Rural India high on non-farming jobs

Employment in sectors other than crop production and plantation grew faster in rural areas in comparison with urban areas between 1998 and 2005. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 30, 2008, 24:09:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Employment in sectors other than crop production and plantation grew faster in rural areas in comparison with urban areas between 1998 and 2005. Millions of Indians shifted to jobs in the retail trade, manufacturing and allied agricultural activities such as livestock farming and fishing, according to the Fifth Economic Census-2005 released by the government on Thursday.

It is, however, not clear if this shift was triggered by distress in the agricultural sector or indicates enhanced entrepreneurship among the country’s rural folk. “It may be because people got pushed out of agriculture or were pulled into business because of higher economic returns,” Pranab Sen, Secretary in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said after releasing the data.

Sen said the data clearly shows higher economic activity in rural areas compared to urban India. In 2005, 100 million people were in areas establishments as owners or employees. And more than half of them were in rural areas.

Many critics of the BJP attribute the NDA’s defeat in the 2004 Lok Sabha election to “jobless growth”. SK Nath, Director-General, Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), who coordinated the census, said new data proves “there was nothing like jobless growth. During the period surveyed, growth in a number of enterprises matched the rise in employment, showing that economic growth has benefited rural India.” But the census did not survey wages, Sen said. An economist with the Planning Commission said the census does not answer the big question - whether per capita earnings in rural India have increased. “I believe it has not. Some of these self-owned enterprises may be because of agricultural distress,” he said.

According the survey of 211 million households and 42 million establishments, the employment growth rate in rural areas went up by 1.60 per cent during 1998-2005 from 1990-1998 rates. In urban areas, the rate rose by just 0.36 per cent in the same period.

Employment growth rate in rural areas during the current survey period was 3.88 per cent while it was 2.22 during the previous eight-year period. But in urban areas, where economic activity is believed to be higher, the annual employment rate recorded for 1998-2005 was 1.70 per cent compared to 1.34 per cent in the previous period. The survey does not account for employment in the government though.

The higher employment rate in rural areas was primarily because villagers ventured into self-owned retail and manufacturing businesses — the two sectors with the maximum growth between 1998-2005. Growth of self-owned establishments run by family members doubled in rural areas during the census period as compared to 1990-98, when it was 2.25 per cent. Similarly, establishments with up to six workers witnessed a three-fold jump in rural areas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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