The Story Of Village Palampur Class 10 Economics Chapter 1 Notes

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The Story of Village Palampur Class 10 Economics Chapter 1 Notes

Introduction

Story introduces basic production concepts via a hypothetical village named Palampur.
Main activity: Farming, with other activities like small scale manufacturing, dairy, and transport.
Production activities require various resources: natural, man-made, human effort, and money.
Learning how resources combine to produce goods and services in the village.
Palampur is well-connected to neighboring villages and towns.
Raiganj, a big village, is 3 km away from Palampur.
An all-weather road connects Palampur to Raiganj and further to the nearest small town of Shahpur.
Various modes of transport seen on the road: bullock carts, tongas, bogeys loaded with jaggery, as well as motor vehicles like motorcycles, jeeps, tractors, and trucks.
Palampur has approximately 450 families of various castes.
80 upper caste families own the majority of land, residing in brick houses with cement plastering.
SCs (dalits) make up one-third of the population, residing in a specific corner of the village in smaller mud and straw houses.
Most houses have electric connections, used to power tubewells in fields and small businesses.
Two primary schools and one high school in Palampur.
Government-run primary health center and one private dispensary for medical treatment.
Palampur is an imaginary village used to explore various production activities.
Farming is the primary production activity in Indian villages.
Non-farm activities include small manufacturing, transport, and shop-keeping.
The story will delve into both farming and non-farm activities after discussing general production concepts.

Organisation of Production

Production aims to generate desired goods and services.
Four requirements for production: land and natural resources (water, forests, minerals), labor, physical capital, and entrepreneurship.
Labor is essential, including both highly educated and manual workers.
Physical capital refers to the variety of inputs needed at different production stages.
Physical capital includes tools, machines, and buildings.
Tools and machines vary from simple (like a farmer’s plough) to complex (like generators, turbines, computers).
Tools, machines, and buildings are called fixed capital and can be used over many years.
Raw materials and money in hand are also part of physical capital.
Raw materials (like yarn for a weaver or clay for a potter) and money are essential for production.
Raw materials and money are considered working capital and are used up during production.
The fourth requirement for production is knowledge and enterprise, referred to as human capital.
Human capital is essential for organizing land, labor, and physical capital to produce goods or services.
Production involves combining land, labor, physical capital, and human capital, known as factors of production.
The story of Palampur will focus on exploring the first three factors of production.

Farming in Palampur

1. Land is fixed

Farming is the primary production activity in Palampur, with 75% of the population dependent on it for livelihood.
The well-being of the people is closely linked to farm production.
However, there’s a constraint: the land area for cultivation is fixed.
Since 1960, there has been no expansion in the land area under cultivation in Palampur.
Some wastelands were converted to cultivable land, but there’s no further scope to increase farm production by bringing new land under cultivation.
Land area is measured in hectares, but in villages, local units like bigha, guintha, etc., are commonly used.
One hectare equals the area of a square with one side measuring 100 meters.

2. Is there a way one can grow more from the same land?

Palampur resembles villages in the western part of Uttar Pradesh in terms of crops grown and facilities available.
All land in Palampur is cultivated, with no idle land.
During the rainy season (kharif), farmers grow jowar and bajra for cattle feed.
Between October and December, farmers cultivate potatoes.
In the winter season (rabi), fields are sown with wheat, with surplus wheat sold at the market in Raiganj.
Some land is devoted to sugarcane, harvested once a year and sold in raw form or as jaggery to traders in Shahpur.
Farmers in Palampur are able to grow three different crops in a year due to a well-developed irrigation system.
Electricity’s early arrival in Palampur transformed the irrigation system.
Previously, Persian wheels were used for irrigation, but electric-run tubewells proved more effective.
Initially, the government installed the first few tubewells, but soon farmers began setting up private ones.
By the mid-1970s, the entire cultivated area of 200 hectares was irrigated.
Multiple cropping is growing more than one crop on a piece of land during the year, common in Palampur to increase production.
All farmers in Palampur grow at least two main crops, with many adopting potato as a third crop in the past fifteen to twenty years.
Another method to increase production is using modern farming methods for higher yield.
Yield is measured as the crop produced on a given piece of land during a single season.
Until the mid-1960s, traditional seeds with relatively low yields were used in cultivation, requiring less irrigation.
Farmers used cow dung and other natural manure as fertilizers, readily available without having to buy them.
The Green Revolution in the late 1960s introduced Indian farmers to cultivating wheat and rice using high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of seeds.
HYV seeds promised significantly greater grain production per plant compared to traditional seeds.
Adoption of HYV seeds led to far larger quantities of food grains produced from the same land.
However, HYV seeds required ample water, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides for optimal results.
Higher yields were achievable only through a combination of HYV seeds, irrigation, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
Farmers in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh were the first to adopt modern farming methods in India.
They utilized tubewells for irrigation, HYV seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
Some farmers also invested in farm machinery like tractors and threshers, speeding up plowing and harvesting processes.
These modern methods resulted in high yields of wheat.
In Palampur, traditional wheat varieties yielded 1300 kg per hectare, while HYV seeds increased the yield to 3200 kg per hectare.
This led to a significant increase in wheat production, providing farmers with greater surplus to sell in markets.

