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Abstract

Agriculture is the largest and most important sector of Indian economy.  Agriculture contributes 40 to 50 percent of national income and provides livelihood to 70 percent of the population of the country. Rubber plantation industry in India enjoys the distinction of having the highest rate of growth in comparison to that in other rubber growing countries of the world. According to International Labor Organization the term ‘Plantation’ includes any agricultural undertaking regularly employing hired workers which is situated in the tropical or subtropical regions and which is mainly concerned with the cultivation or production for commercial purposes of coffee, tea, sugarcane, rubber, bananas, cocoa, coconuts, groundnuts, cotton, tobacco, fibres (sisal, jute and hemp), citrus, palm oil, cinchona or pineapple; it does not include family or small-scale holdings producing for local consumption and not regularly employing hired workers. Plantation crops include variety of products like Tea, Coffee, Rubber, Pepper and other spices; Tobacco also is classified under this category. Rubber is one of the prominent plantation crops of our country and has considerable significance on the Indian economy. In Tamil Nadu, Kanyakumari District accounts for 98 percentage of production of rubber. They provide employment to 1874 people mostly from the rural area where there is very little employment opportunity. This study is to find the Socio-economic condition such as income, education, wealth, place of residence and employment status of rubber plantation laborers of Kanyakumari District. Due to variety of reasons the conditions in the rubber plantations remained unsatisfactory for a long time. Socio-economic condition of plantation laborers remained very unsatisfactory with low wages, unhygienic working and living conditions. The questionnaire is the major tool in collecting data. Convenient sampling technique is used for data collection. Percentage analysis is used for analysis.

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