Rural underdevelopment

Rural underdevelopment is the absence of a series of quantitative and qualitative changes in a rural population that would effectively converge in raising the standard of living and improving the way of life of the people concerned. The most striking features may be: limited technical knowledge as characterized by relative technological stagnation, which is at the same time the cause and consequence of wrong land utilization; under-employment of the available rural manpower; a relatively low per capita income, and hence a chronic shortage of capital for financing further development; weak or inadequate socio-economic infrastructures for rural producers; and failing rural institutions, particularly the inadequate organization of the domestic market, resulting in a marked tendency to develop export crops (in fact, export monoculture) which are often the only profitable ones. The small peasant farmers, the share-croppers and the landless labourers continue to live in poverty using the same subsistence farming techniques as they have for centuries, and never receive the benefits of any food production techniques developed or profit realized from exported produce.