July 4 @ 1:25 / AMN
One out of three families living in villages is landless and depends on manual labour for livelihood. There are a total number of 24.39 crore households in the country, of which 17.91 crore live in villages.Of these, 10.69 crore households are considered as deprived. These and other information has been revealed in the first ever Socio-Economic and Caste Census released by government yesterday
The deprivation data reveal that 5.37 crore or 29.97 percent households in rural areas are landless deriving a major part of their income from manual labour.
About 30 per cent of rural households belong to Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe(ST) group.
As per the census, 29.43 per cent of the households belong to the SC and ST category across the country.
The census, which was released by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi yesterday, also showed that over one-third of population living in rural areas is illiterate. Mr Jaitley said, the document will be essential for policy makers both at Centre and state level and will form the basis of helping government target groups for support in terms of policy planning.
Speaking on the occasion, Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birendra Singh said the data addresses the multi dimensionality of poverty and provides an opportunity for evidence based planning with a Gram Panchayat as unit.
The Government, however refrained from releasing the caste-based data in the Census.
The SECC process, which had begun during the UPA government in 2011, had led to a huge political controversy with OBC leaders from various political parties including the then government, making a strong pitch for enumeration of caste in the SECC on the lines of the 1931 census.
