Post-Covid Labour Shortage, Wages and Mitigation Strategies in Punjab Agriculture

By using the data from 47 villages in 12 districts of Punjab, the present study examines the effect of lockdown-induced labour shortage on wages and farmers’mitigation strategies in agriculture. The labour shortage owing to the return of migrant workers, though not fully, but was largely compensated by the local workers unemployed from other sectors. On an average, the wages increased by more than 50 per cent over the previous year. The wages increased as compared to the previous year as the shortage of migrant workers due to mobility. While the area under paddy affected the wages positively, the total number of agricultural workers had a negative influence. Farmers used three major mitigation strategies and reduced area under paddy by 2.6 per cent, adopted direct seeding of rice on 10 per cent area and practised mechanical transplantation of paddy on 1.5 per cent of area but none of these strategies could have a statistically significant check on wage increase.