Agrarian structure, technological change and poverty, microlevel evidence

This book deals with the impact of agricultural modernisation on poverty. Unlike the available studies on rural poverty in India which provide evidence at the national or state level, it is a study of rural poverty at the micro level, and the estimates of poverty are based on actual caloric intakes from a dietary survey of households rather than grouped data on consumption expenditure.

It represents the very first attempt to explain, quantitatively, why some communities but gains from growth. not others spread

The author has argued that the response of HYV seeds related technology, in respect of the incidence and severity of poverty, depends on the nature of the agrarian structure not just at the level of states or agro-climatic zones of India, but also at the village level in line with differences in institutional and social history. This fact has been hitherto neglected because stressing intra-rural differences" use-in rightly by income or "class"-the literature has somewhat ignored the differences among types of villages, and the unformities of behaviour and response within a of a given type. Thus, while the studies village on the subject have emphasised the fact that village communities are vertically differentiated by income, assets and tenure, etc, very little attention in the poverty-technology link has been Paid to horizontal (inter-village) differences in the village societies.

Taking an area-Borsad taluka in Central Gujarat-where, on an average, the adoption of HYV seeds related technology is high, studied ten the author has villages for inter-village comparisons for insights into the incidence of poverty and its correlates.