98% farm labourers in BPL category: Study

Vishav Bharti
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, January 7

With the Congress government, which has been in power for the past two years in Punjab, failing to take a call on loan waiver to Dalit agricultural labourers, a study has brought out that 98 per cent of agricultural labourers in the state live Below Poverty Line.

In the run-up to the 2017 Assembly elections, the Congress had promised in its election manifesto that the loans of farmers as well as that of agricultural labourers would be waived.

The study aimed to find out the incidence and determinants of poverty among Dalit households in rural Punjab. It covered 543 households in 27 villages spread across the three regions of the state.

The study, which appeared in the latest issue of journal Social Change, has found out that going by different measures of assessing poverty, 98 per cent of agricultural labourers live Below Poverty Line. The situation is not much different for other classes, including rural artisans and non-agricultural, private employee households.

“The incidence of median poverty among the SC population is the highest among agricultural labourers, artisan and households of other categories.”

The study found that as a whole, Dalits in rural Punjab live in abject poverty. By taking 40 per cent of state per capita consumption expenditure as the poverty line, 95.75 per cent of the SC population is living below this mark.

On the basis of the World Bank’s extreme poverty measure ($1.25 and $2 per day, per capita consumption expenditure), 90.32 and 96.62 per cent of the total sampled SC population live in extreme poverty.

The author of the study, Prof Gian Singh, formerly with the economics department in Patiala’s Punjabi University, said the study observed that pro-poor growth policies should be launched to generate productive employment and empowerment among the deprived SCs.

Earlier, different studies had brought out that more than 80 per cent of agricultural labourers were in debt and they had to take loans even to meet their daily needs. More than 70 per cent of the loan amount was spent on medicines, daily consumption and house construction. A significant amount of loan, around 13 per cent, is spent on weddings.

Protest outside muktsar DAC 

Muktsar: A large number of farm labourers, including women, under the banner of the Punjab Khet Mazdoor Union, on Monday lodged a protest outside the District Administrative Complex (DAC) and raised slogans against the state government. Gurjant Singh, a leader of farm labourers, said they were not even getting the benefit of the atta-dal scheme, pension, MGNREGA dues and assured free-of-cost residential plots. TNS