Q.What is disguised unemployment? Explain with reference to Indian agriculture.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Disguised unemployment refers to a situation where workers appear to be employed but are not actually contributing additional output — that is, if some of them were withdrawn from the activity, total output would remain unchanged. It is called "disguised" because, unlike open unemployment, these workers are not idle or jobless in an obvious sense; they are present and engaged, but their real contribution to production is negligible.
In the context of Indian agriculture, this happens because a large number of family members often work on a small piece of land that genuinely requires far fewer hands to farm efficiently. Since alternative employment opportunities outside agriculture are limited, especially in rural areas, family members who cannot find other work continue to remain engaged on the family farm, even though the land could be cultivated just as productively with fewer workers. This explains why India's agricultural sector can show a very large share of the workforce while contributing a comparatively much smaller share of national output — the extra workers are not raising output, they are simply sharing among themselves the output that fewer workers could have produced alone. …
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