P. K. Nayak, Sadhan Kumar Chattopadhyay, Arun Vishnu Kumar and V. Dhanya*

Indian economy is elevated to a high growth path triggered mainly by macroeconomic reforms and expansion of economic activities across the sectors. However, there are some serious concerns about a number of imbalances in the growth scenario – inter-sectoral, interregional and inter-state. These imbalances have definitely a serious impact on the goal of “inclusive growth” as envisaged in the Eleventh Five Year Plan. The study reveals that still poverty ratio is very high in the economy despite high growth. There is no significant increase in employment in the unorganised sector of the economy. The study shows that while the contribution of the agriculture sector in the real GDP has declined fairly fast, the share of the employment in the agriculture sector has not declined to that extent. As a result, the average productivity in this sector has remained very low as compared to other developing countries. Since a large section of the population continues to be dependent on the agriculture sector, directly or indirectly, this has serious implications for ‘inclusiveness’ of the growth dynamics. The study has emphasised the role of finance in growth and attempted to analyse the regional dimension of financial inclusion, although in a limited sense, in terms of state-wise and sector-wise allocation of credit over the years. It was observed that the distribution of bank credit across sectors and regions is not equitable. Given the level of potential output, Indian economy is well poised to achieve an impressive growth in near future. The strength and resilience of the Indian economy were well tested while weathering the global turbulence of recent time. The paper arrives at the conclusion that furtherance of macroeconomic reforms, harnessing synergistic links among the sectors and availing of opportunities provided by the forces of globalization and intensive use of technology can enable us to achieve higher level of inclusive growth. Sustainable inclusive growth presupposes inclusive governance through empowerment, grassroot participation and increased public accountability.

JEL Classification : C12, D92, F43, G21, O47

Keywords : Inclusive growth, inequality, financial inclusion

Introduction

Inclusive growth has become a buzzword across the globe. Inclusiveness – a concept that encompasses equity, equality of opportunity, and protection in market and employment transitions – is an essential ingredient of any successful growth strategy (Commission on Growth and Development, World Bank, 2008). The Commission of Growth and Development (2008) considers systematic inequality of opportunity as “toxic” as it will derail the growth process through political channels or conflict.

Indian economy has been registering a steady growth in the recent years. However, poverty continues to be a major concern. While some level of growth is obviously a necessary condition for sustained poverty reduction, there is an increasingly unanimous view that growth by itself is not a sufficient condition for eradicating poverty (Ali and Son, 2007). Growth can marginalise the poor sections and increase inequality. High and rising levels of inequality can hinder poverty reduction, which in turn, can slowdown the growth process. One important indication of inadequate inclusion in India is that poverty reduction has been muted in the last decade even with rising growth. The poverty rate has declined by less than 1 per cent per annum over the past decade, markedly below trends in neighboring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh where both average income levels and growth are lower (World Bank, 2007)

The importance of inclusive growth is well acknowledged among the policy makers. The approach paper of 11th Five Year Plan adopted in December 2006 describes the need for inclusive growth in its discussion. The approach plan points out that the growth oriented policies should be combined with policies ensuring broad based per capita income growth, benefiting all sections of the population, especially those who have thus far remained deprived.

While the need for inclusive growth is stressed, it is to be seen, whether it is the inadequate growth of certain sectors like agriculture or the inability of certain groups like SC/STs to form part of the growth process or the lack of both physical and financial infrastructure that pull back the particular regions/sections from enjoying the economic growth. It is possible that a combination of all these factors is preventing certain sections/areas to be out of the growth process. In that case it is necessary to know the major determinants that pull down inclusive growth. The inter linkages between different development indicators and growth in the context of various regions and sections needs to be analysed to understand the nuances of India’s growth process. In this context, a study on regional perspectives of inclusive growth is of utmost importance.

With this backdrop, the paper is organized as follows. Section II deals with the concept of inclusive growth. Section III analyses the inter-state growth performance. Here we look into the growth of Net State Domestic Product and per capita income from 1980-81 onwards. We also examine the sectoral contributions of economic growth across different states. Section IV discusses socio-economic inclusiveness as well as the poverty and unemployment which help in understanding the inclusiveness of our growth processes vis-à-vis select developing countries. Section V deals with relationship between finance and growth. It also highlights state-wise, sector-wise allocation of credit over the years. Section VI concludes the paper.

