SOCIAL SCIENTIST 1 ^ the Sixth Plan and their likely fate in the Seventh Plan, is indicative of two inter-related sets of perceptions about the nature and role of such programmes. The first is typified by the Prime Minister's response to a question on removing poverty, in which he argued to the effect that while poverty removal was very necessary, the problem was that unlike money spent in industry, money spent on such programmes tended to be largely unproductive/ The tendency to regard such outlays as a kind of dole to the destitute, producing little or nothing by way of output (and perhaps 'necessary* only from the view point of the political imperatives of a one-man one-vote sys -tern) is certainly not confined to the P.M., but is extremely widespread amongst economists. It is this perception which underlies the reported rejection by the Planning Commission of the suggestion that the right to work should be included as a fundamental right, on the ground that such an inclusion would imply providing employment to every unemployed person regardless of the cost ^Yet this is a myopic perception ,which does not recognise that underemployed labour is a valuable resource .An extensive discussion had taken place in the sixties in this country on the question of mobilising underemployed labour for capital formation projects, a discussion which merits revival today in the light of the continuing severity of the unemploy-* ment problem, and the fact that, with nearly 30 million tons offoodgrains stocks, objective conditions are unprecedentedly good for an all-out attack on poverty through employment of underemployed labour on capital formation projects on a large scale. As we have argued elsewhere), it is precisely through such mobilisation that a similarly labour-surplus agriculture like China's had experienced a near-doubling of the pioportion of cultivated area under irrigation as well as successful implementation of large scale soil conservation, irrigation and afforestation projects. The second set of perceptions which logically lead to employment generation and poverty alleviation outlays being regarded as a drain on the budget, arise from the following proposition : the green revolution's economic benefits, and the benefits of growth generally, automatically filter down to the rural poor, whose real income rises. Stronger versions of this proposition assert that not only has income distribution not worsened with growth especially in green revolution areas,but has either remain unchanged or has actually improved; in consequence there is an expansion of the rural market for manufactured goods, and no demand-constraint therefore inhibits Indian industrial expansion. Growth of labour demand in green revolution areas not only benefits local labour by raising real wages, but exercises a Suction effeci* on low -productivity rural labour elsewhere, inducing migration, as ofBihari labour to Punjab. Two types of data are cited in support of these propositions : survey data covering a cross-section of rural households which show that adoption of green revolution technology is undertaken by some households in every acreage-group of holdings;*,' and the NSS consumption data, from which conclusions about income distribu -don are sought to be drawn.7 (The only direct and reliable data on the earnings of a social class, namely the results of the All-India Rural Labour