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ThesisItem Open Access Agrarian crisis and status of agricultural labourers in Punjab(Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 2020) Chaudhary, Anurag; Sukhpal SinghThe present study examined the agrarian crisis and status of agricultural labourers in Punjab. In order to accomplish the specific objectives, both primary as well as the secondary data was used. The primary data was collected from a sample of the 300 agricultural labour households selected from 12 villages of 6 districts of Punjab namely Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Sangrur, Mansa and Shree Muktsar Sahib districts through multi stage random technique. The secondary data related to area, production and yield of crops such as rice, wheat, maize and cotton from the year 1960-61 to 2017-18 was collected. Secondary data related to area under high yielding varities of crops, agricultural workforce, number of operational land holdings etc was also collected. The study revealed that the agrarian crisis has severely penetrated in the life of the agricultural labourers. On an average, out of the population of 1351 persons only 380 persons were earning and the remaining 971 persons were totally dependent on them for carrying out their livelihood, almost 69 per cent population belonged to the scheduled castes but it was interesting to note that as such as 12 per cent households belonged to general castes. Most of the agricultural labour households were living in the pucca houses, however average number of rooms was just 2.37 revealing that a family of 4.50 was living in just 2.37 rooms. Casualisation of agricultural labourers has taken place to a great extent. Agricultural labourers were engaged in the activities such as permanent agricultural labour casual agricultural labour, industrial labour, labour in services sector, labour in brick kilns, working as domestic servants and sale of animals and milk and on an average per capita income from these activities was `1407.86, `21115.40, `699.46, `671.31, `422.27, `259.69 and `408.50 respectively, So the per capita income was `23850 whereas total per capita consumption expenditure was `24983 and the average propensity to consume was 1.04. On an average, 84.11 percent households were indebted, only 13.26 per cent of the loan taken was used for some productive purposes whereas remaining 86.14 per cent of the total loan was used for unproductive purposes such as socio-religious ceremonies, buying motorcycles, mobile phones etc. It was suggested enhance some employment opportunities by developing some non farm activities for the agricultural labour households.