Inequalities in the Process of Agriculturalists Learning Non-agricultural Skills

Abstract

The thesis answers these questions through insights gained from a household survey and an ethnographic study of a village in Ramgarh district of Jharkhand. It demonstrates that despite the emergence of numerous formal skill development establishments (such as polytechnics and ITI colleges and educational foundations) in the region, there was a clear preference for informal learning. The difficulty in accessing formal learning settings increased the preference for informal learning at the workplace. Differences in accessing the workplace led to inequalities in learning skills. The inequalities in learning skills limited the ability of some individuals and groups to tap jobs created by rural transformation. This contributed to self-employment, with a couple of those left behind in the village innovating vehicles to carry scrap. Some others who were also unable to get the jobs generated by the transformation, resorted to illegal livelihoods through the sale of country liquor or by stealing coal from open pit coal mines. In such an unequal situation, the emergence of any uncertain event, especially as a shock like the COVID-19 pandemic, disrupted the entire arrangement. When the economy revived, inequalities between individuals and groups were exacerbated even as new inequalities emerged.