RURAL INDIA LOOKS BEYOND GREEN PASTURES

Rural India, home to about two-thirds of the country’s 114.5 crore population. India’s rural economy is largely agrarian is a notion of the past. India is witnessing a dramatic fall in the share of agriculture in rural GDP against the value of goods and services produced in rural areas.
The contribution of Agriculture and allied activities is decreasing since the year 1950 – 51. Agriculture contributes to around 19% to the total GDP of India. The contribution of the agriculture to the rural gdp of India is following a similar trend. According to an analysis done for ET by Rajesh Shukla, senior fellow at the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), the combined share of industry and services in rural GDP has risen to 58.4% in the current fiscal from 48.6% in 1999-2000 on the back of strong growth in these sectors in the past five years while the share of agriculture slipped to 41.6%. The contribution of industry, the most robust of all rural sectors, to the rural economy is 30.2% in the current fiscal year while services account for 28.2%. According to the CSO’s Economic Census 2005, about a fifth of the non-farm rural workforce is employed in agricultural establishments while four-fifths worked in non-agricultural establishments. This is the result of large public and private investments in the rural sectors over the last decade. The public sector has invested heavily in infrastructure of rural area. While it has led to the overall development in sectors like power, irrigation, roads and transport; employment generation can be considered as the by-product of such heavy investments.
Following is the list of recent schemes and initiatives by the government in rural sector :
The Bharat Nirman programme
NREGA (national rural employment gurantee act)
The National Food Security Mission (NFSM)
The Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana
Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF)

Echoing Shukla’s view, chief economic advisor at the finance ministry, Dr Arvind Virmani said: “There may be a need to review the definition of what is rural as per the Census of India. Parts of rural India do appear to have urban characteristics.” As per this view, we might need to change the definition of rural or urban area. As per Nagesh Kumar, director-general of Research & Information Systems for Developing Countries, a New Delhi-based economic think-tank: “Such a transformation — away from agriculture — is actually desirable for India as over 60% of India’s population cannot live off just under a fifth (19%) of the country’s GDP in agriculture.”
To conclude I would like to consider the other aspect of the article. If we look at the current growth rate of agriculture which is just 2.4 %, we cant get too optimistic of the increasing contribution of the industry and services to the rural gdp. At the end of the day we need to realize that we need agriculture growth rate of atleast 4 % to meet the demand of 115 crore and ever increasing population of India.