As I settle back into city life, enwrapping myself in civilization by constant trips to the neighbourhood mall, the rural-urban divide becomes stark in my brain. Terms such as ‘haves’ and ‘have not(s)’ are thrown about freely in every classroom until the words evoke conditioned reflexes in the form of drooping eyelids and wandering imaginations. The rural stint I undertook this summer has helped in ever so many ways to open my mind to a reality beyond the confines of my parents’ home, boarding school and now University. By and by I shall attempt to, by a series of blog posts, assimilate all that I observed, felt and want to record. If you find that the order/manner of documentation is rather haphazard, I beg you to bear with me for the time being. Perhaps some order shall arise from within the chaos.
Firstly, a brief introduction to the context: This summer I interned with the Foundation of Agrarian Studies (main office in Salt Lake, Kolkatta). The foundation (F.A.S) is currently engaged in a project to establish agricultural relations across India (P.A.R.I). Thus every summer they conduct socio-economic surveys in different States. They usually pick one village each from about three districts with distinct agricultural practices within a State. Consequently, this year I was part of the field team that went to Rewasi in Sikar district in Rajasthan; Panahar in Bankura district and Amarsinghi in Malda district, both in West Bengal. The team further went on to a village in Cooch Behar in North Bengal, but I was beckoned homewards by then. The internship lasted for about a month and twenty days.
Our study in the villages had several objectives, the primary being computation of rural household incomes. The measurement of poverty has historically been a bone of contention amongst schools of economic thought. Even ‘Prank’ ISC economics enlists in some detail, the problems of national income computation- particularly in the unorganised sector. The design of the questionnaire (painfully long, I admit, but usefully so) thus interested me from the very start.
Income sources were accounted for under the following sections:
- Income from crop production
- Income from agricultural and non-agricultural wage labour
- Income from salaries
- Income from business and trade, rent, interest earnings, pensions, remittances, scholarships and all other sources
- Income from animal resources
The first sub-heading, i.e. crop production comprised the lion’s share of the schedule. Here we collected under the following variables at the household level-
- Value of hired human labour
- Value of hired bullock labour
- Value of owned bullock labour
- Value of owned machinery
- Value of hired machinery
- Value of seed, home produced and purchased
- Value of insecticides and pesticides
- Value of manure, home produced and purchased
- Value of fertilisers
- Irrigation charges
- Land revenue
- Miscellaneous expenses
- Rent paid for leased in land
- Interest on working capital
- Depreciation of implements and machinery (courtesy www.agrarianstudies.org)
We also accounted for family labour (also hired and exchange labour) involved in every crop operation. This particular page was very detailed-it accounted for gender of workers, hours worked per day and number of labour days (per operation per crop). Data on assets held by the HH; amenities such as sanitation, electricity, water sources available; housing conditions; ration cards held was also collected. Since I was not part of the team that worked on income computation from data collected, I shan’t be able to speak of procedure involved post this stage. Needless to say, that it’s terribly complex. F.A.S recently published its findings in the Andhra Pradesh round of 2005-published by Tullika Books.
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