For the first time in independent India, agriculture is no longer the primary source of income for most rural families. Prof. Vijay Paul Sharma, Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, said at the Delhi School of Economics Public Policy Conference, on Wednesday, November 19, that wages and non-farm jobs have quietly overtaken farming as the biggest slice of village income.

“Today, the share of agriculture in the rural household income has declined,” he said plainly. “In fact, it is the other part; wages and non-farm activities which have a significantly higher share in rural income.”

The Silent Income Revolution

What was once unthinkable is now an everyday reality; the average rural household now depends more on daily labour, small shops, driving, construction work, or factory jobs than on the harvest.

Farming has slipped from a dominant contributor to just one of several income streams and often not the largest.

What It Means for the Village Kitchen

This shift is rewriting food itself. Prof. Vijay presented, with less time tied to the fields and more cash from wages, rural families are spending dramatically less on basic cereals (down from 32% of food budget in the early 2000s to just 10% today) and far more on milk, eggs, meat, packaged snacks, and eating out which is the same pattern once seen only in cities.

A Health Wake-Up Call Hidden in Pay Packets

Prof. Sharma warned that the same wage packets bringing prosperity are also bringing lifestyle diseases to villages. Diabetes and hypertension, once urban problems, are now common in rural areas and even among the young, which is a direct result of the new income and behavioural shift, which is letting families trade home-cooked millet rotis for instant noodles and cold drinks.

Farming is still there, but the daily wage or the small shop next door is now what keeps most village homes running.