I Survey Methodology

II Social and Demographic Characteristics and Economic Opportunities

Employment and unemployment status presented in Table 3 reveals that in stratum 1, unemployment rate is very high at 11 per cent for males and 13 per cent for females; these rates are much less in stratum 2. Considering the fact that women are by and large engaged in household chores, the proportion (53 per cent) of females “not in labour force” is particularly high in both strata.

The percentage distribution of the number of persons reporting “paid employment” and “self-employment” are presented in Table 4. In stratum 1, agricultural labourers form the bulk (86 per cent) of those engaged in paid employment. The rest are distributed over a dozen other occupations in very small proportions indicating that the scope of paid employment is limited. This also implies the lack of economic opportunities other than agriculture to absorb a larger number of rural poor. There are

Table 2: Selected Features of the Sample Districts

some paid-employment occupations yielding more than double the income of agricultural labourers but these are in negligible proportions. The estimated average annual income per agricultural worker was a meagre Rs 5,046.

Among those self-employed in the poor households, 85 per cent are small cultivators with average annual income estimated at Rs 7,290. About 6 per cent, engaged as big cultivators, have a relatively higher annual income at Rs 9,902. The non-household industry attracting only 2.25 per cent of households yields an average annual income of only Rs 3,219.

On an average, a self-employed person in a poor household earns Rs 7,338 annually as compared to Rs 5,246 earned by a person in paid employment. The results clearly show that for stratum 2 households, self-employment is a much more viable proposition than those in stratum 1. The average income of Rs 23,716 for stratum 2 in self-employment is more than three times that of the self-employed in stratum 1. Lack of opportunities, uncertainties in both paid and self-employment and the high incidence of poverty may induce people to seek employment outside the village. However, in Madhya Pradesh, only 2.68 per cent of the households reported migration of their

Occupation Paid Employment Self-Employment No of Per Worker No of Per Worker Person Income Person Income (Per Cent (in Rs) (Per Cent (in Rs) Share) Share)

Stratum 1 Agricultural labourer 85.72 5046.35 2.57 7617.05 Cultivators small 0.00 0.00 84.88 7290.29 Cultivators big 0.00 0.00 5.71 9902.25 Livestock and fishermen 0.16 6005.55 0.97 5407.58 Forest-based tribals 1.87 1323.97 0.67 3273.45 Mining and quarrying 0.51 10526.67 0.13 3006.07 Household industry 0.35 6778.26 0.95 11508.37 Non-household industry 0.78 6962.77 2.25 3219.05 Construction 1.92 7772.31 0.03 40000.00 Electricity, water, gas 0.10 5376.60 0.02 0.00 Retail trade 0.32 10907.05 0.01 20000.00 Transport, storage and

communication 0.16 11584.73 0.00 Hotel, restaurant, dhabas 0.09 12462.50 0.09 8000.00 Financial service provider 0.11 6028.88 0.00 Community, other service provider 0.41 4899.90 0.00 Other different from above 7.51 7748.63 1.73 6035.98 Total 100 5245.51 100 7337.72

Table 5: Distribution of Households according to Per Capita Income Classes and Indebtedness

Per Capita Income Class Stratum 1 Stratum 2 Distribution Share of Distribution Share of of Indebted of Indebted Households Households Households Households

members to places outside the villages. In this group, 22 per cent left for casual work in agriculture.

Table 5 gives the percentage distributions of households and the share of indebted households by per capita income class. A heavily skewed income distribution is notable for the poor households with 30 per cent of households having per capita income of less than Rs 2,500 per year, 66 per cent below Rs 3,500 and 86 per cent below Rs 4,500. In other words, every three out of 10 households subsist on a per capita monthly income of less than Rs 208; two out of three households survive on per capita monthly income of less than Rs 292. Merging the lower small income ranges, 87 per cent of the poor households have per capita income less than Rs 4,500 that is, Rs 375 monthly. At the other end, only

0.70 per cent has per capita annual income of Rs 10,000 or more.

With low incomes, many household are forced to incur debt. The incidence of indebtedness, as defined by the percentage of households taking loans during the year preceding the survey, is 23 per cent. The share of indebted households is 26 to 27 per cent at the lower end but increases marginally to 28 to 31 per cent in some of the income groups after Rs 6,500. As against 0.70 per cent in stratum 1, it is observed that in stratum 2, 18 per cent earn Rs 10,000 or more. However, in stratum 2 about 43 per cent have to survive on an annual per capita income of Rs 4,500. Of the total households on an average, 15 per cent are indebted; over the income groups, in general, this ratio is less than that in stratum 1.

