Employment Generation by Small Businesses in Kolar

Abstract

With the fast mechanization of agriculture and the slowly emerging picture of traditional methods of agricultural relapsing the vast rural labour force and piece meal workers were left in the lurch without any form of sustenance. In this hauntingly real scenario the emergence of small businesses has come as a whiff of fresh air in a backward and dry Kolar district. With very less construction activity no immediate employment available this gap has been filled up by the mushrooming of these small businesses in Kolar and Bangarapet an adjoining taluk to Kolar. Due to the ripple effect any development in Kolar is felt enormously in Bangarapet. The sample size was one hundred and fifty taken from both Kolar as well as Bangarapet. For the study purpose. Area selected was Kolar town and Bangarapet town and the rural areas in both the talukas was not selected for survey. Tailoring Businesses or Warehouses (garments) only and not leather goods or items) besides textile shops or Clothing showrooms which absorbed most of the women and male agricultural labour was chosen for sampling. Simple random sampling was done and descriptive analysis was followed. Percentage method was used for data classification and tabulation. On the field survey was conducted and interview method was followed. A questionnaire was designed for data collection purposes. Eleven tailoring ware houses were sampled with five done in Kolar and six done in Bangarapet. In the cloth shops totally ten were sampled where five were done in Kolar and other five in Bangarapet.  The findings showed that all those working in tailoring shops earned around Rupees 5000 to Rupees 6000 per week both men and women earned the same wages (pay parity prevailed). The proprietor being men for all the large and small tailoring shops in Kolar and Bangarapet . One hundred and thirty employed were women and twenty were men. This revealed that more women were employed in in tailoring shops and in cloth shops as shop assistants.  All in all as rural labour absorption was done in Kolar and Bangarapet itself and so there was no rural urban migration to Bangalore. This study concludes with the revelation that small towns itself are capable of absorbing unemployed rural labour. Thus backward districts have started employment generation for poor agriculture labour. But this won’t be possible if the state government and private investors did not earmark many industrial enclaves and started many small scale enterprises, technical and medical colleges for employment purposes.