Levels and Pattern of Indebtedness among Landless Agricultural Labour in Rural Punjab Kumar Varinder*, Singh Balbir** *Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala **Professor of Economics, Department of Distance Education, Punjabi University, Patiala JEL Classifications: H31, Q14, R20 Online published on 16 September, 2014. Abstract Agricultural labour the weakest seqment of society constitutes around two-third of the total labour force in the country. This segment of the labour force being unorganized is deprived most of the benefits of the labour enactments. They had almost no alternative for better employment opportunities in non-agricultural sectors of the economy. In fact, the economic conditions of agricultural labour have become miserable, so it becomes desirable to study the economic conditions of the agricultural labour in Punjab. The study found that 85.37 per cent of the landless agricultural labour households were under debt Majority of them availed credit from large farmers, landlords and village money lenders who charged very high rate of interest. Because of the low levels of their income they were not in a position to provide adequate collateral security required for institutional sources. The main objective of the paper was to estimate the extent among agricultural labour households in Punjab. Top Keywords Agricultural labourer, indebtedness, landless, rural and Punjab. Top |