178
Ground-Level Disbursements for Non-Farm Sector
The importance of non-farm activities in rural areas arises from the
structural transformation that is taking place in the Indian economy. Briefly,
the growing marginalisation of agriculture, the need to shift a large part of over
56% of the labour force dependent on agriculture away from the sector, rapid
technological and organisational changes occurring in the corporate world
unable to absorb any high proportion of labour force – all of these make it
imperative that the rural economy gets diversified into a wide range of non-
farm activities so as to provide productive employment to the growing rural
labour force, reduce the wide economic differences between rural and urban
areas, and generally expand the domestic market for facilitating higher and
more egalitarian growth. More importantly, with increased rural incomes,
there is the upward social mobility giving rise to increased demand for non-
farm activities. It is said that the remarkable spread of rural roads (4 lakh kms
built in the last 12 years), cell phones and electrification as well as spread of
education, are bringing about remarkable changes in rural lives.
While there is no foolproof definition of the rural non-farm sector, it
obviously consists of a vast number of sub-sectors with varying degrees of
importance: rural tiny, small and medium manufacturing enterprises,
handicrafts and village industries, transport and local communications,
storage and warehousing, repairing services, health and educational services
and vast sets of grocery and other retail outlets and other service sectors.
Recognising the importance of the rural non-farm sector, NABARD has
been consciously promoting the sector by providing training facilities for rural
Table 5.24: NABARD Refinance for Non-Farm Sector Activities
Year
NABARD Refinance for
Non-Farm Sector (
`
Crore)
NABARD’s Total Refinance
(Rupees, Crore)
1991-92
970.01
1992-93
1074.61
1993-94
1279.80
2004-05
2542.58
2005-06
2285.98
2006-07
2265.16
2007-08
2747.95
2008-09
2706.79
2009-10
3465.99
12009.08
2010-11
3446.40
13485.87
2011-12
3574.21
15421.70
Source:
NABARD Annual Reports; 2011-12 Report (p.28) and earlier years
