Rural Poverty - Irrigation Nexus in Tamil Nadu

It is only in the second half of twentieth century only that the poverty and the poor have come to be matters of our concern and obligation. After a long neglect of the poor during the British rule, the measures adopted after independence signify the recognition of poverty and the social responsibility for alleviating it. How did it happen? What have we done? How far have we succeeded? Before attempting to answer these questions, let us first take up the question of the concept of poverty. Rural poverty was related to several variables viz irrigated area, percentage of gross irrigated area to gross cropped area, food grain production per thousand rural population, food grain productivity, and cropping intensity. These data were collected for the state Tamil Nadu for 37 years from 1964 to 2000 from various issues of Season and crop Reports and Economic Appraisals of Tamil Nadu and World Bank reports and also from some of the recent published materials.