3. Will the land sustain?

Land is a natural resource, requiring careful use to sustain it.
Scientific reports suggest that modern farming methods have overused the natural resource base.
In many areas, the Green Revolution has led to loss of soil fertility due to increased use of chemical fertilizers.
Continuous use of groundwater for tubewell irrigation has depleted the water-table.
Environmental resources such as soil fertility and groundwater take years to build up and are difficult to restore once destroyed.
Care for the environment is crucial to ensure the future development of agriculture.

4. How is land distributed between the farmers of Palampur?

Land distribution among farmers in Palampur is unequal.
About one-third of the 450 families (150 families, mostly dalits) are landless and have no land for cultivation.
Of the families who own land, 240 cultivate small plots less than 2 hectares in size, which do not yield adequate income.
Small plots cultivated by small farmers are scattered around the village.
More than half of the village area is covered by large plots.
There are 60 families of medium and large farmers in Palampur, cultivating more than 2 hectares of land.
Some large farmers own land extending over 10 hectares or more.

5. Who will provide the labour?

Labour is the next necessary factor for production after land.
Small farmers and their families provide their own labour for cultivating their fields.
Medium and large farmers hire farm labourers for their fields.
Farm labourers come from landless families or families with small plots of land.
Unlike farmers, farm labourers do not have rights over the crops grown on the land; they are paid wages by the farmer.
Wages can be in cash or in kind, and may include meals.
Wages vary widely based on region, crop, farm activity, and duration of employment.
Dala is a landless farm labourer in Palampur who works on daily wages.
Minimum wages for a farm labourer set by the government are Rs 300 per day, but Dala receives only Rs 160 due to heavy competition for work.
Both Dala and Ramkali are among the poorest people in the village.

6. The capital needed in farming

Modern farming methods require significant capital investment, increasing the financial burden on farmers.
Small farmers often borrow money to acquire the necessary capital, obtaining loans from large farmers, village moneylenders, or input suppliers.
The interest rates on these loans are very high, leading to distress in repayment for small farmers.
Medium and large farmers, in contrast, have their own savings from farming, enabling them to arrange the capital needed without borrowing.

7. Sale of Surplus Farm Products

Farmers sell surplus farm products after retaining a portion for family consumption.
Medium and large farmers typically supply surplus wheat to the market.
Traders at the market buy wheat and sell it to shopkeepers in towns and cities.
Large farmers like Tejpal Singh have substantial surplus wheat, which they sell at the market for good earnings.
Tejpal Singh uses his earnings to save, lend to other farmers in need, arrange working capital for farming, and invest in increasing fixed capital like buying another tractor.
Other large and medium farmers similarly sell surplus farm products, save part of their earnings for capital for the next season, and may invest in various assets such as cattle, trucks, or shops for non-farm activities.

Non Farm Activities In Palampur

Non-farm activities in Palampur are the focus after learning about farming as the main production activity.
Only 25% of the working population in Palampur are engaged in activities other than agriculture.

1. Dairy — the other common activity

Dairy is a common activity in many families of Palampur.
Buffalos are fed various kinds of grass, jowar, and bajra grown during the rainy season.
Milk is sold in Raiganj, a nearby large village.
Two traders from Shahpur town have established collection cum chilling centers in Raiganj.
Milk collected is transported to faraway towns and cities from these centers.

2. An example of small-scale manufacturing in Palampur

Less than fifty people are currently engaged in manufacturing in Palampur.
Manufacturing in Palampur differs from that in big factories in towns and cities.
It involves simple production methods and is done on a small scale.
Manufacturing activities are primarily conducted at home or in fields with the assistance of family labor, with hired laborers being rare.

3. The shopkeepers of Palampur

Trade in Palampur mainly involves shopkeepers who buy goods from wholesale markets in cities and sell them in the village.
Small general stores in the village sell a wide range of items including food staples like rice, wheat, sugar, and tea, as well as non-food items like oil, biscuits, soap, toothpaste, batteries, candles, notebooks, and stationery.
Some families residing near the bus stand have opened small shops selling eatables.

4. Transport: a fast developing sector

Palampur is connected to Raiganj by a road with various types of vehicles.
Transport services include rickshaws, tongas, jeeps, tractors, trucks, bullock carts, and bogeys.
These transport providers ferry people and goods and receive payment in return.
The number of people involved in transport has increased over the past several years.