ANNOUNCEMENTS
Agriculture is very appropriately considered as the ‘backbone’ of the Indian economy, generating employment opportunities for fifty per cent of our population and contributing more than the world average to the Gross Domestic Product of our country (Miles, 2008). However, due to weak legislations related to workplace safety, workers have to bear the brunt of injuries of varying degree, sustained by them while working on-field. The study aims to analyze the value a worker places on his/her life, in pursuit to reduce a small amount of occupational risk faced by them.
The study thus sets out with a focus to examine whether the agricultural workers are given a wage premium to combat the injury (or fatality) risk being faced by them or not. The study makes use of the Theory of compensating wage differential, conceived and established by the famous political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith, who proposed that a worker’s job characteristics would have an impact on the labor market equilibrium and hence, workers need to be compensated in the form of a higher pay for enduring on-the-job risks.
In its introductory stage, after the seriousness of the problem is realized, a suitable research area has been chosen, where the study is conducted via a multi-stage random sampling process. The questionnaire had been designed in a manner that it captures the profile of the farm laborers, their asset-related information, health-related information, compensation and mitigation related information in detailed sections attributed to each one of them.
On completion of the primary survey, in the next step, the workers have been sought into different categories, owing to their risk exposure to different tasks performed on farm fields. Further, econometric regression tools have been employed to analyze the wage-risk tradeoff and existence of wage premium (if any) between workers of different categories. The results have then been interpreted for empirical understanding. As an adequate conclusion to the study, significant drawbacks in the existing legislation on Occupational Safety and Health in India are highlighted and improvements have been suggested over the present scenario.
Keywords: Occupational health hazards, vulnerability, job characteristics, wage-risk tradeoff, value of ‘statistical’ life (VSL)
