NEW DELHI: Despite the tall claims of successive governments, more than half of India’s rural households engaged in casual manual labour, as per the new socio-economic caste census released by the centre on Friday.
The Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 for Rural India was released jointly by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh here. Though the name of the census suggests caste, SECC 2011 does not include castes. Government did not release the data regarding caste.
The SECC 2011, the first paperless census conducted on hand-held electronic devices by the government, has painted a grim picture of rural India with 51.14 per cent (9.16 crore) manual casual labour. According to the census, 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.
The deprivation data reveal that 5.37 crore (29.97 per cent) households in rural areas are “landless deriving a major part of their income from manual labour”. As many as 2.37 crore (13.25 per cent) families in villages live in houses of one room with ‘kaccha’ walls and roof.