Rural Gujarat's grim story: 95% household earners' income is less than Rs 10,000

By Rajiv Shah
Painting a grim picture of Gujarat’s rural areas, the latest Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), released on Friday, says that a staggering 94.81 per cent of rural households reported their maximum income below Rs 10,000 per month. Significantly, this is against the all-India average of 91.71 per cent, and worse than all 21 major states with the sole exception of Telangana (95.32 per cent) and Andhra Pradesh (96.8 per cent).
The poor state of incomes of the highest earning member of Gujarat’s rural households comes amidst Government of India seeking to project Gujarat as a “model” state, where agricultural incomes have allegedly risen sharpest in the country. In fact, for nearly a decade, under Narendra Modi’s chief minisership, the state government kept talking about “double digit” rate of agricultural growth, despite expert view that the calculation was based on taking a poor monsoon year as the base year.
Pro-Modi economists such as Prof Bibek Deboy even tried to make out that the rural poverty in Gujarat has come down much faster than most other Indian states. He is reported to have said that the “real story” of development of Gujarat is in the rural areas. The SECC was conducted during 2011-12, with some states completing the data collection in 2013, due to a lengthy process of seeking objections on collected data.

What is shocking for Gujarat is, the percentage rural households reporting highest earning member with incomes between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, is also one of the lowest in India – just 11.5 per cent households as against the all-India average of 17.18 per cent. Of the 21 major states, just one state, Telangana, reported that its households had still lower number of highest earning member with income between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000 (7.33 per cent).
However, ironically, if the SECC data are to be believed, there is a far fewer proportion of rural households in Gujarat with the highest earning member earning less than Rs 5,000 (45 per cent). This is against the all-India average of 74.49 per cent, with only two states, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana reporting lesser proportion of households with incomes less than Rs 5,000 – 29.26 per cent and 40.02 per cent, respectively. The all-India average is 74.49 per cent.
There is, however, little explanation in the SECC data, released by high-profile team consisting of Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, minister for rural development Birender Singh and chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, about the rural households which do not fall in the three categories of rural household incomes whose data have been released – household heads having income less than Rs 5,000, between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000, and more than Rs 10,000.

The SECC data show further that Gujarat has the least percentage of rural households living in rural areas (59.52 per cent) compared to other states with the sole exception of Tamil Nadu (57.53 per cent). Gujarat’s rural illiteracy is 31.01 per cent illiteracy (national average 35.73 per cent). Six states have a lesser proportion of illiterates – Kerala 11.38 per cent, Himachal Pradesh 22.05 per cent, Uttarakhand 25.41 per cent, Tamil Nadu 26.38 per cent, and Maharashtra 26.96 per cent.

The SECC data also show that for 41.09 per cent of Gujarat’s rural households cultivation is the main source of income, as against the all-India average of 30.1 per cent. Then, there are 43.28 Gujarat’s rural households which depend on manual labour as the main source of household income, as against the all-India average of 54.14 per cent.

Gujarat’s just 1.29 per cent rural households depend on domestic work as the main source of income (all India average 2.5 per cent); 2.49 per cent depend on own non-agricultural enterprises (all-India average 1.61 per cent); and 11.38 per cent depend on “other” rural activities (all-India average 14.01 per cent). While there is no explanation of what “other” could be, an analysis of the data from all the states suggests one of the major sources of income could be fisheries.

Comments

RUPE said…

There appear to be errors in one of the SECC tables on the site. The following is the problem table, from which, perhaps, the data for the above article has been drawn:

http://www.secc.gov.in/staticReportData?getReportId=S_19

The following seems to be correct:

http://www.secc.gov.in/staticSummary

--RUPE

July 07, 2015

Rajiv Shah said…

Yes, I also think so that there is something wrong with the income data. But the link that you have provided does not provide income factor at all.

July 08, 2015

Beyond India-China borders: Economic links expand, political gaps persist

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* Despite growing trade between India and China, a persistent trust deficit continues to shape their bilateral relationship. Expanding economic engagement has not fully resolved political differences, many of which stem from historical legacies as well as contemporary geopolitical concerns. Border disputes—often traced to colonial-era arrangements—remain a significant obstacle to deeper cooperation, while differing strategic alignments in global affairs add further complexity.

GreenTech Summit claims NCR as key green building hub, without pan-India comparison

By A Representative The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), under the Confederation of Indian Industry, held its GreenTech Summit 2026 in New Delhi, where industry representatives, policymakers and sustainability professionals discussed the adoption of climate technologies in India’s built environment.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Gujarat cadre to HDFC: When bureaucratic style hits corporate walls

By Rajiv Shah I was a little amused by the abrupt March 17, 2026 resignation of Atanu Chakraborty —a Gujarat cadre IAS officer of the 1985 batch who retired from the government in 2020—as chairman of HDFC Bank . Much of what may have led to his decision to quit this ostensibly high post—actually a non-executive, part-time role—is by now well known. I followed most of it online with considerable interest, partly because I had interacted with him umpteen times during my stint as The Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar from 1997 to 2012.

Operation Epic Fury: Making America great at the world’s expense?

By N.S. Venkataraman* The decades-long enmity between Iran and Israel is well-documented, but historically, their direct confrontations have been brief, constrained by the logistical and economic limitations of sustained warfare. The current conflict in the Middle East, however, marks a radical and dangerous departure from this pattern.

India has been getting its economic growth wrong for two decades, say top economists

By Jag Jivan* India's official GDP figures have misrepresented the trajectory of the world's fifth-largest economy for the better part of two decades, according to a major new working paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). It finds that India overstated annual growth by up to two percentage points after 2011 — and understated it during the boom years of the 2000s.

Beyond the election manifesto: Why climate is now a kitchen table issue

By Vikas Meshram* March has long been a month of gentle transition, the period when winter softly retreats and a mild warmth signals nature’s renewal. Yet, in recent years, this dependable rhythm has been disrupted. This year, since the beginning of March, temperatures across vast swathes of the country have shattered previous records, soaring to between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius in some regions. This is not a mere fluctuation in the weather; it is a serious and alarming indicator of climate change .

Jerusalem's Al Aqsa mosque under siege: A test of Muslim solidarity and Palestine’s future

By Syed Ali Mujtaba* In the cacophony of Israel’s and the United States’ attack on Iran, one piece of news has been buried under the debris of war: Israel has closed the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem to Palestinian worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan. The closure, announced as indefinite, affects the third most revered mosque in the Islamic world.

Search This Blog