Trends of real income in Tiruchirapalli and the upper Kaveri Delta, 1819-1980: A footnote in honour of Dharma Kumar

Abstract

The trend of real incomes of agricultural labourers in South India over a span of 160 years, using evidence of payments in kind, indicates that there have been four broad phases. In the first half of the ‘long nineteenth century’, incomes increased but grew very slowly. From the middle of the nineteenth century up until 1916, there was a trend of rapidly increasing real incomes reflecting, among other things, the growth in demand for labour outside agriculture and the possibilities of migration. The third phase, the ‘50 year's depression’, has been less well studied. Agricultural labour incomes in the western Kaveri delta began to decline during the Great Depression, and continued to decline after India secured independence, into the 1960s. The fourth phase, which corresponds broadly to the introduction of the Green Revolution, is a period in which real incomes recovered rapidly, returning almost to the peak levels achieved in the middle of World War I.