ABSTRACT:
The rural non-farm sector (RNFS) encompasses all non-agricultural activities: mining and quarrying, household and non-household manufacturing, processing, repair, construction, trade and commerce, transport and other services in villages and rural towns undertaken by enterprises varying in size from household own-account enterprises to factories. Rural farm and non-farm employment play an important role in the economies of marginal, small, medium and large farmers under rain-fed rice production system of Chhattisgarh State. Non-farm income is an important source to the marginal and small farmers during slack period, because Chhattisgarh State is belonging to mono- crop rainfed rice production system. Instead of farm sector, non-farm sector is also facilitating to structural transformation for providing the non-farm goods to the farmers. Thus, it becomes necessary to find out the significance of farm and non-farm employment in the context of mono-crop rainfed production system in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh State for formulation of appropriate policies. Hence, in the present paper, an attempt has been made to examine the income and employment pattern in rural non-farm and farm sectors in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh State. Attempts have also been made in this paper to analyze the income and employment inequalities in on-farm and non-farm sectors amongst the farmers of different farm size categories. The present paper is based on primary data collection. Informations regarding income and employment of 200 sample households engaged in rural non-farm and farm sectors have been collected using pre-tested schedule. The random sampling method was adopted for selection of villages and households. For the analysis of data collected from field survey, simple average and percentage methods have been used for fulfillment of objectives of the study. Gini coefficient ratio has been calculated to estimate the contribution of income in-equalities amongst the sample households engaged in farm and non-farm sectors. Decomposition of Gini coefficient ratio is useful to identify the relative contribution of each income source to the overall inequality. For the decomposition of Gini coefficient, the pseudo Gini coefficients are multiplied by the income share to each source to the total income and summed overall sources of income. The study reveals that employment in farm sector was highest and found to be 65.45 percent followed by 34.55 percent in non-farm sector. Thus, employment in agricultural sector (on-farm and off-farm employment ) contributes nearly 2/3 employment during kharif season. Women work participation in non-farm employment was found to be negligible. It was observed that the rate of employment in farm sector which includes both on-farm and off-farm activities is more ( 41.36%) when compared with the employment in non-farm sector which is only 19.46 percent. The proportion of employment among females in non-farm sector is lesser (0.46% ) when compared with the proportion of male workers (19.0%). Hence, to increase women labour participation in non-farm employment, establishment of women based small scale industries and cottage industries should be established. In conclusion, it can be said that although, agriculture plays a leading role in the generation of employment in rural areas of Raipur district and diversified job opportunities are available, but these are not sufficient to generate the non-farm employment. So, it should be strengthen through promotion of agro-based industries.