Higher agricultural yields reduced absolute poverty in rural India, both by raising smallholder productivity and by increasing real agricultural wages. But gains to the poor were far smaller in the short run than in the long run.Unlike most developing countries, consistent poverty measures for...

Experience in India suggests that reducing rural poverty requires both economic growth (farm and nonfarm) and human resource development.The unevenness of the rise in rural living standards in the various states of India since the 1950s allowed Datt and Ravallion to study the causes of...