NCERT 6th Class (CBSE) Social Science: Rural Livelihoods

Question: The different types of farmers that the children met? Were large farmers, Small farmers landless peasants.

Answer: There is a small group of people who own large areas of land. They are rich farmers and have lots of money. They do not work on the lands themselves but employ landless peasants who work on their lands.

Question: What are the difficulties faced by farmers who owned small plots of land?

Answer: They cultivate the land themselves. They grow only a few types of crops on their land and are able to produce very little on their land. They produce enough to fulfill their needs and sell the little that is leftover in the market. Their landholdings are small and they do not use modern methods of agriculture. They still use cattle to perform their agricultural functions. As the work on the land seasonal, these farmers go to the cities to sell vegetables till the crops on their lands are ready. Weeding, hoeing and milling on the fields are mostly done by women. These farmers are always indebted to the moneylenders in the village because they borrow money from them to buy seeds, fertilizers and pesticides and also when their crops fail due to scanty rainfall.

Question: Why was Mahi’s situation pitiable?

Answer:

1. Mahi was a poor peasant had no land, he worked on the farms of others. He get work only during the sowing and harvest seasons. He was paid a daily wage.
2. If the monsoon fails or there is a drought, then his family and he are penniless because there is no work. At other times, he went around looking for odd jobs.
3. He was still paying back the loan that his father took from the moneylenders he has already taken away his three bighas of land and all of his wife’s jewellery.

Question: What is the significance of the Bhoodan Movement?

Answer: India is an agricultural country, with more than 55 per cent of the country’s population involved in agriculture. At present there are about 50 million landless peasants in our country.

In 1950, Acharya Vinoba Bhave started the Bhoodan Movement or the Land Gift Movement. He walked across India and encouraged the rich landed people to give up part of their land to the poor peasantry.