Employment and poverty in rural India: Which way to go?

The paper 'Employment and poverty in rural India: Which way to go now?' explores the cause and challenges of poverty, amongst rural masses in India. It goes on to establish the relation between rural poverty and various efforts to increase employment in rural India. Though recently there has been a decline in estimates of population below the poverty line, the absolute number of rural poor is still very high with agricultural labour households facing the worst brunt of poverty. The paper assesses the contribution of farm and non-farm sector in reducing poverty across the rural population. The paper also explores the role played by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) to help the rural poor at the level at which poverty is most virulent. The paper suggests that there is tremendous scope, at the policy and implementation level, to improve rural employment and reduce poverty in India. Since agriculture and allied activities are still the mainstay of the rural people and will continue to be so in the near future, productivity improvement in this sector must be looked at as a far more decisive instrument to reduce poverty amongst the rural poor. Efficient management of natural resources and adoption of precision farming practices can facilitate the improvement of productivity. There is also an urgent need to improve the scope of non-agricultural employment in the rural areas, improved physical infrastructure and human capital base can pave the way for success.