Question

The following table shows distribution of workforce in India for the year 1972-73. Analyse it and give reasons for the nature of workforce distribution. You will notice that the data is pertaining to the situation in India 30 years ago! 

Place of Residence	Workforce (in millions)
	Male	Female	Total
Rural Urban	125 32	69 7	195 39

Answer 1

(i) The total workforce in India in the year 1972-73 was 234 million that includes 195 million workforce of rural and 39 million of the urban population. This indicates a greater involvement of rural workforce comprising of 83 % of the total workforce as compared to 17% of the urban workforce. This is because a majority of rural population was engaged in agricultural and allied sectors. 

(ii) The rural workforce comprises of 64% of the male workforce and 36% of female workforce. On the contrast, the urban workforce comprises of about 82% of male workforce and 18% of female workforce. The participation of males in both rural as well as in the urban areas is higher than the females because of the lack of opportunities available to women for acquiring education. Also, families often discouraged female members to take up job and, consequently, women were confined to household works only.

(iii) Comparing urban female work force with that of the rural female workforce, we can conclude that the females in the rural areas formed 36 % of the workforce, whereas, the females in the urban areas formed only 18% of the workforce. In the rural areas, despite a majority of the population was engaged in farming and allied activities, agricultural sector had low productivity. Consequent to the low productivity, rural people had low earnings that further led to widespread poverty in the rural areas.

Thus, it can be concluded by analysing the above data that Indian economy suffered from low productivity, acute unemployment and widespread poverty, disguised unemployment in agricultural sector and low female participation rate in the workforce 30 years ago