Table 6 provides the status of education among adults and children in male and female categories across strata. Educational status is classified into three categories, viz, “can read and write”, “read only” and “can’t read and write”. Table 6 shows that, across gender, literacy rate among the adults is much higher in stratum 2 compared to stratum 1. In stratum 1, more than 47 per cent of the adult males fall in the “can’t read and write” category and the same ratio is 33 per cent in stratum 2. The differences in the adult female literacy achievement across strata show that compared to males, the disparities are much higher in case of female with 24.64 per cent literate in the category of “can read and write” in stratum 1 and 38.21 per cent in stratum 2.

In the case of the educational status of children also there are disparities across gender but not to a significant extent across strata. However, disparities are much lower in case of children compared to adults. The percentage of children in stratum 1, who fall in the category of “can read and write”, is 80.46 per cent, with male children at 82 per cent and female children at

Economic and Political Weekly February 3, 2007 79 per cent. In the case of stratum 2, these ratios are 80.88, 85.05 and 75.74 per cent respectively.

The distribution of children not attending schools by sex and reasons for the poor is given in Table 7. Shortage of finance is the main reason for children not able to continue education in stratum 1.

In order to examine whether the distance of schools from the place of residence is a significant factor in terms of regular attendance to the school, we looked at the relationship between distance and attendance. Table 8 shows that there is no clear relationship between the two. If we take the attendance in the last two classes of attendance, i e, 0-80 to 1 and equal to 1 in stratum 1, it explains 62 per cent of the attendance when the school is less than one km away. At the same time, it also explains 60 per cent of the attendance when the school distance is between two to five km. In other words, school distance does not matter when it comes to the question of attending the school. However, it needs to be emphasised that this finding is not an argument to have lower school density in rural Madhya Pradesh.

The primary survey investigated the benefit incidence of government programmes in education by stratum in scholarship, free books, mid-day meal schemes and others as summarised in Table 9. For stratum 1, the percentage of school going children receiving benefit exceeds 100 per cent. In the case of stratum 2, the percentage of children receiving benefits is 85.41 per cent. Further, the distribution of the nature of benefits reveals that the mid-day meal scheme is the most predominant form of benefit received by the school going children followed by free books and scholarships. The benefit in the form of free uniform is only 3 per cent and negligible in stratum 1 and stratum 2 respectively. The distribution of expenditure across benefit also reveals that the major share of expenditure is on mid-day meal schemes.

The distribution of benefit across strata, as given in Tables 9 and 10, reveals that more than 65 per cent of the total benefit goes to the children belonging to stratum 1 and the rest goes to stratum 2. The per capita expenditure benefit across strata reveals that per capita expenditure benefit is higher in stratum 1 than in stratum 2 indicating a progressive benefit distribution.

The provision of public health services and its access have a significant impact on human development. Issues examined in this perspective are the pattern of health service seeking behaviour, the cost of consultation as per the use of type of health services, health expenditure across MPCE class and the status of antenatal care services in rural Madhya Pradesh. According to secondary data, Madhya Pradesh has a rural health infrastructure with 8,835 sub-health centres, 1,194 primary health centres, 229 community health centres and 36 district hospitals. The Third Human Development Report of Madhya Pradesh has reported the gap in the rural health infrastructure where an additional 1,689 subhealth centres, 497 primary health centres, 199 community health centre and nine more district hospitals are to be added to meet the demand for the provision of public health services in rural Madhya Pradesh.3

Given these limited public health facilities, the survey enquired about the health service seeking behaviour of households based on the nature of consultation with various health service providers during the last one year. Table 11 shows that more

Adults Adult Education Status Children’s Education Status Stratum 1 Stratum 2 Stratum 1 Stratum 2

Male Can read and write 50.95 65.85 81.98 85.05 Read only 1.87 1.08 2.72 0.79 Can’t read and write 47.19 33.07 15.30 14.16 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 Female Can read and write 24.64 38.21 78.51 75.74 Read only 2.85 2.15 3.90 5.22 Can’t read and write 72.51 59.64 17.59 19.04 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 Persons Can read and write 38.78 53.14 80.46 80.88 Read only 2.32 1.57 3.23 2.77 Can’t read and write 58.90 45.29 16.30 16.35 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

