Rural Labour Market in Kerala-Small Holder Agriculture and Labour Market Dynamics

The pattern of land distribution and the nature of the crops grown are, inter alia, two key determinants of rural labour market dynamics. Most of the existing literature on rural labour markets have the skewed distribution of land and the predominance of annual crops as their behavioural assumptions. It is argued here that the theories developed on these assumptions are unable to explain the labour market behaviour in rural Kerala where agriculture is characterised by the predominance of small holdings and perennial tree crops. These two characteristics have substantially altered the structure of the labour market from the stylised model and hence theories based on the dominant norm fail to explain the labour market behaviour in Kerala.