SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

In Seripura, there had been a large-scale migration, during the
mid-eighties, because of the severe drought situation. This largely
reduced the availability hired labour force in the village. In the late
eighties, the agricultural situation improved with the adoption of
diversified and commercial crops. This, coupled with an increasing
labour scarcity, led to a higher demand for labour, resulting in the
emergence of alternative labour strategies. The labour intensity of
sericulture in the context of labour scarcity has necessitated not only in
finding alternative labour strategies but also in altering and redefining
the traditional rural labour relations. The emerging importance of task
contract system in agriculture and the exchange labour system in
sericulture are seen as the results of labour scarcity. Sericulture has also
responded to labour scarcity by changing some of the rearing practices,
as for example, from leaf feeding to branch feeding and reducing the
number of crops by increasing the scale of each crop. Moreover, in the
emerging situation, the total family labour requirement in agriculture
became proportionately far less than that in sericulture. Further, with the
displaced family labour, many of the smaller land-holding families have
to fmd an alternative, either by adopting sericulture or become part of
the hired labour. On the other hand, the bigger land-holding families
with their traditionally out-of-field family labour, could find a gracefully
adaptable employment status within the household premises, in the
adoption of sericulture.
Given the regular and inevitable work nature in sericulture, one of
the major concerns of the sericulturists is an assured and uninterrupted
supply of labour. In this context, sericulture makes the best use of the
permanent and the crop contract labour as well as the assured casual
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