Drivers of Change : Dynamics of Rural Livelihoods and Poverty in SAT India (Research Bulletin no. 26) (original) (raw)

report and providing constructive comments. We thank A Sudha Rani for her excellent research assistance in completion of the study and Pamela Samuel for helpful comments for linguistic improvement. We are grateful to Amit Chakravarty who has copy edited this volume and to Rajkumar B, for page layout. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors who alone are responsible for any errors in it. data for women in 1992 and 2007, the BMI indices have improved for women. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, inequality as measured by the Gini ratio stagnated or tended to decline, but since then has improved, except in the poorest Akola village. Facilities such as shops, eating places and flour mills have increased sharply in all villages. Cell phones have become ubiquitous, and motorbikes have spread. LPG connection, fans, refrigerators, TV sets, and toilets have improved living conditions. Pucca houses have replaced thatched houses built from local materials. The pathways to and success with development have differed sharply between villages depending on their agricultural endowment, their cropping and livestock opportunities, new agricultural technology, their access to canals, opportunities for well irrigation, their proximity to new factories and cities, and according to the way they have involved themselves in education, migration and diversification opportunities. The most successful villages benefited from several of these factors, including a sugar factory in a Shirapur village and the proximity to Hyderabad's new airport in a Mahbubnagar village. That agricultural opportunities are not necessarily the main factors shaping village development is strikingly illustrated by the Mahbubnagar village hardest hit by drought and major loss of tank irrigation: It has been able to significantly compensate for declining agricultural opportunities via non-farm labor participation, education and migration. The village with the poorest performance that is located in Akola did not get canal irrigation, has saline groundwater, is far from urban employment, is poorly served by its local government, and is riddled with factions. It has suffered both from poor agricultural and non-agricultural opportunities and governance problems. The villages therefore range from very successful to very unsuccessful participants in economic development. While agricultural endowments, developments and opportunities remain very important factors for prosperity, the importance of the non-farm and urban economy has become much more important. Income growth and poverty reduction have been most striking since the acceleration of economic growth in these two states, and most villages have found ways to benefit from it. v