Section II: Concept of Inclusive Growth

Inclusive growth implies participation in the process of growth and also sharing of benefit from growth. Thus inclusive growth is both an outcome and a process. On the one hand, it ensures that everyone can participate in the growth process, both in terms of decisionmaking for organizing the growth progression as well as in participating in the growth itself. On the other hand, it makes sure that everyone shares equitably the benefits of growth. In fact, participation without benefit sharing will make growth unjust and sharing benefits without participation will make it a welfare outcome.

In view of the above, inclusive growth can be observed from long-term perspective as the focus is on productive employment rather than on direct income redistribution, as a means of increasing income for excluded groups. Under the absolute definition, growth is considered to be pro-poor as long as poor benefit in absolute terms, as reflected in some agreed measure of poverty (Ravallion and Chen, 2003). In contrast, in the relative definition, growth is pro-poor if and only if the incomes of poor people grow faster than those of the population as a whole, i.e., inequality declines. However, while absolute pro-poor growth can be the result of direct income redistribution schemes, for growth to be inclusive, productivity must be improved and new employment opportunities created, so that the excluded section forms part of the growth process. In short, inclusive growth is about raising the pace of growth and enlarging the size of the economy, while leveling the playing field for investment and increasing productive employment opportunities.

The concept of inclusive growth has gained wide importance in several countries including India (Bolt, 2004). The Approach Paper of the Eleventh Five Year Plan provides “an opportunity to restructure policies to achieve a new vision based on faster, more broad-based and inclusive growth. It is designed to reduce poverty and focus on bringing the various divides that continue to fragment our society” (GOI, 2006: 1). In fact, Indian economy has come a long way from so called “Hindu Rate of growth” economy to high growth economy and is compared with China in many respects. In the last five years (2005-06 to 2009-10) the growth rate has averaged at 8.6 per cent making India as one of the fastest growing economies in the World. Of course, transition to high growth is an impressive achievement, but growth is not the only measure of development. Our ultimate goal is to achieve broad based improvement in the living standards of all our people. Rapid growth is essential for this outcome because it provides the basis for expanding incomes and employment and also provides the resources needed to finance programmes for social upliftment. However, it is not sufficient by itself. It is to ensure that its benefits, in terms of income and employment, are percolated down to all the sections of the society, including the poor and weaker sections. For this to happen, the growth must be inclusive in the broadest sense. It must be spread across all states and not just limited to some. It must generate sufficient volumes of high quality employment to provide the means for uplifting large numbers of our population from the low income and low quality occupations in which too many of them have been traditionally locked. It is argued that “rapid, sustained and inclusive growth will take place when large numbers of people move from low-productivity jobs to high-productivity ones. The less effective the growth process is in creating jobs, both in terms of numbers and quality, the greater the political threat and, consequently, the less sustainable the growth process itself” (Gokarn, 2010). Various indicators have raised concerns that India’s growth is not inclusive or its benefits are not widely shared. One, the agriculture sector has been growing at a rate of 2-3 per cent per annum which has led to a fall in its share in the total income. With the level of employment in the agriculture sector remaining more or less constant, the slow growth in income means that the productivity in the agriculture sector has remained low. Regardless of the magnitude of increase and the differential across the two sectors, the stark fact is that average labour productivity outside agriculture is about 5 times that in agriculture (Gokarn, 2010). Two, the poverty impact of growth has been muted: poverty declined from 36 per cent in 1993/94 to 28 per cent in 2004/05, a 0.8 percentage point reduction per annum compared to 1.6 per cent poverty reduction per annum in our neighbouring countries, viz., Bangladesh and Nepal (World Bank, 2007). It is observed that close to 300 million still live in deep poverty at less than a dollar a day. Three, growth rates were generally lower in the poorer states during the 1980s and 1990s¹. Four, employment is dominated by informal sector jobs. Five, it is observed that public services are weak in the poorer regions. Six, female labour force participation rates have remained low despite rising education levels among women due to absence of opportunities. Seven, there exists significant wage discrimination among casual laborers, women get about half the wages of men. Less than one third of this gap can be explained by conventional factors such as skills, location, industry, etc. Eight, although SC groups have made progress, large sections of SC and ST groups are agricultural workers, the poorest earners. Finally, access to finance has been low in rural areas, 87 per cent of the poorest households surveyed (marginal farmers) do not have access to credit, the rich pay a relatively low rate of interest (33 per cent), the poor pay rates of 104 per cent and get only 8 per cent of the credit (World Bank, 2007). Growth has diverged across regions, leaving behind the large populous states of North, Central and North-East India. Growth has not been creating enough good jobs that provide stable earnings for households to climb and stay out of poverty.

