Overview: The Story of village Palampur

                                           THE STORY OF VILLAGE PALAMPUR

 

The purpose of this story is to introduce the basic concepts related to production and this is done through a hypothetical village called Palampur.

 The story gives the idea of production and employment in the villages of India. Palampur is a hypothetical village. Farming is the main activity. Besides dairy farming, shop keeping, small scale manufacturing etc.. are other activities. 

Palampur is connected with Raiganj a big village (3 kms away) and Shahpur a small town. Many kinds of vehicles like tongas, bullock carts, bogeys (carts drawn by buffalos ) loaded with jaggery,  jeeps motor vehicles, tractors and trucks are also seen in the village.

There are around 450 families lived in palampur, 80 upper caste families own land in the village. The dalits (SCs) comprise one third of the village and lived in one corner of the village and much smaller houses made of mud and straw. The village had the facilities of electricity, tube wells, 2 primary schools, one high school, a primary health centre run by the government and one private dispensary. 

Production Stages/ Organization of Production

As it is mentioned above, the main purpose that we have to discuss in this chapter is the various concepts that the village uses for production. For the production of services and goods of any type, there are four factors that are used in the production. They are land, capital, labor, and Human Resource.

 Out of these four factors, the first and the most important factor is land.

Land includes other natural resources like forests, minerals, and water. These natural resources are the most important factor in production.

Second is the requirement of Labour There are many production and manufacturing activities which require highly educated workers while other activities require manual labor.

The third is the requirement of physical capital. This includes the inputs that are required at every step of production. The inputs are machines, tools, buildings, which can be used for the production for many years and are also called fixed capital. While money in hand and materials are called working capital.

The fourth and final requirement is the Human Resource or Enterprise.

To put all the land, labor, and physical capital together one needs to have knowledge and enterprise. Then only finally you will get output. These days this final factor is also called as human capital. Thus, for the production, each and every factor above is very important.