Cultivator: Meaning in reference to Employment

When the main worker or workers are/are engaged in the cultivation of a piece of land which was owned by them or leased by the government or from a private person/institution in exchange of money/ kind or a share in the product then such a person is called a cultivator. But when someone is working on someone else’s land in exchange for wages in cash/ kind or a payment method which is a mixture of both then such a person is not called a cultivator.

The whole cultivation process involves ploughing, sowing, caring and then finally harvesting the yield of jowar, wheat, rice, millet, sugarcane or any other cash crop but not plantation crops like tea, coconut, coffee, rubber etc.

In agricultural language, a cultivator is also a tool which is used in the ploughing of land in the initial days of the sowing season. This machine assists the farmer to do his work faster with lesser physical effort.

What is Current Daily Status?

Current Daily Status is another method to measure unemployment on a daily basis in the reference week. This method reports time disposition of an individual working on a daily basis and therefore the activity pursued, the time spent doing the activity also recorded in a quantitative manner.

Criteria for Determining the Activity Status:

For recording time disposition of activities pursued by a person, an intensity of 1.0 is given if an activity is done for ‘full day’ and 0.5 is given if an activity is undertaken for ‘half day’.

• A person who is given working for the full day is called as 1.0 and a person who is working for half day is given a 0.5 as recorded time disposition.
• Full day work is defined as a person who has worked for at least 4 hours in a day.
• If a person is working for 2 or more activities and at least for 4 hours then his work intensity is assigned a value of 0.5.
• Half-day employment is that condition where a person works at least 1 hour but less than 4 hours per day. Such a person is classified as working or employed for half day and as seeking work.
• A person who is not engaged in an activity for even an hour in the entire day is classified as unemployed for the entire day.
• A person who is seeking work for at least one hour but less than 4 hours then such a person is classified as unemployed for the half day and not a member of the labour force for the other part of the day.
• When a person is not involved in any activity and not even seeking work for even half of the day is considered to be out of labour force for the entire day.

This method provides day to day data about the trends in the employability of the labour in India in the reference week. It helps us to get a ratio of working and nonworking labour in the economy.