Section III : Economic Growth – Spatial and Temporal Analysis

III.1: Overall Growth

During the three decades period from the early 1950s to 1980s, the Indian economy was witnessing so-called “Hindu” rate of growth and the major concern was accelerated growth apart from ensuring equity. During that time, although inequality was a major problem, it was not as prominent as in the recent phase of accelerated growth. With the growth in GDP, the issue of rural-urban divide, regional divides and rich-poor divide became evident, which brought “inclusive growth” on high priority. The Indian economy has been growing at a faster rate in recent decades than it did earlier (Table 1 and Chart 1).

Sector wise performance

While the growth rate of the Indian economy has been increasing in recent times, one phenomenon which was observed was that the growth performance of the three major sectors of the economy, namely, agriculture, industry and services, has been diverse. The growth in the agriculture sector has been the most volatile and also the least among the three sectors most of the times. While the growth in the industrial sector has remained more or less constant, growth rate in the services sector has risen sharply (Chart 1).

The consequence of the diverse growth rate in the three sectors has resulted in a structural change in the contribution of the sectors in the total GDP. The share of the agriculture sector in the overall GDP has declined more or less consistently since independence from 55.3 per cent in 1950-51 to 17.0 per cent in 2008-09. The share of the industrial sector has increased from 10.6 per cent in 1950-51 to about 19.0 per cent in 2008-09. The share of the services sector has nearly doubled from 34.1 per cent in 1950-51 to 64.5 per cent in 2008-09 (Chart 2).

Since a large section of the population continues to be dependent on the agriculture sector, directly or indirectly, this has serious implications for ‘inclusiveness’.

Potential Output²

The Indian economy grew at about 9.0 per cent during 2003-08, which decelerated to 7.0 per cent during 2008-10. Although a part of the gap is due to cyclical factor, different estimation methods suggest that the potential output growth would be around 8.0 per cent during the post-crisis period and 8.5 per cent during the pre-crisis period³. It is argued that the loss in potential output could be due to a slowdown of investment in various sectors, more specifically in the agriculture sector. In fact, the public investment in agriculture in real terms has witnessed steady decline from the Sixth Five Year Plan to the Tenth Plan. Trends in public investment in agriculture and allied sectors reveal that it has consistently declined in real terms (at 1999-2000 prices) from ` 64,012 crore in Sixth Plan to ` 42,226 crore during the Ninth Plan. However, during the Tenth Plan this has increased in absolute terms to ` 67,260 crore. It can also be observed that the public investment has gone down over the year, while private investment remained stagnant (Table 3). The gross capital formation (GCF) in agriculture and allied sectors as a proportion of total GDP stood at 2.66 per cent in 2004-05 and improved to 3.34 per cent in 2008-09. Similarly, GCF in agriculture and allied sectors relative to GDP in this sector has also shown an improvement from 14.07 per cent in 2004-05 to 21.31 per cent in 2008-09.

Declining investment in the agriculture sector had a direct bearing on the productivity of foodgrains in the country. As can be observed from Chart 3, although average yield/hectare (productivity) of foodgrains in India has increased over the years, the productivity is low compared to many other developing countries. The productivity of foodgrains has increased from 522 kg/hectare in 1950-51 to 1854 in 2007-08. While in 1979-80 the yield per hectare was 876 kg/hectare, it became 1380 kg/hectare in 1990. However, productivity growth remained stagnant at a very low level throughout the period. Various studies have been done on the agriculture sector and its associated issues. More recent, among these, studies is done by Mishra (2007) which states that ‘poor agriculture income and absence of non-farm avenues of income is indicative of the larger malaise in the rural economy of India’. One of the manifestations of this has been the increasing incidence of farmers’ suicide in various parts of the country, especially Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, etc.

As per the World Bank database, in respect of cereal productivity, India remained far below even China, Indonesia, Thailand and Sri Lanka (Table 4).

In short, the analysis at the all-India level shows that agricultural sector has lagged behind the growth process. Productivity in agricultural sector is low not only compared with other sectors, but also when compared to the agricultural productivity in other developing countries. In the next section we examine the inclusiveness of growth across the states in India.