Reasons Stratum 1 Male Female Persons

Shortage of finance 80.96 78.31 79.70 School is too far 2.82 4.81 3.77 Poor quality in affordable school 0.69 – 0.36 Discontinued after marriage 0.11 0.72 0.40 Have to do household work 0.50 1.20 0.83 Have to earn for family 1.82 6.12 3.87 No interest 5.24 – 2.74 Not specified 7.87 8.84 8.33 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00

Type of Stratum 1 Stratum 2 Benefits Number Expenditure Number Expenditure Benefiting Distribution Benefiting Distribution (Percentage across (Percentage across Share) Benefits Share) Benefits

Scholarship 20.36 28.54 19.11 25.75 Free books 36.66 21.51 37.49 26.89 Free uniform 3.09 1.00 3.68 0.37 Mid-day meal 34.73 47.60 31.77 46.49 Others 5.16 1.36 7.95 0.50 Total 100 100 100 100 As per cent

to schoolgoing children 151.22 85.41 Per capita expenditure

benefit 122.38 103.33 Benefit Excl MM as per cent

to schoolgoing children 98.71 17.68

than 75 per cent of the rural households seek medical help from primary health centres, followed by private doctors, quacks and health workers. However, there is a large proportion of households who seek the service of the category called “others” in both the strata, which among other providers include mobile dispensary, maternity centre, indigenous practitioners, faith healers, and chemists.

Table 12 shows the spread of average consultation cost in stratum 1 for these health service providers. The modal value of average consultation fee is Rs 10 for PHC, health worker and private doctor. Around 57 per cent of the households pay less than Rs 10 in stratum 1 for health workers. While for ‘Jhola chhap’ quack, around 34 per cent of the households, pay Rs 25.

Type of Benefits Stratum 1 Stratum 2 Total

Scholarship 67.57 32.43 100 Free books 60.05 39.95 100 Free uniform 83.40 16.60 100 Mid-day meal 65.81 34.19 100 Others 83.60 16.40 100 Total 65.27 34.73 100

Health worker 13.92 PHC 75.38 Private doctor 31.69 ‘Jhola chhap’ quack 20.31 Others 57.35 Not specified 1.35

Note: This is as a percentage of total households.

Stratum 1 Health worker 56.91 10.00 13.39 14.57 5.13 100.00 PHC 36.34 21.55 25.56 5.77 10.78 100.00 Private doctor 31.34 22.17 14.13 14.10 18.26 100.00 ‘Jhola chhap’ quack 27.40 27.03 34.30 7.03 4.25 100.00 Others 44.48 17.78 22.85 6.23 8.65 100.00 Not specified 34.60 7.34 29.85 1.14 27.06 100.00

Table 13 shows the distribution of households reporting illness across monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) class, corresponding health expenditure across medicine, doctors and others,4 per household health expenditure and the share of health expenditure in total expenditure of households. The MPCE class-wise distribution of households reporting illness shows that more than 98 per cent of the households below the poverty line reported illness during the last one year in stratum 1. At the higher end of the MPCE classes, the reporting is 100 per cent. In regard to the composition of health expenditure, the bulk of the expenditure (more than two-thirds of the total health expenditure) goes to medicines followed by others and doctors. It is also notable that per household health expenditure increases across MPCE class. The average per household annual health expenditure in stratum 1 is Rs 879. The average share of health expenditure in total expenditure in stratum 1 is 6 per cent.

Another dimension of health services, where there is active government intervention, is reproductive and child health services (RCH). The RCH programme in general and the antenatal care services in particular are said to have a salutary effect on family planning [Mishra et al 1996; Pandey et al 2002]. Another thrust area of the RCH programme is to encourage deliveries under the supervision of trained health professional [Pandey et al 2004]. The national population policy also specified achieving 80 per cent institutional deliveries and 100 per cent deliveries by trained health professionals by 2010 as its socio-economic goal. The survey probed into the status of RCH programme by examining the status of antenatal care services and type of assistance sought during deliveries.

During last pregnancy, the clinical consultation of currently married women as per the number of visits brings out the fact that the distribution is concentrated around two and three visits respectively. The distribution of the type of consultation providers reveals that in the single consultation class, it is mostly the untrained and trained ‘dai’ whose services were sought. In the case of two consultations category, the number of women visiting trained dai constituted more than 53 per cent in stratum 1 (Table 14). If we consider “other” as a category in this, the share goes up further.

