Some Implications of Unemployment in Rural Areas

Rural Areas EVER since the concept of 'surplus labour' in agriculture was introduced, it has had an extremely eventful life. Sometimes it has been blown up so as to measure the whole economic distance, between tan optimally organised agriculture (with an optimal size of population also thrown in sometimes) on the one hand, and the actual situation of agriculture at any moment of time, on the other.1 Sometimes its very existence has been denied.2 Direct observation has been father rare in the field, both because such observation was often difficult and because the effort was not considered sufficiently glamorous3 Consequently both the defenders and the enemies of the notion of the existence of surplus labour in underdeveloped countries, tend to resort to implicit theorising on a grand scale.