Incidence of Poverty and Livelihood Status of Farmers in Bihar: Village Level Evidences

The study is based on the longitudinal information collected under Village Dynamics of South Asia (VDSA) project supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in the selected villages of Bihar. An attempt has been made to explore the incidence of poverty and livelihood status of farm households between 2010-11 and 2014-15 using descriptive and econometric techniques. The study has shown that the incidence of poverty among farm households is high, but has shown an impressive decline of 34 per cent during the study period. The decline in poverty during period was higher in semi-marginal households (45.8%) than other categories of farm households. The implementation of targeted programmes of social security and public distribution system (PDS) might have contributed to faster reduction in poverty among weaker section of rural society. The total value of assets of the farm households, except of transport vehicles has considerably enhanced due to either possession of new assets, rejuvenation, and/ or value appreciation of the existing assets. There has been about two fold increase in the total value of assets during the period. The decline in poverty and increase in electrification and communication network might be responsible for phenomenal increase in domestic assets on farm households. There has been spectacular increase in access of farm households to toilet, electrification, cooking gas and communication facilities in villages, which indicate improvement in livelihood in rural Bihar. The investment on human capital or skill development along with the complementarities among various types of infrastructures, institutions and development programmes need to be ensured to accelerate the process of poverty alleviation and livelihood improvement in rural Bihar.