Look how rural homes are changing

Study On To Collect Data On Shifting Socio-Economic Patterns In TN

Radhika M | TNN

Chennai: If you thought rural households were all about agriculture, here is some fact for thought. In heavily urbanised Tamil Nadu, a rural household may no longer depend only on farming, despite the strong farmland sentiment. A household may have the wife running a micro-enterprise, husband doing farm labour, the son commuting to city on work, and the daughter working at a BPO and sending money, making it an ‘amazingly diverse’ unit when it comes to occupations. Researchers conducting an ongoing baseline survey covering 80 villages and cities across Tamil Nadu as part of a larger 15-year study on financial behaviour have come across such interesting patterns. The study is being conducted by the Centre for Microfinance under Institute of Financial Management and Research, and Yale Economic Growth Centre, and will cover 400 villages and towns, with 10,000 randomly chosen households. It is called the Tamil Nadu Socioeconomic Mobility Survey. “People may have homes at one place but visit other places for work short-term. They even migrate seasonally depending on the agriculture seasons too. In households that were largely agrarian before, some members of the family do not farm,’’ says Amy Jensen, Programme Head, Longitudinal Studies, at Centre for MicroFinance, adding that such findings are not conclusive yet, as the study has only begun. The baseline study will be complete in June, and its findings will be out in winter this year. Amy says such revelations could give enough impetus for the 15-year research. The study combines features of the Census exercise and the National Sample Survey Organisation. It was initiated because of the dearth of such database on the effect of financial services on people, particularly the poor, unlike in developed countries, say researchers. Once complete, they hope it would become the most comprehensive data available on socio-economic patterns in rural finance, besides aiding financial policy. And that’s because it does not confine itself to one or two indicators unlike many other studies. Instead, it tracks diverse pointers such as health of family members, how the role of anganwadi workers has been changing, children’s education, income, rural-urban migration patterns, ecology of a region, role of caste and kin group on work and home choices, over a period. These include things as mundane as, if the primary school in the village has been upgraded, a vaccination drive, if a hospital comes up in the vicinity of a town or village, and the impact of an SEZ on a village, which triggers sale of land. The study is one of IFMR’s many ongoing research projects. “We believe in social businesses. We do not believe philanthropy is the solution to financial issues in India,’’ says Dave Wallack, member of IFMR’s senior management team, underlining the guiding principle for the study. MOVING AWAY FROM AGRICULTURE Researchers conducting a baseline survey covering 80 villages and cities across Tamil Nadu as part of a larger 15-year study on financial behaviour have come across some interesting patterns The study was initiated because of the dearth of such database on the effect of financial services on people, particularly the poor

This story appeared on May 16, 2010, in Times of India, Chennai