Types of Labour Attachment in Agriculture-Results of a Survey in West Bengal, 1979

Types of Labour Attachment in Agriculture Results of a Survey in West Bengal, 1979 Pranab Bardhan Ashok Rudra THE First (1950-51) and the Second (1956-57) Agricultural Labour Enquiry in India classified all agricultural labourers into two categories: attached and casual. In a rather devastating critique of the concepts used in the First Enquiry, Daniel Thorner (1956) noted that the terms 'attached' and 'casual', as interpreted by the designers of the Enquiry, proved in practice to be "mutually nonexclusive catch-alls for non-homogeneous groups", and what was worse, the specific content and meaning of these two terms were left sufficiently vague as to allow arbitrary and conflicting interpretations by different field investigators in different areas. Raj (1962) reiterated similar criticisms of those two terms as used in the Second Enquiry, Faced with these criticisms, the statistical bureaucracy reacted in a characteristic fashion: they dropped the casual/attach- ed classification altogether in subsequent Enquiries.