ABSTRACT
Faced with the growing criticism that poverty levels are static, in spite of liberalization, the government changed the method of collecting information on this subject. If poverty estimates were like batting averages, then the proportion of households below the poverty line would stand at roughly 50 per cent. Even by official estimates, given the fact that about 68 per cent of India’s population is rural, almost every second villager is living the poverty line. The fact that the proportion of men engaged in agriculture fell between 1997 and 2005 is another indication of why people are so willing to leave their village. The movement of people from village to town and from mud huts to urban slums is most impressive. From 1981 onwards, the Primary Abstracts of the General Population figures in the census show that the numbers of those engaged in Household Industry are increasing steadily, both in urban and non-urban areas.
