Why are the poor in India mostly rural ?

In the last blog we have seen that almost 90% of the poor people in India live in villages. Why are people in urban areas less poor than those in rural areas?
For the urban middle-class population, village conjures up a romantic place with simple, hard-working people living happily. The reality is far from it. In most villages, women walk long distances to fetch drinking water and twigs to use as cooking fuel. Schools are inadequate, many times with a shortage of teacher, rooms and facilities. The village health center also has similar problems. For emergency health problems, the patient may have to be taken to the nearest hospital which may be miles away. Roads are mostly unpaved. Houses are made of clay and barely have any real-estate value. Many villages do not have electricity. Lack of modern toilet is a huge health problem. Most villagers defecate in the open, beside lakes and ponds or in open fields. In India, an estimated 100000 tons of feces is deposited on fields, lakes and rivers every day. This causes enormous pollution is ground water and water in lakes and rivers which are used for human consumption. As a result, diarrhea, dysentery and other related diseases are prevalent in rural India. Studies have shown that water pollution is the principal cause of malnutrition in rural India and not poverty. In fact, malnutrition is less in sub-Saharan Africa although they are poorer than rural Indians. Another cause of malnutrition is the inferior status of women in rural India. As a result, pregnant women are not provided the additional nutrients she needs. This causes the birth of underweight child.
The only advantage is that the man in the family, who works in the farm or fishes in the lake, lives close to the workplace.

In urban India, poor people live in slums. The environment of slums is less than ideal. But most slum dwellers get water from community faucet or tube well; usually have community bathrooms which are inadequate but not non-existent. The slums usually have electricity and cable TV connection. The children of slum dwellers usually go to school. They have access to government hospital in the town. In some cities, slum dwellers use cooking gas to cook.

Some state governments including West Bengal tried to force graduating physicians to serve in villages for a few years. There was a huge resistance among doctors against serving in villages. Most young villagers, who do well in education and get higher education, settle in urban areas. There is a clear tendency among rural folks to migrate to cities when possible. Yet the urban middle class is usually dead against massive migration of villagers to cities and towns.

We have not yet looked at the cause of poverty in rural India. Let us look at it. Almost two-thirds of Indians live in villages. There are about 600000 villages in India, some small, some large. The average village has a population of only 1500. Usually a village has mostly huts made of clay in close proximity of one another, separated by narrow, unpaved lanes. I have already discussed inadequacy or absence of bathroom, drinking water, cooking fuel, school, college, hospital. In some states, large numbers of villages do not have electricity. In West Bengal, even as of 2009, half the households, rural and urban combined, do not have electricity. Some states like Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Tamilnadu have done better. Cable TV, which is no longer a luxury in middle class households, is almost non-existent in villages. Phones, be it landline or cell phone, are not available in villages far away from cities.
The problem is twofold. First, the small size of villages makes it very hard to provide required infrastructure to them. The average village of 1500 has roughly 300 households. (The average family size in India is 5). Providing electricity, drinking water or cable TV in such small community is not cost-effective. How can you provide a high school or college or a hospital for 300 families? The next village might be few Kilometers away so that facilities cannot be shared among multiple villages.
Second, the basic problem in villages is that most people are engaged in farming, fishery and related professions. Out of 510 million working Indians, 300 million or 60% work in farming and related areas. The process of farming is labor-intensive and archaic. Most farmers still use bullock and hoe to till the land. Except for a few states, mechanized farming using tractors, cultivators etc. are absent. This makes farming productivity and hence income very low. Also, in populous states like West Bengal, land holding of average farmer is very small. The land reform enacted 30 years ago has caused fragmentation of land today. Such small land holdings are insufficient for the farmer to earn a decent income. Besides, fragmented land prevents farmers to achieve economy of scale.
If modern farming methods using machines is introduced, the same amount of food can be produced, using perhaps only 20 million farmers and farm laborers. That will render the other 280 million unemployed. This is the primary dilemma of India and cause of rural poverty.
If you look at various countries, you will find a definite correlation between poverty and percentage of workers engaged in farming. Here is a list of nations with percentage of workers working in farms in parenthesis:
USA (0.6), UK(1.4), Australia (3.6), South Korea(7.2), France(3.8), Spain(4)
Bangladesh(63), Pakistan(43), Kenya(75), India(60), Somalia(71), Uganda(82)

In the first row, there are rich countries where percentage of workers in farming is very small. In spite of this, these countries produce and export massive amount of food. In the second row are poor countries. In these countries, most people are engaged in farming. Usually the mechanism is low productivity and hence the income from farms is very small in these countries.
To summarize, there are two problems in rural India.
1) Low income due to archaic, low productivity farming process
2) Small size of villages makes it impossible to provide infrastructure that we take for granted in cities