Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI)

Project on Agrarian Relations in India (PARI) is a project to study villages over a wide range of different agro-ecological zones in India. PARI now covers 27 villages in 12 Sates of the country.

The study involves a census-type survey that covers every household and individual in each village (in five of the 27 villages surveyed, the PARI team conducted sample surveys after initial house-listing surveys). A village-level questionnaire is also canvassed in each village. In addition, a village profile, based on the existing sources of secondary data, is constructed. The following states have been covered under various rounds of PARI surveys:

Historically, India has had a tradition of urging scholarship to turn its face to the countryside, to conduct specific studies of social and economic changes there and to assess and evaluate these changes. We believe that such studies shall not lag behind the rapid and complex changes that are occurring in the countryside.
The objectives of PARI are:

To analyse village-level production, production systems and livelihoods and the socio-economic characteristics of different strata of the rural population.
To conduct specific studies of sectional deprivation in rural India, particularly with regard to the Dalit and Scheduled Tribe populations, women, specific minorities and the income-poor.
To report on the state of basic village amenities and the access of the rural people to the facilities of modern life.

The PARI study began in 2006. In every selected State, we survey two or three villages in different agro-ecological regions. The villages cover a wide range of different agro-ecological regions in the country. State-level mass organisations suggest the regions and the districts that they would like to have studied, and help the Foundation in the selection of the final villages from a short-list prepared by the Foundation.

A Survey Methods Toolbox that lists some of the tools used for collection, entry, and processing of the household level data is available on our Repository Page.

Information collected through PARI questionnaire is listed below. Each of the following items of information is further disaggregated in the questionnaire:

Demographic data, including data on caste and religion
Education levels
Occupation and work status
Ownership and operational land holdings of households
Land sales and purchases
Forms and terms of land tenure
Cropping pattern and crop production
Animal resources
Costs of cultivation
Ownership of assets
Participation in selected government schemes
Household electricity, sanitation, and water facilities
Housing
Incomes and earnings
Patterns and levels of employment
Forms of labour
Indebtedness

It is noteworthy that there are no official sources of serial data on household incomes in rural India. The National Sample Survey provides regular data on monthly per capita household expenditure, and the Comprehensive Scheme for the Study of Cost of Cultivation of Principal Crops in India (CCPC) provides regular data on farm business incomes for selected crops. Our village data have information from all sources of tangible household income, under the following heads:

Income from crop production
Income from animal resources
Income from agricultural and non-agricultural wage labour
Income from salaries
Income from business and trade, rent, interest earnings, pensions, remittances, scholarships, and all other sources.

Data on crop production and the cost of cultivation, while based on the CCPC methodology, are somewhat more detailed in the Project database, which includes household-wise data on the following variables: