Strategies to Enhance the Welfare of Agricultural Labourers

India’s agricultural labourers are central to the country’s food production, yet they remain among the most economically vulnerable groups in the country. Research published in the International Journal of Current Research identifies low wages, assetlessness, irregular employment, and lack of social protection as a persistent cycle of poverty for this workforce. Improving their condition is not just a welfare issue – it is a prerequisite for a productive and stable agricultural sector. This post outlines the key strategies that can genuinely make a difference: stronger wage enforcement, rehabilitation of landless workers, better agricultural practices, and well-designed public work programmes.

The ground reality of agricultural labour in India 🔗

Agricultural labourers in India are largely landless, low-skilled, and dependent on seasonal wage work. They belong disproportionately to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, making their economic vulnerability inseparable from social marginalisation. According to researchers from Burdwan Krishi Viswavidyalaya, agricultural workers constitute the most neglected class in India’s rural structure – their income is low, employment is irregular, and the absence of skills or training leaves them without alternative livelihood options. The situation is made worse by seasonal unemployment during off-farm months, when no crop work is available and no social safety net steps in reliably.

Understanding this baseline is essential before evaluating what policy solutions can realistically achieve.

Enforcing minimum wage laws effectively 🔗

India has had minimum wage legislation since the Minimum Wages Act of 1948, which gives both the Central and State governments the authority to fix and revise wage rates for scheduled employments, including agriculture. The Act’s primary goal is to prevent the exploitation of workers and ensure a basic standard of living. However, the law’s practical impact has been severely limited by weak enforcement.

Data shows that around 42% of all wage earners in India receive wages below the national minimum wage floor, with the problem disproportionately affecting women, casual workers, and those in rural areas. Agricultural workers in particular often receive wages based on informal, traditional arrangements that fall well short of the legal minimum.

The Code on Wages, 2019 🔗

A significant legislative update came with the Code on Wages, 2019, which replaced the Minimum Wages Act along with three other central labour laws. A key feature of this code is the introduction of a national floor wage to be set by the Central Government – a move that addresses the long-standing problem of wide disparities between states. The code also mandates mandatory revision of minimum wages every five years and strengthens penal provisions: employers who fail to pay the minimum can face fines up to INR 10,000 or imprisonment of up to five years.

But legislation alone is insufficient. Effective enforcement requires trained labour inspectors conducting surprise checks, digitised wage payment records, and worker awareness campaigns so that agricultural labourers know their legal entitlements. Wage theft, employer non-compliance, and shortcomings in monitoring mechanisms continue to undermine the efficacy of minimum wage regulations, particularly in the informal sector where most agricultural work takes place.

Rehabilitation of landless agricultural workers 🔗

Landless labourers form the most vulnerable segment within agricultural labour. Having no land means having no fallback – their income depends entirely on whether work is available and whether employers are willing to pay fairly. Landless labour in India is heavily associated with poverty, debt, and loss of land due to financial distress or natural causes, creating a cycle that is difficult to break without structured government intervention.

Land redistribution and ceiling laws 🔗

Post-independence India made some attempts at land reform through ceiling laws, which set maximum limits on land ownership and redistributed surplus land. Under these measures, priority in land distribution was given to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe labourers, and approximately 70 lakh hectares of land has been distributed to landless labourers. However, implementation has been uneven, with loopholes in ceiling laws exploited by larger landowners, and much of the distributed land being of poor quality or lacking irrigation access.

Abolition of bonded labour 🔗

A foundational reform was the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976, which criminalised debt bondage – a practice that trapped generations of agricultural workers in unpaid or underpaid labour tied to loans. As a result of this act, 2,35,670 bonded labourers were identified and freed across the country up to March 1988. Despite this legal milestone, a 2025 report by the National Campaign Committee for Eradication of Bonded Labour found that the Act is consistently ignored by district and state authorities, with bonded labour persisting in both traditional and evolving forms across agricultural sectors.

Effective rehabilitation for freed bonded workers – and for landless labourers more broadly – must include skill development, access to credit, and formal employment linkages. Without these follow-through steps, release from bondage or assistance programmes offers little lasting improvement.

Agricultural cooperatives as an alternative 🔗

Where land redistribution is not feasible at scale, forming agricultural cooperatives offers a practical alternative. Through cooperatives, landless workers can access shared land, equipment, and collective marketing channels, effectively transitioning from daily wage earners to having a stake in farm operations. This model also gives workers more negotiating power in determining wages and conditions.

Improving agricultural practices and working conditions 🔗

Improving the physical conditions under which agricultural labour is performed is just as important as improving pay. Long hours, exposure to agrochemicals, heavy manual work, and lack of basic amenities on work sites contribute to poor health outcomes among agricultural workers.

Appropriate mechanisation 🔗

Mechanisation through tools like tractors, combine harvesters, and drip irrigation systems reduces the physical burden on farm workers, shortens working hours for specific tasks, and improves overall productivity. The key is to introduce appropriate mechanisation – machinery that reduces backbreaking labour without entirely displacing workers. For example, mechanical rice transplanters reduce the severe physical strain of manual transplanting while still requiring skilled operators. This protects both labourer welfare and employment levels.

Organisations like S M Sehgal Foundation work with smallholder farmers on soil health management, input-use efficiency, and small farm mechanisation, showing that modern techniques are viable and beneficial even at the level of small and marginal landholdings – the very farms where most agricultural labour is concentrated.

Safety standards on farms 🔗

Basic occupational safety for agricultural workers – provision of protective gear when handling pesticides, access to safe drinking water at work sites, rest periods during extreme heat, and shade – remains an unmet standard across large parts of rural India. Establishing and enforcing farm safety norms, particularly for chemical exposure and heat stress, is a direct and cost-effective way to protect labourer health. Better agricultural practices – including integrated pest management and organic farming methods that reduce agrochemical use – also benefit workers by lowering their exposure to toxic inputs during application.

Crop diversification and year-round employment 🔗

One of the core challenges for agricultural labour is seasonal unemployment. Crop diversification – growing multiple crops across different seasons rather than relying on a single crop – directly addresses this problem by extending the period during which farm work is available. It also reduces income risk for farmers, which in turn supports their ability to pay workers consistently.

Public work programmes as a safety net 🔗

Even with wage enforcement and better farm conditions, seasonal gaps in agricultural employment will persist. Public work programmes are essential for filling this gap and providing income stability to workers during off-seasons.

MGNREGA: a rights-based employment guarantee 🔗

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), enacted in 2005, is India’s most significant labour welfare programme for rural workers. It converted employment into a statutory, enforceable right: any rural household could demand work from the government, and failure to provide it triggered a legal obligation to pay unemployment allowance. The Act guarantees a minimum of 100 days of wage employment per household per year for unskilled manual work.

MGNREGA increased incomes and savings among landless labourers and improved their bargaining power relative to landowning cultivators. By providing an alternative source of income, it weakened the grip of exploitative traditional labour arrangements – including caste-based patron-client systems – and gave workers a practical way to refuse underpaid or humiliating work. During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020-21, the scheme generated over 389 crore person-days – the highest since its inception – acting as the country’s largest economic shock absorber when markets collapsed.

However, MGNREGA has faced persistent implementation problems. In several states, wages paid under MGNREGA have been lower than those determined by the Minimum Wages Act, and wage delays have undermined the programme’s reliability. Expanding MGNREGA to include skill-based and infrastructure work – irrigation channels, farm roads, soil conservation – would make it a more productive and meaningful employment source for agricultural workers.

New directions: the proposed VB-GRAMG framework 🔗

A proposed successor to MGNREGA – the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) Bill, 2025 – seeks to expand the annual entitlement to 125 days and introduce climate-resilient rural asset creation as a formal category of permissible work. This explicitly acknowledges the lived reality of millions of workers facing increasing climate disruptions – heatwaves, floods, and erratic monsoons – and links public employment to long-term environmental resilience. The critical test, as with all such programmes, will be in implementation quality and whether the guarantee remains demand-driven rather than state-controlled.

The role of organised labour and policy enforcement 🔗

All of the above strategies – wage laws, rehabilitation programmes, public employment schemes – depend heavily on their enforcement for actual impact. Agricultural labourers remain largely unorganised, and as a result their collective bargaining power remains weak. Unlike industrial workers, they lack strong trade unions that can advocate for wage increases or improved conditions at scale.

Building and supporting agricultural labour unions and collective self-help groups (SHGs) is therefore a structural necessity. Organised workers are better positioned to report wage violations, demand safety standards, and participate in local governance processes that determine how rural employment schemes are implemented. Alongside this, labour commissioners and local enforcement officials need adequate resources, training, and accountability mechanisms to translate policy into practice on the ground.

Access to social protection – including health insurance, housing, and education for workers’ children – must also be integrated into any comprehensive strategy. India’s new labour codes, which extend statutory benefits such as provident fund, insurance, and gratuity coverage to unorganised workers, represent a significant step in this direction, provided implementation keeps pace with legislative intent.

What do you think? Given that minimum wage laws have existed in India since 1948 yet enforcement remains inconsistent decades later, what structural changes do you think would make the most meaningful difference in protecting agricultural labourers? And with public work programmes like MGNREGA providing a critical safety net, how can these programmes be strengthened to ensure they truly serve the most marginalised workers – landless labourers, women, and Scheduled Caste communities – without falling prey to delays, wage gaps, or poor implementation?

References

1. https://journalcra.com/sites/default/files/issue-pdf/46586.pdf
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_Wages_Act_1948
3. https://www.promptpersonnel.com/the-lowdown-on-minimum-wage-everything-you-need-to-know/
4. https://telangana.pscnotes.com/tspsc-mains-notes/tspsc-group-i-mains-paper-iii/tspsc-mains-paper-iii-society/problems-of-agricultural-labour/
5. https://www.outlookindia.com/national/replug-50-years-of-bonded-labour-abolition-act-and-why-equality-remains-a-dream-for-millions-in-india
6. https://www.smsfoundation.org/role-of-modern-technology-in-agriculture/
7. https://www.smsfoundation.org/how-does-modern-agriculture-improve-the-productivity-of-farmers/
8. https://learning.agribusiness.academy/sustainable-farming-practices-the-future-of-agriculture-in-india/
9. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/governance/two-decades-of-the-right-to-work-under-mgnrega-and-the-turn-we-are-taking-now
10. https://scroll.in/article/1089526/the-end-of-mgnrega-is-the-undoing-of-a-social-revolution-in-rural-india
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi_National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_labour_law