New Delhi: Rural India is no longer synonymous with agriculture, as most households are landless and depend on casual labour for a living, according to data from the socio-economic caste census (SECC) released last week.
The numbers are telling. Across the country, agriculture is the primary source of income for only 30% of the 179 million rural households. While 51% depend on manual or casual labour for a living, 56% rural households do not own any land.
In Punjab, the cradle of the Green Revolution, farming is the main source of income for less than 30% of rural households, while 48% depend on manual labour as the primary source of income. And, 65% of rural households in Punjab do not own land.
The numbers show a wide variation across states. In Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and West Bengal, less than 20% of rural households depend on farming as the primary source of income. Landlessness is also high in these states—72% in Kerala, 73% in Tamil Nadu, 65% in Bihar and 70% in West Bengal.
Bihar fares the worst among all states in terms of the proportion of rural households dependent on manual labour (70.6%), followed by Tamil Nadu (65.8%), Andhra Pradesh (58.9%), Odisha (58.8%) and West Bengal (58.4%).
Among large states, Karnataka has the highest proportion of rural households dependent on agriculture (44.7%) and the lowest proportion of families dependent on manual labour (32.5%).
SECC data on irrigation, ownership of agricultural equipment and machinery and access to credit show that most states fare poorly on most counts.
Only 37% of land in India has assured irrigation for growing two crops a year. In Punjab and Haryana, about half the land has irrigation for two crops, but irrigation access is poor in states like Chhattisgarh (13%), Odisha (20%), and Jharkhand (25%).
Only a little over 4% of rural households in India own mechanized equipment like tractors or tillers and less than 10% own any irrigation equipment like a pump set or sprinkler system.
Mechanization is high in Punjab (16.2%), Haryana (11.5%), Gujarat (8.1%) and Karnataka (7.5%) and low in states like Odisha (0.9%), West Bengal (1.1%) and Chhattisgarh (1.2%).
Less than 6% of rural households in eastern states like Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha own any irrigation equipment. In comparison, ownership of irrigation equipment is high in states like Punjab (23%), Haryana (23.5%), Rajasthan (17%), Uttar Pradesh (16.6%) and Madhya Pradesh (15.2%).
Credit access in rural India is dismal. Only 3.6% of rural households in India have a Kisan Credit Card (KCC) for farm loans with a credit limit of over ₹ 50,000, according to SECC. Rural households in states like Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan fare better, with 8-10% households having Kisan Credit Cards. The worst performers are West Bengal (1%), Andhra Pradesh (1.3%), Odisha (1.5%) and Telangana (1.5%).
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