During the last three decades the twin problems of poverty and unemployment have drawn a great deal of attention of the intellectuals, planners and policy makers in India. But due to the lack of consensus over the conceptual framework, statistical devices and methodological issues, numerous estimates of rural poverty and unemployment both by the individual scholars and Government departments have been put forth with highly diverting figures. The different Government agencies as well as the indivi-dual scholars are at a loss to know as how to pinpoint the 'hard core of poor and unemployed in a vast country where diversity prevails from natural, social and economic fronts and the Planners and policy makers are unable to understand as to how it should be attacked. In this book an attempt has been made to resolve these conceptual, statistical and methodological issues in order to have more realistic estimates of rural poverty and unemployment from the policy point of view.
This book is a slightly modified version of the doctoral thesis, I have submitted to the University of Allahabad, India, and which earned me the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Economics) in 1984. I take this opportunity to express my heart-felt thanks to all those who have helped me directly or indirectly in the completion of this book.
I am highly grateful to Dr. D.S. Kushwaha, Dean, Faculty of Commerce, Professor and Head, Department of Economics, University of Allahabad, for his sustained encouragement, keen interest, constructive criticism and valuable suggestions during the course of this study.
I feel indebted to Dr. K.P. Pandey, Director, Correspondence Courses, H.P. University and Dr. R. Swaroop, Office Incharge, H.P. University, Agro Economic Research Centre for providing necessary facilities and inspiring me during the course of this study. I am indebted to Dr. M.S. Rathore, Fellow Institute of Development Studies, Jaipur for fruitful discussion, and the relevant latest literature on the subject which he provided while he was Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, H.P. University, Shimla. Thanks are also due to my friend Dr. A.L. Nadda, Economist, H.P.M.C. Shimla, Kanwar Parkash Chand, Research Officer and to Sh. D.V. Singh, H.P. University, Agro-Economic Research Centre, Dr. Yadvinder Kumar Sharma, H.P. University, Shimla for the help they extended in the tabulation work and analysis of the empirical part of the book.
With pleasure I put on record my gratitude and appreciation for the staff of Himachal Pradesh University Library, H.P. University, Directorate of Correspondence Courses Library; H.P. University, Agro-Economic Research Centre Library; Indian Institute of Advanced Study Library, Shimla; Himachal Pradesh Directorate of Economics and Statistics Library; Himachal Pradesh Secretariate Library, Labour Bureau Library, Shimla, Panjab University Library, Chandigarh and to the Allahabad University Library.
I am grateful to the Editors of Indian Journal of Labour Economics, and Indian Journal of Economics who by publishing my research papers, on which a good bit of this book is based, have kindly helped me to put forward my views.
I acknowledge my indebtedness to all the sampled households who supplied daily informations throughout the full agricultural year of 1980-81.
The prosperity of every country is correlated with the well. being of its inhabitants. Therefore, the primary objective of development policies in any country is to achieve growth targets with 'social justice'. Economic development of a country means higher per capita real income, accompanied by an increase both in production and productivity, reduction in inequalities of income and removal of unemployment. The optimum utilization of human resources in productive directions will lead to the reduction of unemployment and will boost the income of the society.
The minimum basic requirements of food, clothing and shelter are necessary for the survival of mankind. In order to meet out these minimum requirements, income has to be earned either from self-employment or through wags employment. When an individual, even after his best possible efforts, does not get work on the existing wage rate or even at low wage rate to earn his means of subsistence, he is termed as 'unemployed' as well as 'poor'.
In the recent literature on economic development, increasing attention has been devoted to the phenomenon of rural poverty and unemployment in India. Confusion exists in the literature because the conflicting concepts, faulty statistical devices and the unrealistic methodological techniques have been applied to different and often inconsistent situations, and conclusions based on measuring a particular type of poverty and unemployment have been drawn as if they were valid for the phenomenon in general.
Poverty is measured both in relative and absolute terms the former measured in terms of inequalities of income and is found to exist even in most affluent societies such as the United States, whereas the latter is measured in terms of minimum calorie norms required to keep a worker in normal health and efficient working position. In India since 1960's in order to find out the dimensions of absolute poverty, the same minimum calorie norms have been applied uniformly all over the country without taking into account the diversity in topography, climatic conditions as well as the variations in the nature, type intensities of economic activities carried out in the rural and urban areas of the country. The minimum food requirements are 'necessary' but not 'sufficient' for the survival of human beings. The minimum non-food requirements are equally important which have not been taken into account by most of the studies on poverty estimates in India.
Most of the empirical studies on unemployment either by adopting very high norms of full employment and by treating men, women and children equally efficient have overestimated the extent of rural unemployment or by excluding the agricultural labourers and small cultivator who constitute the 'hard core' of unemployed have underestimated the figures of unemployment. In most of the studies, no distinction has been made between visible and invisible unemployment, removable and non-removable surplus which is quite important from the policy point of view. Further, most of the estimates of unemployment have been worked out by applying the 'unidimensional approach' (i.e. time criterion alone) to the N.S.S. data, the validity of which cannot be relied upon.
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