ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses key aspects of the economic contribution of the Pallar women of south Aruloor. It explains the relationship between capitalist agricultural production and reproduction in the subsistence sphere. Large-scale agricultural production in the Tiruchi and Thanjavur area had been turning into an agribusiness in which the agricultural producer was a capitalist entrepreneur who employed an increasingly proletarianized labor force. All transplanting work in the Aruloor area is done by Pallar women: Indeed, every blade of green in the paddy-fields was planted by the hand of a Pallar woman. The relations of reproduction of the Pallar household depend on the recruitment of Pallar women to the fields and of Pallar women and female children to the household. The differential employment prospects and the contribution to the household of Pallar women and men makes it clear, however, that the burden of family survival falls much more heavily on the shoulders of women.
