| Abstract: |
Rural livelihoods across Bihar's gram panchayats have shifted markedly over the past decade, moving away from the state's historically land-locked, monocrop agrarian base toward a mixed portfolio of farm income, wage labour under MGNREGA, and short-duration migration. This paper documents that shift at the panchayat level, using survey data from six gram panchayats spread across two agro-climatic zones of Bihar the North Bihar floodplain and the South Bihar upland to map how households allocate labour and income across sources. The study covers 480 households, selected through stratified random sampling weighted by landholding category, and its central concern is not whether diversification exists, since prior work has already established that, but how the pattern of diversification varies by land size, caste category, and distance from the block headquarters. Findings indicate that marginal and landless households derive over 60 percent of annual income from non-farm sources, chiefly MGNREGA wage labour and short-term migration to Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi-NCR, while medium and large landholders retain agriculture as their dominant income source but increasingly supplement it through dairy and non-farm self-employment. A livelihood diversification index computed for each panchayat shows considerable inter-panchayat variance that correlates more strongly with irrigation access and road connectivity than with landholding size alone. The paper argues that panchayat-level heterogeneity, routinely flattened in district- or state-level livelihood studies, carries direct implications for how MGNREGA convergence and skill-development schemes ought to be targeted, and closes with methodological and policy implications drawn from the panchayat-wise comparison. |
