Abstract
Small farmers constitute more than 50 per cent of the country’s farming population and account for more than half of the number of hungry and poor people. This paper, therefore, deals with the question of whether it is the ‘smallness’ of the majority of farm sizes, which is the main cause for perpetuating hunger and poverty in our country. It looks at the contribution of small farmers to the national and household food security and their own nutritional and hunger status. It also highlights the socio-economic policies that can help the empowerment of small farmers towards meeting the challenges and opportunities of biotechnological and information technology revolutions and globalization.
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Notes
In the Indian Constitution certain castes have been identified as ‘Scheduled Castes’ and certain castes as ‘Scheduled Tribes’ and so on. The level of poverty, educational status, social status vary substantially across different castes.
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This work was undertaken while being a part of ICAR-IARI.
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L.S. Venkataramanan Memorial Lecture; This lecture was delivered by Prof Praduman Kumar at the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore (ISEC), as LSV Memorial Lecture on December 26, 2008. The article was submitted to ISEC for possible publication and circulation. This lecture is presented here in its original version.
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Kumar, P. Fight against hunger and poverty in rural India. J. Soc. Econ. Dev. 24 (Suppl 1), 125–146 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-022-00217-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-022-00217-w