Abstract
This paper examines issues and policies in the roles of agriculture and non-agriculture in raising employment and reduction in poverty. First, it provides poverty trends in the pre and post-reform periods. Second, it analyses factors for decline in poverty and different views on the roles of agriculture and non-agriculture in reducing poverty. Third, it looks at the agricultural policies including doubling of farm income. Fourth, it examines briefly issues in rural non-farm sector, manufacturing and services, social protection programmes and inequality. Apart from agriculture, focus is needed on two areas for reduction in poverty: raising quality employment and education. Manufacturing and services are important sectors for absorption of labour. India has to forge its own path of manufacturing development. Reduction in inequalities is important for its own sake but also for poverty reduction. Finally, improvement in gender is equality crucial for raising GDP and poverty reduction significantly.
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Notes
Srinivasan (2007) reviews the evolution of poverty lines in India from a historical perspective and critically discusses some issues relating to official poverty lines. Also see Deaton and Kozel (2005), Vaidyanathan (2001). Srinivasan (2013), among other things, discusses about poverty lines in India in the recent past. For a discussion on poverty debate in India see Deaton and Kozel (2005)
For details on these committees see GOI (2014)
In the literature RPF is computed in at least two different ways: (a) as the ratio of food prices component of CPIAL to the CPIAL itself, and (b) as a ratio of the food or cereal price index to the price index of the manufacturing sector. See Ghose (1989).
For a review of rural non-farm employment, see Himanshu (2014)
On determinants see Nayyar and Sharma (2005)
Personal correspondence with Ajit Ghose
See Rangarajan and Dev (2015) for a discussion on public expenditure on health and education on the poor.
United Progressive Alliance
National Democratic Alliance
May not be statistically significant.
More on gender inequality, see Dreze and Sen (2013).
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Mahendra Dev, S. Poverty and Employment: Roles of Agriculture and Non-agriculture. Ind. J. Labour Econ. 60, 57–80 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-017-0091-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-017-0091-2