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Working Population in India!
Table 1 shows that out of a total population of 837 million in 1991, the working population in India was 37.64 per cent. Out of the total working population of 314.9 million, 90.6 per cent (285.4 million) were main workers and 9.4 per cent (29.5 million) were marginal workers.
Of the total workers (314.9 million), 79.2 per cent were located in rural areas and 20.8 per cent in urban areas. Sex-wise, out of 314,9 million total workers, 71 per cent were male workers and 29 per cent female workers.
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Out of the 223.5 million male workers, 75 per cent were in rural areas and 25 per cent in urban areas. Of the 91.4 million female workers, 89.2 per cent were rural workers and 10.8 per cent were urban workers. Out of 285.4 million main workers, 38.7 per cent were cultivators, 26.2 per cent were agricultural labourers, 3.6 per cent were household industry workers and 31.5 per cent were other workers.
The 2001 Census reveals that the total number of workers had gone up during the 1990s. Table 2 shows that 39.3 per cent of India’s population in 2001 comprised of workers as against 37.6 per cent in 1991. Of these 78 per cent were main workers and about 22 per cent marginal workers, as against 90.6 per cent and 9.4 per cent respectively in 1991. This shows that the number of casual (marginal) workers has increased quite sharply during the nineties.
This is clear from the figure of rural India. In 1991, 35.8 per cent of rural population consisted of main workers and 4.3 per cent as marginal workers. In 2001, the share of main workers increased to 31 per cent and that of marginal workers rose to about 11 per cent.
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The proportion of marginal workers in urban population has also risen over the period. But the situation is better in urban areas because the proportion of main workers had remained almost steady at 29.3 per cent of the total urban population in 2001. But the proportion of urban marginal workers increased from 1 per cent in 1991 to 3 per cent in 2001.
In 2001, India had a working population of 402.5 million, both main and marginal workers. Over 58 per cent were working either as cultivators or agricultural workers, and 4.1 per cent as household industry workers and 37.9 per cent as ‘other workers’.
