the growth rate of 12.86 percent per year. However, during the same period the average price of paddy per quintal had increased from 152 to 685 rupees showing ab brelatively much lower growth rate of 8.25 percent per year. The lower growth rates
in the price of paddy adversely affect the real earnings of reapers. Again, payments in terms of paddy is unfavorable to farm labourers in two other respects. First, they receive their payments only after threshing and winnowing and the time gap between reaping and threshing very often goes up to 30 or more days. Second, as the price of paddy considerably decreases during the harvest season, labourers who are badly in need of money to meet their day today expenses are forced to sell their share of paddy at the then prevailing low price. Therefore many of the paddy farm labourers in the study area are least interested in harvesting once they earn enough