It can further be inferred that in the class of five or more visits, the nature of consultation is mostly with trained professionals like nurses and doctors. However, when we look at the aggregate, 22 per cent of currently married women sought the help of untrained dai in stratum 1. Based on National Family Health Survey 2 data, Roy, Kulkarni and Vaidehi (2004), while analysing the pattern of utilisation of antenatal care services and the delivery status (safe/unsafe) across socio-economic groups, found extreme inequality in Madhya Pradesh with regard to utilisation of these services. These findings are reinforced by our survey in these 11 districts.

IV Pro-Poor Fiscal Intervention: The Ground Realities

Stratum 1

Note: NS – not specified.

Apart from the direct fiscal interventions, the sensitivity of public representatives towards their constituency should have a profound influence on rural development. Though it is difficult to judge the sensitivity of public representatives vis-à-vis their respective constituencies, as a rough measure, we have examined their frequency of visits and also the nature of development activities initiated through MP and MLA local area development funds. More than 31 per cent of the visits fall in the category of more than one year in the case of visits of MP implying that 69 per cent of villages were not visited by there MPs even once in a year. In the case of MLA’s visit, more than 42 per cent of the visits fall within the category of more than one year. What is striking is that for both MPs and MLAs, a large part of the rural population failed to specify anything about the visits of their representatives to their villages.

The nature of development schemes run by the public representatives, broadly classified, reveals that these are in the nature of raising the village infrastructure by the provision of public water supply, village roads, community hall, etc. More than 75 per cent of the villages could not report the nature of any development schemes run by their respective representatives either by the MPs or MLAs. Among the other schemes reported, these are mostly concentrated in the construction of rural roads

(12.05 per cent), followed by public hand pumps (6.25 per cent) and community halls (4.04 per cent).

(Per cent)

In the multitier system of governance in India, local bodies, i e, village panchayats also provide various public services in their jurisdiction. Table 17 shows that like most other states, in Madhya Pradesh also, the panchayat services are confined to various civic services in the form of maintenance and provision of the public water supply system, provision of additional facilities in the form of setting up of hand pumps, running of schools, maintenance and construction of roads and bridges. In fact the major share of expenditure of panchayats goes for creating additional facilities in the form of roads and bridges. In the case of health services, they conduct vaccination programmes, and look after the running of village hospitals (primary health centre). The average expenditure of each panchayat in running these functions works out to about Rs 67,000 per year.

The finances of panchayats are weak as they are unable to raise their own resources. Table 18 shows their heavy dependence on centre and states for resources. According to the size class of panchayats, the structure of funds according to various sources, viz, centre, states, own resources and others, shows that across size class, panchayats’ own revenues in total resources of the panchayats constitutes only 8 per cent. The direct resource transfer from the centre constitutes around 49 per cent of the total resources, and the rest comes from the state government.

V Poverty Alleviation Strategies: Perception of Poor

VI Summary and Concluding Observations

Table 16: Distribution of Households Reporting Benefit and Its Nature by MPCE Class

Percentage of Percentage Per Village Villages Distribution Expenditure Reporting of Expenditure (Rs)

Size of Panchayat Per Cent Structure of Revenue Resources by Sources by Number of Villages of Members Centre States Own Others Total

1-5 4.45 45.23 46.58 2.47 5.72 100 6-10 14.73 40.99 40.01 14.64 4.35 100 11-15 42.94 51.53 41.16 2.75 4.56 100 16-20 34.17 49.66 35.55 11.63 3.16 100 21-25 3.71 43.96 44.51 11.52 0.00 100 26-30 0 > 30 0 Not specified 0 Total 100 48.82 39.53 8.03 3.61 100

Economic and Political Weekly February 3, 2007 illiteracy rate for males too, though not as much as in the case of females.

Thus, given the high gender discrimination in rural Madhya Pradesh reflected in the adverse sex ratio, extremely low adult female literacy rate and the status of RCH programme, efforts should be focused not only be for poverty reduction but for a pro-gender development policy.

EPW

Email: srivastava@mse.ac.in

Notes

account of X-ray and various other diagnostic tests.

References

Economic and Political Weekly February 3, 2007