Measuring farmers’ welfare: An analysis across states of India

Development literature is replete with comparative studies on the patterns of regional agricultural development and the factors responsible for the regional disparities. Their focus has been on production. However, in recent decades, a paradigm shift has happened away from production to farmers’ income, and further to farmers’ welfare. This paper identifies multiple indicators of farmers’ welfare grouped into (i) production, (ii) post-production, (iii) infrastructure, (iv) social development, (v) ecological aspects, and (vi) policy and fiscal environment, and constructs an index of farmers’ welfare for each of the states. Accordingly, we find Punjab ranking the highest and Rajasthan is at the bottom of the index.