorb and employ 2/3rd of the female work force but fails to give them recognition of employed labour. The female labour force in developing nations still faces the oppressive status of being majorly responsible for family and household maintenance. In addition to that their contribution of being a agriculture labour is suppressed under the status of family labour who work in farm in addition to her regular household chores. These problems of the rural women are further accentuated by the tribulations of illiteracy, underdevelopment, unemployment and poverty. Despite of the major productive women labour force in agriculture their needs and problems are somewhat ignored by the rural development initiatives. The multitasking potentiality of female labour bought significant propositions for agricultural productivity, rural production, economic vitality, household food security, family health, family economic security and welfare. CONCLUSION The purpose of this study is to analyse the women participation in agriculture across diverse Indian states based on secondary data source. Efforts were made to systematically collate the data and analyse the trend of women participation in each state. The study clearly depicts active involvement and participation of women in the agricultural sector in almost all the states with few exceptions like Kerala, Punjab and West Bengal where women are actively participating in non-agricultural activities which includes house-hold industry, service sector etc. The growth rate trend illustrates how much the population grew on average per year, over the multiple year periods. It is almost uniform for all the states showing very slight changes in few states which shows a bit higher growth rate than the rest. Thus the entire work can be concluded with the facts that women participation in agriculture is increasing with time and women are now acknowledged with the status of agricultural worker. Despite of the negative scenario and discrimination of wages and in working status for women the situation is getting better day by day due to implementation of various policies and initiatives taken by government and different NGO's the invisibility of women as an agricultural worker is plummeting and will further diminish in future. 71