Introduction

This edition of the Review of Rural Affairs brings together five papers that highlight the issues of livelihood insecurity and fragility in general and poverty, inequality, and employment insecurity in particular among the rural populations, especially farmers and labourers. Observed through the lenses of occupations and castes, the persisting trends of heightened vulnerability of the poorest groups, which the papers bring to the fore, are reflective of the broader econo­mic phenomena encompassing the country, that of agrarian distress and the informalisation and contractualisation of the formal workforce.

The issue of low income of farmers and the high incidence of poverty among them is a problem that has plagued Indian agriculture for quite some time now. This problem has also gained increasing attention from policymakers in recent times. However, there does not exist any consistent time series of real farm incomes at the state level. Dipankar Basu and Kartik Misra, in their paper “An Empirical Investigation of Real Farm Incomes across Indian States between 1987–88 and 2011–12” (p 7), construct consistent estimates of average real farm incomes for 18 major Indian states between 1987–88 and 2011–12. Using this newly constructed data, the evolution of farm incomes across states is analysed, looking both at their levels and growth rates over time. In order to summarise the relative performance of states over the roughly two-and-a-half-decade period, 1987–88 to 2011–12, the states are ranked by the average level of real farm income and growth rates.