インド・グジャラート州中部における農業労賃の低位性

農村インフォーマル金融制度との関連に焦点を当てて

抄録

According to the Agricultural Wage in India, published yearly by the Indian Government, the agricultural wage rate in central Gujarat remains around Rs. 24–30 per day. This is much lower than the rates in other areas such as northern and peninsular Gujarat, where the rate has risen sharply, reaching Rs. 60 during the 1990s. It is also perhaps surprising that the agri cultural wage in central Gujarat remains low even after the recent increase in rural non-farm employment opportunities that provide wages of around Rs. 60–200 per day. This suggests that the ‘trickledown’ effect of economic development to the agricultural labor classes is not working well. Why does the agricultural wage rate in central Gujarat remain at such a low level despite the opportunities of high wage, non-farm employment? Why doesn’t the‘ trickle-down’ effect work well in central Gujarat? This paper aims to examine this question through an intensive field survey at a sample village in central Gujarat.
The paper addresses this question by considering two factors, one external the other in ternal.The external factor is the limitation of non-farm employment opportunities. If these opportunities are separated from agricultural labor markets by high barriers (e.g. high education requirements), the ‘trickle-down’ effect will not work well. The internal factor is the local informal credit institution. As K. Basu (1983) explained in his ‘inter-linkage theory’, if the agricultural laborer is in debt to his employer with a low interest rate, his wage will also be low because the employee gets the benefit of low interest.
Investigation showed that 44% of the agricultural laboring classes (landless and marginal farmers) are working in non-farm sectors, and 40% out of the 44% are employed in high-wage and low-education sectors. No clear segmentation is found. On the other hand, the internal factor has a stronger effect on low agricultural wages. There is a local informal credit institution called Kaymi that exists especially in rural areas of central Gujarat. Under this local institution, 22% of agricultural laborers are in debt to their employers free of interest. Evaluating the benefit of interest-free credit that is enjoyed by these laborers gives their ‘effective wage’ to be Rs. 48, which is close to the wage of non-farm employment. This local institution also affects low wages of the other 78% of agricultural labors. With restricted opportunities for the agricultural labor classes to get formal loans, this local informal institution is the only way for them to obtain credit and ease risk burdens associated with their livelihood. This paper also asserts that this kind of ‘social institution’ has been developed upon long-term social relationships that are based onland distribution inequity, which closely corresponds to caste segmentation.