Rural development

Rural development means improving lives in villages beyond farming alone: non-farm jobs, infrastructure, services and local governance. Most rural households now combine farm income with wage work, migration remittances and small enterprises. Worked example: a household earning 60,000 from farming, 40,000 from wage work and 20,000 from remittances has total income 120,000 — non-farm sources are half its income, so a purely agricultural policy misses half its livelihood.