Recent years have seen the development of an extensive and disquieting literature on trends in rural poverty in in and their relationship to agricultural growth. A recurring theme in much of this literature is that agricultural growth has been accompanied by a steady deterioration in distributional terms, involving not only an increase in relative inequality but also an increase in absolute impoverishment Indeed, it is argued that these trends are the natural consequence of the type of agricultural growth which can be expected within the existing institutional structure in Indian agriculture. This latter proposition has important implications for policy. It raises doubts about the scope for achieving even the fairly minimal welfare objective of alleviating absolute poverty in the future, at least through the kind of agricultural development that is currently deemed feasible, i.e growth without radical institutional change.