Harvesting Employment: An Economic Analysis of Odisha’s ₹3,100 Paddy MSP, Rural Youth Livelihoods, and Reverse Migration Dynamics

Odisha’s announcement of procuring paddy at ₹3,100 per quintal under the Samrudha Krushak Yojana is a notable state level intervention in terms of price support for agriculture. The central miscall of the key paddy minimum support price of the state input assistance policy is therefore expandable to beyond farm-gate price realization. This paper studies whether a higher procurement-linked paddy price can bolster rural youth livelihoods, induce seasonal labour demand, and create conditions for partial reverse migration in Odisha. The paper examines a wide range of verified secondary evidence on paddy MSP, state policy on procurement, PLFS labour indicators, MGNREGA person-days, and trend in paddy procurement in Odisha. The econometric component makes use of a clearly labelled illustrative district-level dataset for all 30 districts of Odisha since complete district-level public data linking youth employment and reverse migration is not available. Through the application of descriptive statistics, growth-rate analysis, correlation analysis and OLS regressions, we estimate the associations with agricultural procurement intensity, rural wages, availability of MGNREGA, irrigation, youth employment and potential for reverse migration. The results indicate that procurement-intense districts have better rural livelihood indicators and more reverse migration potential, but this effect is contingent on irrigation, transparent procurement, buffer stocks, milling capacity and non-farm value chain employment. The ₹3,100 paddy procurement can give a fillip to rural employment and help in migrant reintegration but only when it comes with efficiency in procurement, crop diversification, development of rural enterprises, and skills formation directed to youth.