MGNREGA – A step towards inclusive growth

About three-fourths of the SCs live in rural areas, where the main source of livelihood is either farming, wage labour or some kind of non-farm business. In 2000, only 16 percent of all SC households cultivated land as owner-cultivator as against 41 percent among non-SC/ST households. Only 12 percent carryout some kind of business, which indicates access to capital. Taking both farm and non-farm activities, only about 28 percent of rural households had got some access to capital assets as compared to 56 percent for non-SC/ST households. Inadequate access to agricultural land and capital leaves no option to SC workers except to resort to manual wage labour; consequently, it leads to enormously high-level of (manual) wage labour among the SCs, that is, 61 percent as compared to only one-third for others in rural areas. Among them, in urban areas, one-third was casual labourers as against only 7 percent among the non-SC/STs. The unemployment rate (based on current daily status) in 2000 were two times higher among the SCs (5.5%) as compared with non-SC/STs. With higher incidence of wage labour, associated with high rate of under-employment, the SCs tend to suffer from low income and greater level of poverty. In 2000, about 38 percent of SC households were below the poverty line in rural areas as compared to only less than 20 percent among non-SC/STs households. The incidence of poverty was as high as 50 percent among agricultural labour as against 40 percent among nonagricultural labour. In urban areas also, the poverty among SCs was about 38 percent, which was much higher as compared with 19 percent for non-SC/STs. Along with the general population, the percentage of both SCs living below the poverty line has indicated a declining trend from 1993–94 to 1999–2000. The need for special attention for SCs welfare and development was realized that the Scheduled Castes suffer from the dual disabilities of severe economic exploitation and social discrimination. While they constitute 16.2 per cent of the total population of the country, their proportion is much larger – more than twice in the poverty groups of the country, most of the Scheduled Castes are below the poverty-line. Accordingly, thrust has to be on the economic development of the Scheduled Castes.