Project on Agrarian Relations in India
Rajasthan Round 2007 |
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Two villages were surveyed in Rajasthan in 2007 as part of the third round of the Project on Agrarian Relations in India.
• Dungariya, Udaipur district
• 25 F Gulabewala, Sri Ganganagar district
Dungariya, Udaipur district
Dungariya is a village in Kotra tehsil, Udaipur district. An all-weather road connecting Kotra to Udaipur passes through the village. However, one settlement of the village, Dungariya thala, was about 4 kilometres in the forest and accessible only by foot.
Dungariya is a small, mainly tribal, village. In 2007, 111 households lived in Dungariya. Of these, 107 belonged to different Scheduled Tribes.
Dungariya is a village where irrigation covers less than five per cent of net sown area, and subsistence agriculture is practised. Its households are also dependent on forest products for subsistence. The main crops grown in the village were maize, red gram, black gram, wheat and cowpea.
Most households cultivated forest land that had been cleared, and for which they did not have formal legal titles. Households collected firewood, mahua and other products from the forest. Very little agricultural and non-agricultural wage employment was available in the village. Public works programmes, including the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (which had just begun in 2007), were an important source of employment. Many persons from the village also migrated seasonally to Gujarat in search of employment.
Agriculture was mainly based on family labour, and additional labour power was primarily mobilised through labour exchange rather than by hiring in labour power.
Access to basic amenities in the village was very poor. There was no electricity in the village, no household had a water connection, and only one household had a lavatory.
25 F Gulabewala, Sri Ganganagar district
25 F Gulabewala is a village in Sri Ganganagar district. The village is about 25 km from Sri Ganganagar town and is connected by an all-weather road.
In 2007, 204 households lived in 25 F Gulabewala. The main castes in the village were Jat Sikh, Mazhabi (Dalit) Sikh, and Nayak (Dalit).
The village is irrigated by the Gang Canal project. The main crops cultivated in Gulabewala were wheat, rapeseed, cotton, cluster beans, and fodder crops. In recent years, a decline in the availability of water has resulted in a decline in the cultivation of cotton. In particular, a substantial part of the agricultural land in the village is left fallow in the kharif season because of poor irrigation.
Land distribution in the village was extremely unequal. About 65 per cent of all households in the village were landless. At the other end of the distribution, the largest landowning household had about 287 acres of land and 31 households had more than 30 acres of land each. Agricultural land was owned primarily by Jat Sikh households; only three Dalit households, out of a total of 123 Dalit households resident in the village, owned any agricultural land.
An important feature of agriculture in the village was a very high level of mechanisation. Of the 72 households in the village that owned land, 34 owned a total of 42 tractors. Another important feature of agriculture in the village was the widespread employment of long-term Dalit workers by large landowners.
Other PARI Rounds:
Andhra Pradesh Round (December 2005) (June-July 2006)
Uttar Pradesh Round (July 2006)
Rajasthan Round (May-June 2007)
Dungariya, Udaipur district
25 F Gulabewala, Sri Ganganagar district
Maharashtra Round (May-June 2007)
Madhya Pradesh Round (May-June 2008)
Karnataka Round (May-June 2009)
Rajasthan Round (May 2010)
West Bengal Round (May-June 2010)
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