Determinants of rural non farm sector employment in Punjab and Haryana a household level analysis

Abstract

Rural non-farm sector employment can and often does contribute to rural development, poverty alleviation, and reducing unemployment in rural areas. Moreover, with non-farm sector employment, the problems of agricultural distress and rural-urban migration can also be reduced for predominately agrarian states of Haryana and Punjab. In this study, the trend, nature and determinants of employment in rural non-farm sector of Haryana and Punjab are studied. The present study is based on NSSO s 50th round and 68th round s data on employment and unemployment. The proportion of rural households engaged in different employment activities differs enormously among both states and the proportion of households engaged in rural non-farm sector is increasing in Haryana and Punjab. There was inter-district variation in choice of employment activities in farm and non-farm sector in both the states. Moreover, the nature of occupations even in non-farm sector is also changing in Haryana and Punjab. The logistic regression model analysis and statistical analysis identifies that choice of participation/employment in rural non-farm sector varies significantly with dependency ratio, family size, number of skilled members, education, caste, land possessed, head s education. Furthermore, the study revealed that the economically better-off households and with large land holdings were largely engaged in self-employment in agriculture and economically weaker households or with low land holding were either causal workers in agriculture or in non-farm related activities. It is recommended that polices should be designed to enhance the education and skill of rural people of Punjab, so this can assist in transformation from farm to non-farm sector in high paid skilled jobs. The development of lagged districts and development of rural infrastructure is also prerequisite for development of non-farm sector. Moreover, the growth of RNFE may not be distress driven rather the development of rural areas and education promotes RNFE newline