The general explanation of the overall economic growth responsible for
significant poverty reduction in the nineties in India may not stand a close
scrutiny. While there is no unanimous view about the association of growth in
agriculture sector to poverty reduction, the strong correlation between the
increase in real agricultural wages and poverty indexes is found to have ample
empirical evidences. Invariably an increase in real wages in agriculture has led
to decline in poverty and vice versa, which is responsible for lowering of the
poverty rates in rural India.