Page 539 - AWSAR 2.0

The study was conducted in four randomly selected districts of UP, namely Jhansi, Muzaffarnagar, Sitapur and Varanasi, and two randomly selected districts of Bihar, namely Bhagalpur and East Champaran. The states were selected purposively as UP and Bihar are the two most important states where the share of the total out-migration of youth in the country is the highest with 23.83% (11.9 lakhs) and 14.89% (7.5 lakhs), respectively. From each district, 40 respondents were selected randomly for studying the psychological and socioeconomic impacts.
Based on the data collected from Census 2011, the number of young people (15–28 years of age), who were main workers as cultivators or agricultural labourers, were divided by the number of young people who were main workers other than cultivators and agricultural labourers to find out the proportion of youth involvement in agriculture. The results are presented in Figured 1 and
2. While analysing the decadal
change, it was noticed that the
number of young cultivators
decreased by 28.59, 26.48
and 76.48% in India, UP and
Bihar, respectively, from 2001
to 2011. But surprisingly, the
number of young labourers
increased in India by 49.09%
from 2001 to 2011. The overall
scenario indicates that India is
losing young cultivators, but the
number of casual labourers is
increasing, indicating an even
worse situation where youth
do not have farm management
power and are involved only in menial labour work with minimal income. The lack of employment opportunities may be pushing them to work as casual labourers in farms.
Fig. 1. Proportion of young cultivators to main workers.
The researcher developed a multidimensional scale to measure the perception of youth towards migration and found that most of the youth respondents in
both the states had favourable perception towards migration, indicating their high inclination to shift out of their native villages. Low return and high risk from agriculture were found to be the major constraints for not pursuing agriculture, whereas lack of employment opportunities, low income in village and education were found to be the major reasons for migration. High level of education, cosmopoliteness and aspiration were found to have a negative effect on the decision to migrate, while
the size of family and landholding had a positive effect. Therefore, it was clearly seen that educated rural youth with a high level of aspiration and greater control over life were less likely to make their careers out of practising agriculture. The reasons for doing
Ms. Sukanya Som
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There are high chances that these people live in poor conditions with menial employment opportunities. This has its due impact on the agriculture sector of the country as well. Shifting out of agriculture is high among farmers below 30 years of age