State of Farmers in Rural India - Socio-Economic Status of Bihar

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Agriculture of Bihar faces comprehensive challenges that originate both from within the system and also from outside. The Low level of productivity across all the enterprises, crop, horticulture, milk, meat, egg and fishes has traditionally described the state agriculture. The low level of productivity has consequential effects on low income and high poverty of its population. The study is based on primary data collected from 528 farming households through a field study in forty selected villages from the each agro- climatic zones (one district from each zone i.e., four districts) of the state of Bihar. This book reveals several issue related to economic wellbeing of households such as income, consumption expenditure, productive assets, indebtedness, farming practices and performances, resources availability of farming households among the different categories of farmers in Rural Bihar. It highlights the miserable failure of the credit institutions and the numerous government organizations in fulfilling their assigned task for the farming sector. It also reveals that the socio-economic conditions of most of the landless, marginal and small farmers are miserable, Illiteracy, low level of skill, running at a loss and smaller size of holdings low level of income, higher frequency of poverty and indebtedness and lack of awareness are the main factors leading to their lower standard of livings.

Ghanshyam Pandey (b. 1984) born in a Pakari Village of Bhojpur district of Bihar specialization in agricultural and rural development. He is currently working in India's one of the prestigious Research Institution of Economics as a Research Analyst at Agricultural Economics Research Unit, Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi. He has obtained M.A (Economics), B.ED from Punjab University Chandigarh and Ph.D. (Economics) from Punjabi University, Patiala. He has carried out an extensive field works in connection with different projects on agriculture and rural development etc. for the farmers and non-farmers population for around 75 villages in the different districts of Bihar, Punjab and Haryana. The author has more. than four years experience of research. Prior to joining at IEG, he has worked at Agro-economics Research Centre as a Research Fellow, Delhi School of Economics Campus, University of Delhi and Punjab University as a Project Fellow, Chandigarh. Beside the completing research projects, the author has numerous research publications in reputed journals and as book chapters. He has also presented more than dozen of research papers in national and international seminars and conferences at the reputed institutions.

This book by a young and enthusiastic researcher, Dr. Ghanshyam Pandey examines some of the issues related to inclusive development and social justice among various sections of the agricultural income earners in Bihar. The author analyses several issue related to economic wellbeing of households such as income, consumption expenditure, productive assets, indebtedness, farming practices and performances, resources availability of farming households. He investigates the issues based on data he painstakingly collected from a field survey of four selected districts spanned across four different regions of Bihar in the year 2010-11. His survey covers a sample of 528 households in 40 villages in the districts of Sheohar, Purnia, Lakhisarai and Bhojpur.

**Contents and Sample Pages**