Level of income, expenditure behaviour and poverty among farming community in rural Bihar

During the mature green revolution period, i.e., 1980s the trends of agricultural sector shows a favourable growth in Bihar as compared to some major state even. However, increasing costs and declining farm income of the farming community in Bihar is not enough to cater to their farm and domestic expenditure, and hence a lot of people migrated from the state for the livelihood survive. Still Bihar is the one of the poorest state in the countryside, even a big hope for agriculture development. The present study examined the income, expenditure pattern and its distribution with poverty prevailing among the different farm size categories in rural areas of Bihar. A significant variation in the income and expenditure level of different farm-size categories was observed. It shows the underdevelopment of the state, where more than 60 per cent of the expenditure occurred on the non-durable items for the farmers. The small farmers were left with no amount of surplus compared to the larger farmers. It is a pity that about 64 per cent of the average farmers were below the poverty line in the state during 2010?11. Ensuring effective distribution, allocation and implementation of various welfare schemes in order to brace the smaller farmers is a matter of prime concern and if left unattended will drag the economy of Bihar towards ambiguous development, where there is only one source of income in the absence of industries and other sectors as well.