Revision notes class 9th S.st (Economics)Ch:1

The Story Of Village Palampur

                 Chapter :1

🔆Introduction

🔅Palampur is a hypothetical village which is well -connected with neighbouring villages and towns.

🔅Raiganj a big village, is 3 kilometres from Palampur.

🔅The village is well connected by the road and most of the houses are electrified.

🔅This village has about 450 families belonging to several different castes. The 80 upper caste families on the majority of land in the village.

🔅The SCs (Dalits) comprise one third of the population and live in one corner of the village and in much smaller houses some of which are of mud and straw.

          Scene of a village

🔅It has two primary schools and one High school.

🔅There is a primary health centre run by the government and one private dispensary where the sick are treated.

🔅farming is the man production activity in the village Palampur. Most of the people are dependent on farming for their livelihood. Non -farming activities such as diary, small -scale manufacturing (e.g. activities of weavers and potters , etc) , transport, etc. are carried out on a limited scale.

🔆Organisation Of Production

🔅There are four requirements for production of goods and services.

🔅The first requirement is land, and other natural resources such as water, forest, minerals.

🔅The second requirement is labour, i.e. people who will do the work. Some production activities require highly educated workers to perform the necessary tasks.Other activities require  workers who can do manual work. Each worker is providing the labour necessary for production.

🔅Physical Capital is the third requirement for production.

Physical capital includes fixed capital (e.g. tools, machines, building, etc.)

🔅Tools, machines, buildings can be used in production over many years, and are called fixed capital.

🔅Working capital includes raw materials such as seeds for the farmer, and yarn for the weaver and money in hand.

🔅Raw materials and money in hand are called working capital.

🔅Human Capital is the fourth requirement for production. Human Capital means the knowledge and enterprise  needed to be able to put together the other factors of production into an output for self use or to sell in the market.

🔆Farming in Palampur

🔅Land area under cultivation is virtually fixed. However, some wastelands in India had been converted into cultivable land after 1960.

🔅The standard unit of measuring land is hectare.

🔅Over the years, there have been important changes in the way of farming, which have allowed the farmers to produce more crops from the same amount of land.

🔅All land is Cultivated in Palampur. No land is left idle.

🔅During the rainy seasons (kharif) farmers grow Jowar and bajra. It is followed by cultivation of potato between October and December. In the winter season (rabi) , fields are sown with wheat.

🔅Mid- 1970s the entire cultivated area of 200 hectare was irrigated.

🔅To grow more than one crop on a piece of land during the year is known as Multiple Cropping.

Modern Farming Methods: HYV seeds, chemical fertilizer etc.

🔅Due to these  change (in the late 1960s) productivity of land has increased substantially which is known as Green Revolution.

🔅Farmers of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh where the first to try out the modern farming methods in India.

🔅Overuse of fertilizers, pesticides and water is resulting into land degradation. The farmers in Punjab are facing these problems.

🔆After land, labour is the next basic factor of production.  Small farmers provide their own labour, whereas medium and large farmers make use of hard labour to work on their fields.

🔅There are many landless families in Palampur which provide labours. As the work is less for the number of labourers they are not given minimum wages set by the government.

🔅So some labourers migrate to the cities.

🔆After land and labour, Capital is another basic factor of production. All categories of farmers (e.g. small, medium and large) require capital. Small farmers borrow from large farmers on the village money lenders or the traders who supply them various inputs for cultivation.

🔅Modern farming requires a great deal of capital.

🔅In Palampur, about one-third of the 450 families are landless, i.e. 150 families most of them dalits, have no land for cultivation.

🔅240 families cultivate  small plots of land  less than 2 hectares in size.

🔅The minimum wages for a  farm labourers set by the government is Rs.300 per day (March 2017), but Dalla gets onley Rs. 160.

🔆Sale Of Surplus Farm Products

🔅Farmers produce crops on their lands by using the three factors of production, land, labour and capital. They retain a part of produce for self -consumption and sell the surplus in the nearby market. That part of farm produce which is sold in the market is called marketable surplus. Small farmers have little surplus output. It is the medium and large farmers only who have substantial surplus produce for selling in the market.

🔆Non -Farm Activities

🔅Out of every hundred workers in the rural areas in India, only 24 are engaged in non- farm activities. There is a variety of non- farm activities in the villages. Diary , Small Scale manufacturing, transport ,etc ., fall under this category.

🔅Some of the people are engaged in non -farm activities.