MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS

INTRODUCTION.

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS HAVE GIVEN AN ACCOUNT of the principal sectors of the economy of the district such as agriculture, industry, trade and transport which provide means of livelihood to a great majority of the population. They do not however, exhaust the whole field of economic activity in the district and there is an appreciable percentage of the population which depends upon other pursuits for their maintenance. There are the learned professions like law, medicine, education, journalism and certain crafts and trades like bakeries, tailoring, laundries, hotels and restaurants, parching of grains, bicycle-repairing, motor-body-building, milk and its products etc. which are not included in any of the major sectors of the economy. These occupations have an important place in the economic life of the district as they provide means of livelihood not only to a considerable number of people, but also to those who produce essential goods of daily consumption. Some others render useful service to the people in a variety of ways. It may be said that the rapid growth of such occupations in the district during the last 60 years is both a factor in the pace of urbanization and an index of the degree of prosperity and economic stability attained by some of the sections of society, like the small artisan, and the trader. These occupations are a sort of blending of trade and industry. In this chapter an attempt has been made to give broad account of the more important of these occupations and the peculiar conditions and problems affecting the persons engaged in them; based on a selective study of a few representative establishments by means of a small token survey conducted in Kolhapur city in the year 1956. The study was confined to certain aspects of the occupations such as number of units existing, nature of tools and applications used, the average monthly expenses incurred and nature of the market for these products etc. The study was by no means fully comprehensive. But it would help in giving a broad picture of the conditions of people who were engaged in them.

The occupations covered by the survey were: —

(1) Aerated Water manufacture.

(2) Agarbatti manufacture.

(3) Bakery.

(4) Cap making.

(5) Copper and brass smithy.

(6) Cycle-repairing.

(7) Flour-milling.

(8) Gold and silver smithy.

(9) Hair-cutting.

(10) Khanavalis.

(11) Laundering.

(12) Lodging and Boarding.

(13) Motor-body building.

(14) Photo-frame-making.

(15) Restaurants and tea shops.

(16) Shroff.

(17) Tailoring.

(18) Tin-smithy.

(19) Umbrella, Trunk and Lock making.

(20) Watch-repairing.

Information regarding the total number of establishments and the number of persons engaged in these occupations along with the categories of workers—paid and family members, men, women and children—was obtained from the Kolhapur municipality. The ward-wise break-up prepared by the municipality gives a clear idea of the total number of establishments in the city, their dispersal as between the different wards, the number of employers, the number and categories of workers and their break-up according to sex. This was the basic data for the survey as the number of samples selected for each occupation depended upon the total number of establishments in that occupation.

The percentage of samples selected varied between 5 and 10. They were selected from different localities and were representative of every size and type. A general questionnaire was framed and answers were collected from each of the selected samples.

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