Urban Fringe: The Features of Livelihood

Abstract

This chapter seeks to portay the livelihood features of urban fringe people and the changes in livelihood options due to city expansion. The analysis of surveyed data has been done at household level as well as at individual level. The result, as presented in this chapter hold the factual evidence with interpretation and evaluations in relation to theory, existing literature work and other relatable fact of the study. The study has found that the livelihood in Aligarh’s urban fringe can be categorized into two broad categories—non-cash-based livelihood and cash-based livelihood. The non-cash-based livelihood, where households are engaged with food production and fuel or fodder collection from common land. But this form of livelihood has been almost wiped out in Aligarh’s urban fringe. The cash-based urban fringe livelihoods are categorized into four broad categories. These are livelihoods based on casual employment, business and trade, farming activity and dairy farming. Cash-based casual livelihood in Aligarh’s urban fringe has many dimensions and most of the lesser educated and lesser skilled workers belong to this category. The employment opportunity of this kind is typically casual, short term and seasonal in nature fetching low and varying wages.