The following table shows distribution of …

From the given table, following points can be noticed about the nature of workforce distribution

1. Majority of the workforce was residing in the rural areas in India in the year 1972-73. The total workforce was 233 million out of which 194 million workers were from rural areas and 39 million from the urban areas. Thus, 83% of the total workforce was rural as compared to 17% of the urban workforce. The reason for this was that a majority of population was living in rural areas during that period. Agricultural activities were predominant in this period as compared to industries. So a major chunk of the rural population was engaged in agricultural activities. They could find employment in rural areas itself.
2. The rural workforce comprises of 64% of the male workforce and 36% of female workforce. On the other hand, the urban workforce comprises of about 82% of male workforce and 18% of female workforce. This shows that participation of males in both rural as well as urban areas is higher than that of the females because of lack of opportunities available to women for acquiring education and also the social structure and family norms which did not encourage women to work. 
3. Another feature of workforce distribution is the difference between urban female workforce and rural female workforce. Females in the rural areas formed 36 % of the workforce, whereas, the females in the urban areas formed only 18% of the workforce. This is because in rural areas, many people were poor and in order to earn their livelihood, females could find jobs in farms, construction sites and other unskilled jobs but urban females did not have that much job opportunity as industrialisation and other service sectors were not that developed. So there were less jobs available for urban females wanting to take up office jobs or some kind of professional jobs. This may also be attributed to the fact that where men are able to earn high incomes, families discourage female members from taking up jobs. Earnings of urban male workers are generally higher than rural males and so the urban families do not want females to work.
   Thus, it can be concluded by analysing the above table that majority of the workforce was from the rural areas and there was low female participation rate in the workforce during that period.