Around half of those who suffer from hunger in India are ironically those who grow our food: the small and marginal farmers. With continuous structural adjustments, economic reforms and globalisation the small and marginal food growing system was transformed into a corporate controlled industrial system of agriculture. This once self-sufficient segment that produced a diversity of food crops and seeds has been forced to become a cultivator of ‘crop commodity’. In the hope to earn better wages they plunge into the labour market along with their small children and families. Being in the unorganised sector they are neither covered by insurance nor have any other legislated protective mechanisms like the employee provident fund or the legal sanction of a minimum prescribed wage. Thus, this labour force is exploited with impunity. Over time the phenomenon has almost got institutionalised in India, where labour from a particular state migrates en-mass in the cultivating season giving rise to demographic and gender issues. This paper discusses the increasing incidence of child labour and the deteriorating conditions of women on the farms. Using case studies and interviews it maps trends in three states of India.
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