poverty in rural Asia/ edited by Azizur Rahman Khan and Eddy Lee
- Bangkok Asian Employment Programme. 1984
- 276 p.
The chapters in the present volume attempt to examine changes over time in the levels of poverty in the rural areas of seven Asian countries - Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. They draw upon the most recent household income and expenditure survey and other data to analyse changes in rural poverty from the 1960s up to the mid or late 1970s.
The sample of countries covered in the volume represent a significant proportion of the total population of Asia and they are also countries which are predominantly rural. In 1980, they had a combined population of 1,067 million and between 72 and 96 per cent of their population living in rural areas. In addition, as the coming discussion will show, they all continue to have a serious problem of rural poverty. As such, the studies cover the core of the problem of rural poverty in Asia. It should be noticed, however, that in the case of India, there are four separate studies of individual states (Punjab-Harayana, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala) rather than a single overall study. view of the vastness and regional diversity of India, it was felt that the latter procedure would beg as many questions as it answers and that it would be more meaning ful to select a sample of states representing different regions and experiences with growth and institutional change. Punjab and Bihar represent dynamic and stagnant agricultural performance respectively while West Bengal and Kerala, apart from representing Northeast and South India respectively, also under went interesting experiments in agrarian reforms. For the same consideration -that of not attempting to cover a large and diverse country through a single study-the study of Indonesia has also been confined only to Java. That island alone, however, covers about 60 per cent of the total population of Indonesia and represents its agrarian heartland. It also constitutes an agrarian system which is quite distinct from that in the outer islands.
Apart from sharing the characteristic of being predominantly rural, the countries in our sample exhibit significant differences in levels of income, in growth performance and in the structure of their economies. As will be seen in Table 1.1, the countries range in size from Nepal (14 million) to India (over 600 million) and in per capita income levels from $130-140 (Nepal and Bangladesh) to $670 (Thailand). The share of agriculture in GPD also ranges from over half (Nepal and Bangladesh) to only a quarter (Thailand and Indonesia). It will also be seen that growth rates in both GPD and the agricultural sector have also varied markedly, being significantly higher in the two ASEAN countries (Thailand and Indonesia) than in the four South Asian countries.
The countries also vary in terms of indicators specific to the rural sector. Food production per capita fell in the two poorest countries- Bangladesh and Nepal and increased only marginally in India and Pakistan during the 1970s. In contrast, more substantial increases were achieved in Indonesia and Thailand. The countries also varied significantly in terms of the cultivated area per rural inhabitant. This was lowest in Bangladesh, Nepal and Indonesia (Java alone), being only between 0.12 to 0.17 hectares per rural inhabitant, but was twice or more as high in the other three countries.