Madurai:
While the revolutionary National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has brought higher wages for labourers across the country, farmers and landlords in Tamil Nadu have begun to feel the pinch following its huge success.
They don't get labourers to work in their fields due to low wages. Will the new choice force landlords to hike wages?
Rural Tamil Nadu is witnessing a critical migration of labour.
Farm workers, 80% of who are women now prefer to work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme that pays much better.
''While working in farms we are paid only Rs 40 a day. Under NREGA, we get Rs 100 a day. Naturally many of us don't work in farms anymore,'' said Tamilselvi, a labourer.
''In NREGA projects there are jobs for all. Farm owners can't give all of us work,'' said another.
''Women especially prefer to work in this project because they get assured income,'' said C. Kamaraj, Collector, Madurai.
In Tamil Nadu, 55 lakh families have availed jobs under NREGA this financial year. For labourers it is a great change: Their wages going up, their dependence on landlords reduced.
But the impact of this mass exodus is being felt in the farms.
''We can't pay the labourers more because the crop yield is still the same and costs have gone up. If they don't work in our fields, crop productivity will suffer,'' said a landlord.
In the delta region of Tamil Nadu, the rice bowl of the state, many farmers have already switched to less labour intensive crops like sugarcane and banana because of this labour shortage.
Labourers will return to farms if agricultural wages go up but that's bad news for landlords who will have to shell out more.