III. 2 Inter-state Comparisons of Growth Performance

With regard to inter-state comparison of growth performance, it can be observed from the Table 5 that there is a wide disparity in growth performance in the three time periods (viz. 1980-81 to 1989- 90, 1990-91 to 1999-2000 and 2000-01 to 2008-09), though the disparity has come down in the last period⁴. Among the three time periods taken, nineties witnessed higher disparity as revealed from the coefficient of variation (CV) at 32.4 per cent. The CV has increased from 27.2 per cent during the eighties to 32.4 per cent in the nineties. However, there was a decline in disparity during the last period where the CV came down to 21.2 per cent.

Not only has the disparity in growth came down during 2000s, the period (i.e., 2000-01 to 2008-09) also witnessed high growth rates across the states. All states, with the exception of Madhya Pradesh, recorded growth of more than 5.0 per cent and 12 states recorded growth of above 8.0 per cent. This is further evident that the average growth rate of 7.3 per cent was registered by all states during 2000-01 to 2008- 09 compared to 4.9 per cent and 5.3 per cent, recorded during the first two periods respectively. Further, certain states like Kerala, Uttaranchal, Orissa and Nagaland showed significant improvements during 2000-09.

Thus, the NSDP figures show that the years since 2000 witnessed better inclusive growth than the previous periods. However, it is quite premature to presume that the latter years indicate inclusive growth as the NSDP figures hide the distributive effect of growth. To probe further into the details, we look into the per capita NSDP figures which give a better indicator of standard of living compared to the state average growth. Here again, it is noted that per capita income (PCI) also has limited value in examining inclusive growth as it gives little revelation on the distribution of income across the population.

Chart 4 gives the distribution of Per capita income across states. It shows that there is a wide disparity across States with Bihar at the lowest and Goa at the top position. The CV is as high as 41.0 per cent.

We further examine the inequality across the States in respect of per capita NSDP across the time periods. Annex Table 2 provides the estimates of semi-log function. For Jammu Kashmir (1980-81 to 1989-90), Bihar and Uttaranchal for 1990-91 to 1999-00 and Nagaland for 1990-91 to 1999-00 and 2000-01 to 2008-09, the figures came insignificant. The growth rates for the rest of the states are given in Table 6.

Compared to NSDP, the disparity is higher in the case of per capita income. However, similar to NSDP, the 1990s witnessed higher disparity which came down in 2000s. The CV increased from 48.0 per cent during the eighties to 53.5 per cent in the nineties before coming down to 32.9 per cent during the last period.

Though the inequality in terms of growth rates have come down in 2000s, inequality measured by Gini coefficient of the level variables, have shown an increase over the period. Gini coefficient has increased from 0.164 in 1980-81 to 0.245 in 2007-08 (Chart 5). Gini coefficient has been calculated for 22 states omitting Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland due to non-availability of continuous data series⁵.

In general, growth rates of states have improved in the last time period with the exception of Madhya Pradesh and Punjab. Both the states showed dismal performance in case of NSDP and Per capita income. On the other hand, Kerala and Orissa showed significant improvement in the last decade, with Kerala registering tremendous improvement both in the growth and level of income. Orissa, which ranked 17 in terms of PCI growth during the nineties, improved its position to the second. However, in terms of the level of PCI, it is still low at ` 15,702.

From the perspective of inclusive growth, an analysis of growth performance of states is not enough. It calls for a more detailed analysis of various sectors of the economy and various sections of population. As a first step, we look into the sectoral shares and growth in each state.

Table 7 provides the share of each sector in NSDP across the three time periods. In all the states, the share of primary sector has declined over the time period considered and tertiary sector showing an increase in share and secondary sector registering marginal or no increase⁶. However, Maharashtra which is often hailed as industrial capital of India, witnessed a decline in the share of secondary sector and witnessed an increase in tertiary sector. In all the states, tertiary sector occupies the major share of NSDP which conforms with the earlier studies showing India’s difference in development path with the general East Asian growth path (Bhattacharya and Mitra, 1990; Bhattacharya and Sakthivel, 2004).

However, in terms of growth rates, secondary sector registered highest growth rate in most of the states during the period 2000-01 to 2008-09 as is revealed from Table 8. On the other hand, tertiary sector which registered high growth during the nineties witnessed a slowdown or marginal growth in most of the states during the last period.

