RURAL INFRASTRUCTURE AVAILABILITY AND WELLBEING

The income poverty of a household does not only depend upon its income but it also depends upon its capability to develop suitable functionings and infrastructure, both physical and soft, plays a vital role in it. Another important factor in poverty reduction programme is the generation and availability of decent works. There is no denial of the fact that income plays an important role in poverty reduction, but it is not the sole factor. The earning of a person depends on the types of work she/he is performing and the choice that a person would make among available alternatives depends upon her/his functionings. The infrastructure plays a crucial role in decision making process of a worker and in turn in reduction of income poverty. This paper tries to identify the relationship between poverty, employment and infrastructure based on data of rural India. The proposed methodology can be replicated in the rural sector of any developing economy. Here first we identified some core facilities (infrastructures) which are available in villages and then develop a ‘village facility index’ to get an idea of their availability. The villages are then categorized based on the index and related socio-economic profiles for each category of villages are analysed to get an idea of overall wellbeing of the rural folks in India.