Depeasantry in Punjab: A Case Study

A decade back, in village Kanjhla like other villages of the state, agriculture was the main occupation. Among the families selected, not a single family is doing farming now. They have shifted to other occupations like shops, labour work, and other small scale businesses to earn their livelihood. The main reasons for leaving farming were falling productivity, fragmentation of holdings, increasing prices of inputs, low profit, etc. They either sold their land or leased out their land. Indebtedness of farmers were also the main reasons for depeasantization. The next generations of farmers don't want to adopt farming as an occupation. The ‘push factors’ have affected a lot to these small and marginal farmers. The growth-led transformation is related with the developmental factors like mechanization of agriculture, increasing employment and income, high education level, urbanisation, development of secondary and tertiary sectors and even state intervention for generating employment opportunities. These factors are known as ‘pull factors’, which contribute to ‘pull’ the workforce from farming to more lucrative non-farm activities. On the other hand, distress-induced transformation is based on the hardship or crisis driven factors like falling productivity, increasing costs, decreasing returns and crop failure; unemployment and underemployment; increasing indebtedness and even suicides. These factors are known as ‘push factors’, which push the agriculture workforce towards non-farm activities to earn their livelihood.