In FY25, the government is expected to spend ₹2,65,808 crore on rural development. The allocation marginally increased by ₹26,824 crore, when compared with the revised estimates for the year FY24.

Extreme poverty is mainly a rural phenomenon. Four of every five people below the $1.90-a-day international income poverty line lived in rural areas in 2013 (Castañeda and others, 2018). Over the last ...