Charts 3 and 4 describe the sectoral composition of such employment for rural men and women as between primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. This is where the extent of employment diversification away from agriculture would be indicated. For rural males, there is evidence of a long term decline in the share of primary employment, but this is very gradual and the trend is not very clear. For almost the entire 1990s as well, the share of primary employment hovered at around 74-75 per cent of the total male employment, which is extremely high.
Chart 3 >> Chart 4 >>
 
The 55^th Round does show a fairly sharp drop in primary employment, but this is in marked contrast to all the previous Rounds of the 1990s, and therefore certainly deserves to be explored further. Also, even this is still around the levels observed in 1990 in the 46^th Round. So, at first glance the data suggest that for rural male workers diversification away from primary employment had occurred, albeit slowly, in the period until 1990, that this process had been halted and even reversed over the 1990s, and that the change in 1999-2000 would indicate a recovery to the levels of one decade earlier. However, there is scope for more detailed analysis into this process.
 
For rural women workers, the tertiary sector has always dominated in employment, and the data indicate a marked process of increase in employment in this sector over the 1990s. However, primary sector employment, if anything, seems to have increased over the 1990s, and especially in the 55^th Round.
 
An important methodological point should be made here. The data in Charts 2 to 5 refer to the broad definition of employment, which covers both “Principal Status” and “Subsidiary Status”  activities, under the Usual Status criterion. The NSS classifies activities according to the major time or priority criterion. The activity on which a relatively longer time is spent is defined as the “Principal Status” activity, those in a which a relatively shorter time is spent is defined as a “Subsidiary” activity.
Chart 5 >>
 
Subsidiary activities include a whole range of economic activities which may be extremely minor in terms of the actual time employed in them – for example, if a single cow is regularly milked every morning or if a chicken is fed daily by a member of the rural household, that could be included as a subsidiary activity under livestock rearing.
 
In a significant break from past Survey Rounds, the 55^th Round enlarged the coverage of Subsidiary Status activities. In the questionnaire schedule, the past practice was to record the details for only one subsidiary usual economic activity of all the members of the household. However, in the 55^th Round, two subsidiary usual economic activities pursued by members of the household for relatively more time were recorded.
 
While this would certainly add more valuable information about the nature of rural economic activity, it would also mean that more such activities would be covered than were covered earlier. This could lead to an impression of employment expansion and diversification which would appear to be more than in previous Rounds even if it simply reflected the greater recording of such activities. This could make the data from the 5^th Round less comparable to that extent.
 
For this reason, the next set of charts provides data for different definitions of activity – for Principal and Subsidiary usual status taken together, for Principal usual status alone, and for weekly status. (The current weekly status is the activity status obtaining for a person during the period of 7 days before the date of the survey. It is decided on the basis of priority cum major time criterion.)
 
As far as male employment in agriculture and non-agriculture – shown in Charts 6 and 7 -  is concerned, the pattern does not seem to vary much for the 55^th Round compared to the other Rounds as far as the difference between Principal plus Subsidiary Status and Principal Status alone is considered. What is very interesting, however, is that while there is a substantial difference between Principal and Subsidiary Status together with Principal Status alone for agricultural work, with the latter being much lower than the former, there is very little difference according to the two definitions for non-agricultural work.
Chart 6 >> Chart 7 >>