Agricultural Wages in India

“Agricultural Wages in India” are published annually by the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture. Agricultural Wages in India reports provide a long time-series of data on agricultural and rural wages. AWI data are provided for selected “Centres”, which are specific villages in selected districts. In most States, data are provided for five categories of agricultural workers: Ploughman, Sower, Weeder, Reaper and Harvester, Other agricultural labour, and Herdsmen. In addition, data are also provided for following categories of non-agricultural workers: Blacksmith, Carpenter, and Cobbler. The data are provided on a monthly basis. Annual series are created by taking a simple average of wages from July to June. For example, average annual wage for say 1993-94 refers to a simple average of monthly wages from July 1993 to June 1994.

Many studies have used AWI data to study trends in agricultural wages. These include jose1973wage,jose1974trends,jose1978real,josewages1988,chavanwages2006,krishnaji1971wages,acharya1989wages. A discussion on quality and reliability of data from AWI can be seen in rao1972agricultural and ghanekar1997wage.

Data from Agricultural Wages in India have been criticised for lack of rigour and uniformity in data collection. Some States do not provide data separately for different categories of agricultural workers and provide it only for “Field labour” as a whole. There are large gaps, both in terms of categories for which data are reported and months for which data are reported, which are indistinguishable from lack of existence of a particular category of workers in a given Centre at a particular point of time. In other cases, month-by-month data are routinely reported for seasonal agricultural tasks for months in which the work does not take place at all. Centres are often changed, without any explanation.

Directorate of Economics and Statistics asks the State Departments of Agriculture to provide data. Practically no instructions are provided on the concepts to be used in identifying different categories of workers, valuation of cash or kind, conversion of duration of work to standard 8-hour day, valuation of piece-rate wages or share-wages.

Nor are there any guidelines on the methodology for data collection. In most States, the village-level revenue officials (patwari or equivalent) just report the numbers on the basis of their local knowledge and in view of the numbers reported in the past. Given that the revenue-officials primarily deal with landowners and cultivators, in most cases, these are likely to reflect wages-as-reported-by-employers, rather than wages-as-reported-by-workers. It is expected that employers over-report wages. This is likely to have a serious effect not just on the level of wages but also on the trends in wages.

These caveats should be kept in mind while using AWI data and interpreting statistical results based on them.

AWI data presented here were computerised by Yoshifumi Usami and pertain to only selected occupations. Data for women workers were computerised for sowers and harvesters. Data for male workers were computerised for ploughmen and harvesters. For States/districts where separate occupation-wise data were not available, data for field labour were computerised. In addition to these agricultural occupations, data on wages of carpenters (male) were also computerised.

Download zipped csv file containing district-level data from here. Data taken from here should be cited as follows:

Usami, Yoshifumi (2014), Agricultural Wages in India, 1973-74 to 1994-95, Statistics on Indian Economy and Society, http://www.indianstatistics.org/awi.html

Download zipped csv file containing data from here.