Development in Tamil Nadu

I have revived my blogging after eons. I would now use this space mainly to write or quote about Tamil Nadu. My information mostly comes from Economic & Political Weekly.

To begin with I pick a longish quote from an article on Women's Empowerment through micro-finance in Tamil Nadu (http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/15883.pdf). The interesting part of this research is that the research have conducted surveys in the concerned villages over several decades. This kind of research gives us an understanding of how things are changing relative to time. In spite of the deafening roar of pessimism I hear all around me, I remain a rational optimist. Going by the evidence available I think things are improving for people of Tamil Nadu.

Here is a quote from the article

"Tamil Nadu belongs to that part of India that has experienced fairly stable economic growth and social development in the past 25 years. In our panel study of six villages in Karur and Tiruchirapalli districts, we have documented this development in various ways. The most important findings relate to a doubling of average real incomes, rapid growth of non-farm activities and a reduction of inequality in terms of operated area and income among the land operating agrarian households in our sample (Djurfeldt et al 2008a).

We have identified the two most important driving forces in this transformation as industrialisation with its side effects and state social policy interventions.

Being close both to the Tiruppur-Karur textile industry belt and the growing city of Tiruchirapalli, many of the households we studied have been able to diversify their economic activities into a number of non-agricultural activities. The actual number of factory jobs is still small, but the number of workers now engaged in shops, various services and modern professional occupations, building industry, etc, is quite significant. Almost 70% of the studied agrarian households have one or more members so engaged. Our statistics on income shows that it has increased faster than farm income over the past two and a half decades. Today 64% of household income derives from the nonfarm sector, that is, the secondary and tertiary sector of the economy. In 1980, this proportion was only 34%.

The development of a rudimentary welfare state is also part of the story. Despite the neoliberal policies at the centre and the pressure on the Tamil Nadu state government to lower spending

on social welfare, we still find functioning state run low price shops in all the villages which supply basic provisions of rice kerosene, and sugar to more than three-fourths of the population. There are more and better government schools than earlier in all the villages and in all of them there are also crèches and centres for the care of pregnant mothers and infants (angan­wadis). All schools and nurseries serve a midday meal to all the children, which helps in improving nutritional standards. Thus working parents are freer to work full time than earlier. This now also provides a larger number of jobs for people in the villages, not just as teachers but also as auxiliary nurses, pre-school assistants, literacy workers, etc, than was the case in 1979-80. However, recruitment to regular public service employment has been at a standstill through more than a decade and a half. Recently, there has been some recruitment of teachers.

It is this development coupled with a somewhat slower but still steady growth of agricultural production that makes up the basis for the material improvements that we have observed. "