Abstract
India is predominantly a rural country. It is witnessing several transformations in all its major domains. The rural settlements and their livelihoods are also no exception and observing changes in new economic order. The trends suggest that there is declining share of agriculture in the national economy whereas urban population is increasing at a faster rate, which threatens agricultural environs and influence their economic activities significantly. It also adds complications to rural livelihood sustainability. This study is primarily based on the secondary sources of data, collected from various governmental and ministerial publications. It attempts to evaluate transforming status of rural livelihood sustainability in the states of India. UNDP’s normalization method was incorporated to standardize indicators and a modified form of IPCC’s vulnerability index was used to develop “Sustainable Livelihood Index” (SLI). This index is taken as a base for formulating “Livelihood Ladder”, adapted from the Oxfam Report. Main findings of this paper reveal that there are large-scale inter-state disparities for different assets, where central and eastern states of India are found to be poor on livelihood sustainability due to their lower human, social, and financial capital and thus more vulnerable to present-day shocks and stresses while southern and northern states are better placed in terms of livelihood sustainability.
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Notes
- 1.
Gross enrollment ratio (GER): It is defined as the number of students enrolled in a given level of education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the official school-age population corresponding to the same level of education.
- 2.
Gender Parity Index (GPI) in enrollment at any level of education is the ratio of the number of female students enrolled to the number of male students enrolled at that level.
- 3.
NSSO stands for National Sample Survey Organization, which comes under the Ministry of Statistics, Government of India and conducts socio-economic surveys on various subjects like employment, consumer expenditure, health services, etc.
- 4.
Like the 66th round survey, the 68th round survey employed three different methods of measurement of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) at the household level—the URP (Uniform Reference Period), MRP (Mixed Reference Period), and MMRP (Modified Mixed Reference Period) methods. This paper has used MMRP method for analysis.
- 5.
Tendulkar Methodology for persons above poverty line (APL) refers to that methodology which identifies persons whose level of income is sufficient to meet their minimum living conditions.
- 6.
It is an economic benchmark used by the Indian government to indicate economically disadvantaged people who need government’s assistance and aid.
- 7.
Marginal workers are those workers who get work for less than 183 days in a year.
- 8.
Water Premises: Premises has been defined as a building along with the land and/or common places attached to it. It is used in context of availability of drinking water source, depending upon the distance at which it is available. (i) Within the Premises: where the household live. (ii) Near the Premises: If the source is located within a range of within a distance of 500 m in the case of rural areas. (iii) Away from the Premises: If the drinking water source is located beyond 500 m in rural areas.
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Fazal, S., Vashishtha, D., Sultana, S. (2022). Livelihood Transformations and Sustainability in India. In: Jana, N.C., Singh, A., Singh, R.B. (eds) Livelihood Enhancement Through Agriculture, Tourism and Health. Advances in Geographical and Environmental Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7310-8_1
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