IMPACT OF MIGRATION ON AGRICULTURE AND STATUS OF DECISION MAKING OF WOMEN IN BIHAR
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Date
2021
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Dr.RPCAU, Pusa
Abstract
The present study was carried out to assess the Impact of Migration on Agriculture and Status of Decision Making of Women in Bihar. The empirical analysis is based on a survey of 360 households comprising of 180 migrant and non-migrant households each from 12 villages of Samastipur, Darbhanga and Madhubani districts of North Bihar. The assessment of impact of male migration in empowering left behind women in various domains of household decisions revealed that the migration of male member have adequately empowered only 29.44 per cent of women. Larger proportion of women respondents (43.89 per cent) were moderately empowered and 29.67 per cent fell under low empowerment group. Women had enough power to make decisions about their health, education, and agricultural production. Women's decision-making in all farm activities, such as crop selection, input purchasing, labour management, and farm produce sales, indicated a fairly moderate level of empowerment.
The yield of paddy was observed to be at par (27.49 q/ha) for migrant‟s households and (27.36 q/ha) for non-migrant farms. Similar trend was observed in case of wheat crop except machine labour charges which was found to be comparatively high in case of non-migrant households. The yield gap was more pronounced in the case of wheat, where the mean yield for migrant was found to be
30.21q/ha compared to 26.88q/ha for non-migrants. The Cobb-Douglas method was used to estimate the efficiencies of production parameters such as area, capital, human labour, machine labour, and irrigation cost for each crop from each group of respondents. Area under paddy (0.417), material costs (seed, fertilizers, and manure) (0.941), and machine labour (0.017) were found to have positive and statistically significant regression coefficients. The irrigation charge coefficient was found to be positive but statistically insignificant. Paddy cultivation in Bihar is generally done during the monsoon season, so external irrigation is less commonly used for paddy cultivation. Coefficient of human labour was negative in case of migrant farmers, showing excess use of human labours. In case of non-migrant, land and human labour coefficients were estimated positive and statistically significant. In case of wheat production, that migrant‟s households are required to use their land and human labour judiciously in cultivation of paddy crop. The regression coefficient of human labour under wheat cultivation (-0.027) was negative and insignificant that indicated that non-migrant farms use labour more judiciously. For wheat cultivation, regression coefficients of all the parameters of production are positive and significant except machine labour in case of migrants‟ households. For maize cultivation, migrant farms have used capital and human labour in more precise ways.
The logistic regression model was used to determine the factors that causes migration revealed that young people from low-income families and those living in substandard housing were more likely to migrate. It may be observed that, education levels, land holding size, and marital status were all strongly associated with migration. Migration has significantly empowered left-behind women in numerous household and livelihood tasks. Migration had a good influence on migrants' households in terms of resource use efficiency, which helped to boost agricultural productivity. There is a positive relationship between migration and educational attainment, but a negative relationship between migration and migrants‟ age.
Migrants' households spent most of their remittances on food (51 per cent). The most common destinations were mostly metropolitan and industrialised areas, where major portion of migrants were absorbed into construction work. It was also discovered that the main cause for their return migration was their desire to work at their native place.