Agriculture has always been the backbone of the Indian economy supported by the fact that nearly 67 per cent of our population and 55 per cent of the total work force depending on agriculture and other allied activities. In India a very high proportion of working population engaged in agriculture, which helps to eradicate poverty in rural area. Thus by providing employment to agricultural labourers, agriculture sector play an important role in rural development. Agricultural labourers work on the land of others on wages for the major part of the year and earn a major portion of their income as a payment in the form of wages for works performed on the agricultural farms owned by others. They will perform simple and routine tasks as part of agriculture, forestry and fishery production process. They depend on agriculture sector for their livelihood. The demand for workers in Agriculture sector is growing fast which increase their status in the society and agricultural workers play a multi-dimensional role in agriculture and in allied fields and also contribute more for the development of rural economy. Though, they are facing lot of issues such as low wages, hard work, long hours of work, seasonal unemployment, low standard of living, traditional bounded, etc.,. Hence this paper explains the problems of agricultural labourers and different programmes introduced by the Government to solve their problems in India.
