Role of improved sickle in reducing drudgery of farm women

The sickle is an ultimate choice hand tool for small and marginal farmers and farm women in the task of harvesting. This preference continues. The study was conducted on 50 farm women from Suro Ka Guda village of Kurabad block of Udaipur district. The sickles used by the local farmers and farm women here are non-serrated. The sharpness of these sickles is reduced quickly so the harvester needs extra time to sharpen them frequently thus leading to productivity reduction and loss of time. To study the difference in working efficiency, gross return and cardiac cost of work serrated sickle was tested upon the subjects and the results were compared to those using non-serrated sickle (traditional design). The results showed that the total cardiac cost of work (TCCW) was 340.0 beats/min, the physiological cost of work (PCW) 11.33 beats/min, the average working heart rate 118.0 beats/min and the average energy expenditure 10.28 KJ/min during the harvesting activity performed using serrated sickle. This sickle was found to be more effective as the parameters like average cardiac cost, energy expenditure and average working heart rate were reduced. Also the average gross returns increased from Rs 118.50 in case of non-serrated sickle to Rs 152.00 in case of serrated sickle use. Hence it was concluded that improved sickle was ergonomically friendly, reduced time taken in harvesting and also reduced drudgery thus proving helpful in conducting harvesting process.