Nitin Srivastava is doing a series of very informative posts on rural marketing titled ‘Perspectives on Retailing in India and Rural Marketing’. In the second post, he looks at some Emerging Trends from Rural India:

Employment: Non-farm activities in rural areas are witnessing a rise in entrepreneurship and employment, which are growing at a faster rate than urban areas. These trends can be seen in the findings of the Fifth Economic Census 2005, excluding crop production and plantation, which puts about 25.81 million enterprises (61.3 per cent of total enterprises) operating out of rural areas. These rural enterprises are clocking an average annual growth of about 5.53 per cent and employ more than 50 million people (51 per cent of the total). Further, rural enterprises are recording an average annual growth of 3.33 per cent in total employment, which is higher than that of urban enterprises. What is striking about rural enterprise is the rising level of entrepreneurship, which is indicated through low number of hired workers (presently standing at about 2/5 of total persons employed).