Question

Assignment from Chapter 10 (question 11). Book Name : The Dynamics of Socio-Economic Development: An Introduction

Question 1:

What are the characteristics of a peasant economy?

Question 2:

Summarize the debate on advantages and disadvantages of the use of the concept of peasant economy.

Answer 1

1. Characteristics:

• Small scale if production
• Economic and social relationships with powerful culture and tradition
• Non mechanised agriculture
• They are often isolated from mainstream
• Domination by other groups
• Strong attachment with their land, families
• Over protective of what they own
• Low status of women
• Independence of household groups

2. Summary on the advantages and disadvantages :

Advantages:

• Within the peasant economy there is better supervision of workers
• Peasants can effectively work as labourers
• There is greater scope of employment in farming sectors in peasant economy
• Wen the technology is costly and limited peasant labour is high in demand
• Productivity is high in peasant economy as peasants have strong motivation to feed their families

Disadvantages :

• Difficult transformation of agriculture in peasant economy
• The peasants are not familiar with new technologies
• Financial crisis makes it difficult to peasants to arrange modern inputs and feed their families
• The production in farms meet only the domestic needs of farmers
• The resources remain initialized or misutilized