Livelihood diversification, rural poverty and income inequality: a study in the hill regions of darjeeling district in west bengal

Although Agriculture plays an important role in rural livelihood, agriculture on its own is increasingly unable to provide a sufficient means of survival in rural areas. Of late, there has been a built in bias in the choice of economic activities towards non-farm sectors. Livelihood diversification towards non-farm sector is associated with greater income opportunities and reduction in rural poverty. This paper has attempted to explore the nature and pattern of livelihood diversification in Darjeeling district of West Bengal. Based on a field survey in Darjeeling district of West Bengal, this paper intended to look at the degree of livelihood diversification and its impact on the extent of poverty and inequality of income distribution. Further, examined the determinants of employment diversification and explored the nexus between poverty, inequality and employment diversification in the district. Interestingly, the relationship between diversification index and the level of household per capita income depicted an inverse U-shaped curve indicating that at lower level of income, the diversification index increased with the level of income, reached maximum at medium level and then fell down as income increased further. The results also showed that there was a significant variation in average diversification across villages and among APL and BPL categories of households in the study area.