The analysis in this section revealed that the growth process was mostly driven by the growth in the services sector. Further, the inequality in growth has come down in the time period since 2000, though the inequality remains at high level. Further, there was a change in growth performance in the last decade with many underperformers moving up and top performers coming down which is reflected in the declining inequality. In the next section, we look into the socio-economic inclusiveness of the growth process.

IV : Socio-Economic Inclusiveness

While discussing inclusive growth, a major factor to be examined is the socio-economic inclusiveness of the people. Inclusive growth being a long term process necessarily emanates from the inclusive nature of socio-economic development across regions and people. But, considering the time constraint, we are limiting our analysis of socio-economic inclusiveness to certain indicators which we feel is able to reveal the social development of the country. We start the analysis by looking into the poverty and unemployment figures over the years. As far as possible, we have tried to compare India’s position with other developing countries

The ultimate objective of planned development is to ensure human well-being through sustained improvement in the quality of life of the people, particularly the poor and the vulnerable segments of population. The development of human resources contributes to sustained growth and productive employment. Development strategy therefore needs to continuously strive for broad-based improvement in standards of living. High growth is essential to generate resources for social spending. However, the benefits of growth should be shared equitably among all sections of society. This is the main logic behind emphasizing the concept of inclusive growth as has been pursued in the Eleventh Five Year Plan.

As per the UNDP Human Development Report 2009 (HRD 2009), India ranked 134 out of 182 countries of the world placing it at the same rank as in 2006 (the Human Development Index (HDI) for India in 2007 was 0.612).⁷ However, the HDI value of India has increased gradually from 0.427 in 1980 to 0.556 in 2000 and went up to 0.612 in 2007, but it is still in the medium Human Development category with even countries like China, Sri Lanka and Indonesia having better ranking (Table 9). In fact, India lags behind in various social indicators of development. There is a huge gap between India and developed world and even many developing countries in respect of health and education, which needs to be bridged at a faster pace. According to HDR, life expectancy at birth in India was 63.4 years in 2007 as against 80.5 years in Norway, 81.4 years in Australia, 74.0 years in Sri Lanka and 72.9 years in China. Adult literacy rate (aged 15 and above) in 1999-2007 was 66.0 per cent in India as against near 100 per cent in China and 92.0 per cent in Indonesia. In the case of combined gross enrolment ratio in education also India was much below the level achieved by some other comparable countries, like China, Norway, and Thailand etc.

Poverty

Poverty is a major issue in the emerging economies, though its intensity varies across countries as reflected in the World Bank’s data on the poverty head count ratio at $1.25 a day (PPP). South Asia continues to have a significant amount of poor people, mainly due to the high poverty ratios in India and Bangladesh (Table 10). It is observed that compared to India, China has made significant progress in reducing poverty in the last 15 years.

As per the official estimates, the incidence of poverty has declined over the years though it remains still at a very high level. The percentage of the population below the official poverty line has come down from 36 per cent in 1993–94 to 28 per cent in 2004–05 (Table 11). However, not only is the rate still high, but also the rate of decline in poverty has not accelerated along with the growth in GDP, and the incidence of poverty among certain marginalized groups, for example the poverty rate of the STs, has hardly declined. Moreover, the absolute number of poor people below poverty line has declined only marginally from 320 million in 1993–94 to 302 million in 2004–05. This performance is all the more disappointing since the poverty line on which the estimate of the poor is based is the same as it was in 1973–74 when per capita incomes were much lower. If we take the World Bank measurement of poverty about 41.6 per cent (as per PPP) of population is below poverty line, which is much higher than the official national poverty ratio of about 28 per cent.

It can further be stated that around 80.0 per cent of the poor are from rural areas. Poverty is mostly concentrated in few states, viz, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand (Annex Table 3). Poverty is concentrated among agricultural labourers, casual workers, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

There are concerns of inequality also in the country. During the last four decades there is hardly any decrease in inequality in the country. It may be observed from Table 12 that while there is a marginal decrease in inequality in the rural area, it has increased in the urban area. A state-wise breakup of Gini coefficients, including a division between rural and urban households, gives similar picture. Most of the States have shown some increase in urban inequality during the same period, but none of the states displayed any increase in consumption inequality over the period 1973-74 to 2004-05.

Employment and Unemployment Situation

Nature and extent of employment is crucial for poverty reduction and inclusive growth. It can be observed from Table 13 that although employment in the industrial and services sector has increased in 2004 in comparison to 1961, agriculture still remains the major sector which continues to employ the largest segment of the population.

