Nearly two out of every three Indians still live in a village. According to the 2011 census there are around 640,000 villages in India, and the rural population is around 900 million people, more than the total population of any other country except China. Rural India is not one place. It is many places. But there are patterns to how village life works across the country, and these patterns say a great deal about the India that most Indians actually live in.

What a Village Looks Like

Most Indian villages are small. The median village has fewer than a thousand residents. It sits inside a landscape of fields, with a few hundred houses clustered around a central point, usually a temple, a well, a large tree, or all three. Around the houses run the farm plots. Beyond them, sometimes, are common lands where the cattle graze, and sometimes forest, if any is left.

The houses vary hugely by region. In Punjab you see rectangular flat roofed brick houses with a courtyard in the middle. In Rajasthan and the drier parts of Gujarat, the traditional home is a bhunga, a circular one room mud hut with a conical thatched roof, designed to withstand desert winds. In Kerala the traditional home is a nalukettu, a large wooden structure built around a central open courtyard for ventilation. In Assam and the north east, houses are often raised on bamboo stilts because of the floods. In the Konkan they have sloping tile roofs to shed the heavy monsoon rain.

The Daily Rhythm

A village day starts early. In most of India the day begins between 4:30 and 5:30 am. The women get up first. Water is fetched from a hand pump or a well. The courtyard is swept. Fresh cow dung is spread on the floor of the compound, which acts as an antibacterial coating and helps keep the dust down. A fresh rangoli is drawn at the threshold with rice flour or coloured powder.

By 6:00 am the men have gone to the fields with the cattle. In farming villages the morning work continues until around 10 or 11 am, when the sun becomes too hot. Everyone comes home for a heavy meal and rests through the middle of the day. Fieldwork resumes in the late afternoon and continues until sunset. The evening is the social time. The elders sit together in the chaupal (village square) or at the panchayat ghar (village council building) and talk. Children play in the lanes. Dinner is later, around 8 or 9 pm.

The Agricultural Year

Rural life follows the agricultural calendar, and the calendar follows the monsoon. Indian agriculture has three main crop seasons. Kharif crops (paddy, cotton, maize, groundnut) are sown at the beginning of the monsoon in June and July and harvested in October and November. Rabi crops (wheat, barley, mustard, gram) are sown in November and harvested in March and April. Zaid crops (watermelon, cucumber, vegetables) are grown in the short summer season between April and June.

The green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s transformed Indian agriculture. Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh moved from traditional grains to high yielding varieties of wheat and rice. Fertiliser and irrigation use jumped. Tractors replaced bullocks in the wealthier villages. India became self sufficient in food grain and started exporting rice. But the same story has meant that rural India is now sharply divided between prosperous farming regions and struggling ones.

The Joint Family

The traditional Indian village family is a joint family, meaning multiple generations, sometimes multiple brothers with their wives and children, living together in the same house or the same compound. The eldest male is the head of the household. Land, income, and daily decisions are shared. The joint family has been slowly breaking down in urban India for decades, but in villages it is still the norm in many regions.

Within the joint family, the women do most of the household work: cooking, cleaning, fetching water, tending the vegetable garden, and looking after the children and the elders. They also work in the fields at planting and harvest time. In many parts of rural India, women’s contribution to agriculture is greater than men’s, though it is still often uncounted in the official statistics.

Caste and Community

The Indian village is also organised by caste. Different castes traditionally do different work. Farmers, traders, weavers, potters, ironsmiths, barbers, washermen, and scavengers each have their own communities, and each has historically had its own place in the village layout. Higher castes lived close to the temple, lower castes lived at the edges. This structure has weakened significantly since Independence, thanks to the constitution’s abolition of untouchability and reservation policies for scheduled castes and tribes. But in rural areas the underlying pattern is still visible in daily life.

Festivals

Village festivals are agricultural festivals. Almost every important Hindu festival has an agricultural side to it that comes clearer in the villages than in the cities. Makar Sankranti marks the beginning of the harvest season in most of India. Pongal in Tamil Nadu is a four day thanksgiving to the sun and the cattle. Baisakhi in Punjab celebrates the wheat harvest. Onam in Kerala celebrates the return of the mythical king Mahabali, but it is also tied to the paddy harvest. Chhath in Bihar and eastern UP is a sun worship festival held twice a year, once after the monsoon and once at the beginning of summer.

Village Institutions

The panchayat is the traditional village council, mentioned in Indian texts going back over two thousand years. Under the modern constitutional framework it has become the local unit of government. The gram panchayat is elected by all adults in the village and manages basic local services, along with a share of centrally sponsored schemes for housing, water, and rural employment. The Panchayati Raj system, formalised by the 73rd amendment in 1993, is one of the largest experiments in decentralised democracy in the world.

The Changing Village

Rural India has changed enormously in the last thirty years. Electricity has reached over 99 percent of villages. Mobile phones and 4G internet are now nearly universal. The Jan Dhan bank account scheme has given almost every rural household a bank account. UPI payments have reached the smallest villages. Solar pumps, solar street lights, and solar home systems have opened up energy options that did not exist a generation ago.

At the same time, many young people are leaving. Around ten million rural to urban migrants move each year, mostly young men going to cities to find better paying work. This has changed the population balance in many villages. The old and the very young stay. Middle aged men are away for months at a time working in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, or the Gulf. Remittances from these migrants now support a significant fraction of the rural economy, especially in Kerala, Punjab, Bihar, and Uttar Pradesh.

Challenges

Rural India faces real challenges. Water tables are falling in Punjab, Haryana, and much of the south. Farm incomes have not kept up with rising input costs, and farmer suicides are still tragically common in a few states. Rural healthcare is often thin, with too few doctors and long distances to the nearest hospital. Girls’ education has improved dramatically but still falls short of boys in many places. Climate change is making the monsoon less reliable.

But rural India is also resilient. Community bonds are strong. Traditional crafts and skills survive. Sustainable practices, from cow dung fuel to rainwater harvesting, that the wider world is now rediscovering have never been forgotten in the villages. The story of rural India in the twenty first century is a story of enormous change layered over enormous continuity.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people live in rural India?
Around 900 million people, about 65 percent of India’s population, live in rural areas. This is more than the total population of any country in the world except China.

How many villages are there in India?
According to the 2011 census, there are around 640,000 villages in India. Most of them have fewer than one thousand residents.

What is the main occupation in rural India?
Agriculture is still the largest occupation, employing around 45 percent of rural workers. Farming is followed by livestock rearing, small crafts, wage labour, and small trading.

What is a joint family?
A joint family is one in which multiple generations, sometimes multiple brothers with their wives and children, live together in the same house or compound. The eldest male is usually the head of the household. It is still common in rural India, though less so in cities.

What is a panchayat?
A panchayat is the traditional village council. Since the 73rd amendment to the constitution in 1993, gram panchayats are elected local government bodies that manage local services and rural development schemes.

What are the three main crop seasons in India?
Kharif (June to October, monsoon crops like paddy and cotton), Rabi (November to April, winter crops like wheat), and Zaid (April to June, short summer crops).

How has rural India changed in recent years?
Electricity, mobile phones, 4G internet, bank accounts, and UPI payments have reached almost every village. At the same time, ten million young people migrate to cities every year, changing the population balance in many villages.

Sources and Further Reading

• Government of India, 2011 Census, Rural Urban Distribution
• Ministry of Panchayati Raj, Government of India, Devolution Report
• NABARD, All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey
• Sen, Amartya and Dreze, Jean, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions, Penguin