18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST in neighbouring Coimbatore district, where agricultural labour is wholly unorganised. TKe attitude of the rich Coimbatore landowners was in-f structive. They assured one that if labourers ever had the temerity to (. organise in their area as in Tanjore, they would soon discover that their ^ employers would not tolerate it as the spineless Tanjore landowners had. Tanjore, however, is the solitary exception. Elsewhere, agricultural labourers are wholly unorganised. Where paid in kind, the rate for harvesting in my sample ranged from 4 to 6 kg of grain (unhusked). For other operations involving staples, daily wage payments ranged between Rs 1.50 to Rs 3.50 for men, depending on operation, plus a meal Or two, with one-half to two-thirds of this for women. Cash payment was generally slightly higher where no meal was provided. For non-staple crops, too, payment was similar, though for especially intensively cultivated crops such as turmeric, payment was marginally higher, up to Rs 5 per day. A recent estimate61 of the movement in real wage-rates supports the contention that they have fallen in most areas with rising prices outstripping any rise in money wage-rates. Wage-rate however, is only one dimension of the labourer's income, the other being the number of days he is employed. A short-run increase' in labour-employment may be expected from double-cropping consequent on irrigation, spread of high-yielding varieties etc. : yet this increase can be, and is being wiped out by even a moderate degree of mechanisation such as is already a reality in many areas.62 My data show that large-scale farms employ more capital intensive techniques relative to small-scale farms (where capital intensity is measured by the value of implements and machinery per unit of wage expenditure).63 With mechanisation and rising labour productivity the long-run tendency to labour substitution is certain to dominate over short-run increase in labour-employment, as in every other country which has, historically, experienced capitalist development. The short-run increase can at best reduce marginally the existing overt unemployment among labourers, before being subordinated to the labour-displacing tendency which will accentuate the already acute problems of underemployment of the mass of dwarf-holding peasants and labourers. The present capitalist development not only holds out no hope for the latter ; it is predicated upon their further displacement. 49 R Thamarajakshi, ^Intersectoral Terms of Trade and Marketed surplus of Agricultural Produce, 1951-52 to 1955-56", Economic And Political Weekly, June 28, 1969. 60 S G Gupta. ^Some Aspects of Indian Agriculture^, Enquiry No 6. Also "New Trends of Growth", Seminar No 38, 1962. •1 The schedules used were similar to those used in the All India Rural Debt and Investment Survey. More detailed information, however, was collected on labour employment and family budgets obtained wherever possible to be used as a rough cross-check on the production data. 62 Punjab, the acknowledged home of capitalist development, was deliberately excluded;