An analysis of Socio-Economic conditions of agricultural labourers in Karnataka-With special referance to Hassan and Haveri District

Agricultural labourers play an important role in agriculture development in any developing country like India as well as Karnataka. Agricultural workers constitute the most neglected class in rural structure and socially large number of the agricultural labourers belongs to scheduled caste and scheduled tribes. They are unskilled, illiterates and employment is irregular. Consequently, they are socially-economically lower range in the society. The study is based on both primary and secondary data; primary data were collected from 384 respondents in Hassan and Haveri district. Analysis was done using simple statistical tools like charts percentages and averages. The paper has tried to investigate the socio-economic conditions of agricultural labourers in the study area. In case of Hassan and Haveri districts agricultural labourers have been facing the major unemployment problem, very low wage, low income and low saving and they are suffered from indebtedness in the districts. In case of Haveri district large number of the respondents has small holdings, majority of the respondents reported that, even they are ready to work for small amount of wage because they are facing crucial unemployment problem. Haveri taluk has less number (0.3%) of female agricultural labourers and highest no-schooling respondents with respect of 14.3 per cent. Furthermore, Haveri taluk has highest with 0.8 per cent of the respondents use kerosene as their lighting source. Moreover, Ranebennur taluk has highest with 1.8 per cent of the landless labourers. When compared Hassan district, Haveri district agricultural labourer‘s socio-economic condition is not good. In this way government should take initiative to allocate the waste land, as well as to create new job opportunities in rural areas to improve the socio-economic conditions of agricultural labourers in the study area.