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MISCELLANEOUS OCCUPATIONS |
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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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