Rural Youth Education, Occupation, and Social Outlook

Rural Youth Education, Occupation, And Social Outlook

by Prakash M. Shingi, N.P. Singh And Dilip Jadhav


India is a land of youth—59 percent of its population is below the age of 24. A vast majority of them obviously come from the rural areas. Within the next 10 years, a large majority of them will either aspire to become full-fledge cultivators or enter an almost saturated labour market and start looking for jobs. The future development of Indian agriculture will essentially depend on the kind of aspirations they have, abilities or skills they possess, values they cherish, and their motivations.


This probably is the first empirical study of its kind and includes potential farmers, in the age-group of 13 to 20, as its unit of analysis to predict future trends in agricultural modernization, or to suggest means to invest in man. The less explicit purpose is also, as it were, to feel the pulse of the rural youth of India, i.e., to describe them, to analyse them, and not to build theories around them. The approach is to study cases and quantify them, and to look for a pattern. The study includes two pattern. The study includes two generations of 138 respondents, is exploratory in nature, and, unlike previous studies in this field, does not aim at evaluating any scheme.


Abour The Author :-


Dr. PRAKASH M. SHINGI (b. 1942) is Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He obtained his Ph.D. in Rural Sociology from the University of Illinois, USA. He has done research in Rural Communication with emphasis on rural television; agricultural extension, agricultural development administration, rural electrification, and dairy development. His teaching interests are Rural Sales Promotion, Marketing intelligence, and Organizational behaviour.

Dr. N.P. Singh was a Research Associate at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a faculty member at the Small Industry Extension Training Institute, Hyderabad. He is currently a faculty member at the Management Development Institute, New Delhi. He is a Ph.D. from I.A.R.I. and has done research in Rural Entrepreneurship.