Socio-economic Characteristics of Peasantry of Sub-mountainous Punjab

Abstract

The paper presents the socio-economic profile of agricultural households in the sub-mountainous region of Punjab. There are six districts in the sub-mountainous region from which the Gurdaspur district was selected randomly. Four villages and 80 farm households were selected using multistage random sampling technique two blocks. The data on various socio-economic parameters were collected for 2019-20. Most of the farmers (71percent) were in the age group of 40-60 years in the district. The literacy rate was reasonably good as only five percent of heads of the farm households were illiterate in the region. Most agricultural households lived as nuclear families (79.00percent) with an average family size of 4.81 members. The average size of the operational holdings was around 8.0 acres. The main crops grown in the region were wheat (38.23percent), paddy permal (21.95percent), paddy basmati(16.46percent), and sugarcane (13.79percent). The average income of the agricultural household in the Gurdaspur district was around six lakhs per annum. The main source of income of the agricultural households was crop cultivation (61.65percent), followed by income from off-farm sources (22.82percent) and livestock income (15.53percent). Across different farm-size categories, off-farm income was the major source of income among marginal farmers. For the rest of the farm-size categories, income from crops was the main source of household income. Average consumption expenditure was worked out to be 3.55 lakh per annum. In total consumption expenditure, the share of food expenditure was 23.62 percent, non-food expenditure was 63.41, and social ceremonies was 21.12 percent. The share of food expenditure in total expenditure decreased with an increase across different farm-size categories, while the share of non-food expenditure increased with an increase in farm size. Total consumption expenditure was around three times higher for large farm-size households than marginal households.