Rural Employment and Diversification

Agriculture alone cannot absorb India's entire rural workforce, particularly given seasonal unemployment (many farm activities are concentrated in specific sowing and harvest periods, leaving farm labour under-employed for parts of the year) and the small and fragmented size of many landholdings. Diversification of the rural economy into non-farm activities is therefore an important complement to agricultural growth.

Rural non-farm employment includes rural industry (agro-processing, handloom and handicrafts, small-scale manufacturing), rural services (trade, transport, construction) and other allied activities such as dairying, poultry, fisheries and forestry, which supplement farm income and provide employment during the agricultural off-season. Growth of such non-farm rural activity is widely seen as important both for raising rural incomes and for reducing the pressure of an over-large workforce depending on farm land alone. …