during the harvesting season. The Indo -Dutch Mission in 1988-89 had estimated the labour shortage in the kayal lands of Kuttanad as 30.76 percent. As per the labour union records there are 2652 agricultural labourers in Ramankari panchayat and about 80 percent of them are residents of Ramankari village. It amounts to nearly half of the total number of employed persons in the study area. (Present study shows that the actual percentage of farm labourers to the total employed persons is 30.25 in Ramankari village. In spite of it, in recent years the problem of labour shortage
