2022, Vol. 4, Issue 4, Part C

The work participation is an important variable to find out the level of socio-economic and political empowerment of a given community and of the nation at large. It is academically well known that social and economic activities are intertwined, therefore, change in the one activity leads to change in another. Most of the people used to work in agriculture sector prior to arrival of industrial revolution and slowly moved to non-agricultural sector after the industrial revolution. This changed the basic relationship between different sections of society broke the traditional client-patron relationships. Therefore, this paper aims to study the changes in the work participation rate and the composition of work to determine the status of socio-economic changes especially after the economic reforms of 1991 in Haryana. This paper use the Census of India 1991 and 2011 data to assess the changes in labor market. The paper finds that the work participation rate of both SC and the non-SC Workers has declined between 1991 and 2011 in the rural areas of Haryana with a marginal increase in the urban areas. This study finds that the rate of increase in the proportion of SC worker in non-agricultural sector is greater than the increase in the non-SC workers. Further, the proportion of SC workers in agricultural sector has declined but the level of their participation in agricultural activities is still very high. The analysis of trends in the proportion of main workers to total workers has declined in all the districts of Haryana which means that the quality of work is deteriorating across all the districts of Haryana. This is why the non-SC landed communities have not moved to the non-agricultural sector for employment as the non-agricultural sector is providing casual jobs with low wages.