Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras have called for education and access to social capital to enthuse rural communities to take up non-farming occupation.
A study by Sabuj Kumar Mandal, associate professor of Economics in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, and his research student Anviksha Drall, found that rural communities held on to agriculture despite it not being a reliable means of sustenance for want of education and skill, credit constraint and poor access to social capital.
However, giving sufficient information through mobile phones would create awareness among people in rural areas about the benefits of non-farming occupation and thus enable better participation. Their study was published in the international journal World Development recently.