Employment growth in the organized sector, both public and private combined, has declined during the period 1994 and 2007. This has happened due to the decline of employment in the public organized sector. Employment in the organized sector grew at 1.20 per cent per annum during 1983-94, but declined to (-) 0.03 per cent per annum during 1994-2007 (Table 14). However, the decline in employment during the later period was mainly due to a decline in employment in the public sector establishments from 1.53 per cent in the earlier period to (-) 0.57 per cent in the later period, whereas the private sector showed moderate growth of 1.30 per cent per annum.

According to NSSO data, compared to 1999-2000, during 2004-05, the unemployment rate in terms of the usual status remained almost the same in rural and urban areas for males, though it has increased by around 2 percentage points for females. As can be observed from Table 15, overall unemployment rates are not too high. However, urban unemployment rates are higher than the rural rates. The unemployment rates according to current daily status (CDS) approach are higher than the rates obtained according to ‘usual status’ approach and ‘weekly status’ approach, thereby indicating a high degree of intermittent unemployment. The unemployment rate, measured through the usual status is very low in the rural areas.

Rural Population

A significant proportion of the Indian population continues to live in the rural areas, though the share has been declining over the years (Table 16). The share of rural population in India is more or less same with that in other South Asian countries. It is interesting to observe that China’s share of rural population, which was almost similar to that of India in early 90s, had declined much faster. With a significant proportion of the rural population engaged in the agricultural sector, the agricultural value added per worker continues to be low.

Rural Health

India has made significant strides in terms of availability of improved water source in the rural areas (Table 17). It is comparable with many countries across the world. However, in terms of inclusive growth on the provision of improved rural sanitation, our achievement has been low.

Gender Disparity

Another important indicator of inclusive growth is the trend in gender disparity. India has made significant strides in terms of reducing the gender disparities as reflected in various indicators. For instance, the female life expectancy at birth, the female literacy levels and the share of women employed in the non-agricultural sector have improved since 1990. In comparison with select countries, it is observed that we are still lagging behind. Even within South Asia, achievements by Sri Lanka are much better than India (Table 18).

Literacy

The male female literacy and literacy gap during the last two censuses across states are given in Table 19. Though the literacy gap across states has visibly come down over the decade, in many states and union territories, it is more than the national average. Literacy gap is highest among the North Indian statets with the exception of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Chandigarh. However, for Punjab, the low literacy gap is more to do with the low literacy rates which itself is a worrisome phenomenon considering that Punjab ranks fifth in terms of per capita NSDP.

In the case of infant mortality rates, the disparity is very high (Table 20). It ranges from 10 in Goa to 70 in Madhya Pradesh.

Another aspect of looking into the development of the region is the provision of basic facilities. Table 21 provides the data on the percentage of population with housing amenities. While there is significant improvement in the availability of electricity, there is huge difference in rural urban. While only 8 per cent of urban population is not having electricity, the share is 44 per cent in the case of rural areas.

The above indicators provided significant facts on differences in the socio-economic conditions across regions. However, it is possible that within regions, certain groups are marginalized. This was evident when we looked into the poverty ratio across different class of population. In the following Tables we looked into the entitlement to different population groups (Tables 22 and 23).

In rural India, among the social groups, the proportion of households possessing land less than 0.001 hectares, during 2004-05, was the highest for ST households (nearly 4 per cent). The corresponding proportion for SC households was about 3 per cent and for OBC and others category of households around 2 per cent each. The survey results also show that the proportion of households possessing land of size 4.01 hectares or more was maximum for other category of households (6 per cent), followed by the OBC (4 per cent), ST (about 3 per cent) and SC households (1 per cent).

In the case of Monthly Per capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) also, the SC/ST communities are marginalized (Table 23). In rural India, proportion of households in each of the five lower MPCE classes (i.e., less than ` 410) was higher among the STs (49 per cent), SCs (40 per cent) and OBCs (30 per cent) than among the others (20 per cent) social group. Between STs and SCs, proportions of households in the lowest two MPCE classes were higher among STs (15 per cent) than among the SCs (8 per cent), and these households spent only ` 270 or less per month. The proportion of households in the highest MPCE class (i.e. those who spent ` 1155 or more per month) was higher among others category of households (12 per cent) than among the OBCs (5 per cent), SCs (3 per cent) or STs (2 per cent).