Excerpts: The Nutrition Economics Group was created in 1977 with funding from AID's Office of Nutrition. The Group's staff of economists help AID implement a program of applied research and technical assistance designed to assist developing countries integrate food consumption and nutrition concerns into their agricultural planning, programming and policy making processes. Much of the work that the Group has supported in the past has focused on specific agricultural and other economic development policies and their effects on the consumption patterns and nutrient intakes of groups likely to be at risk of malnutrition in developing countries. The work reported herein has a slightly different but related focus. i.e., it attempts to assess whether and to what extent low income consumers and other nutritionally vulnerable groups in rural India have benefitted from the nature and pace of agricultural change. The work was undertaken at the specific request of and funded by the AID Mission in India. The specific tasks which were set forth by the Mission were to (1) analyze the consumption patterns of low income consumer groups, particularly those in rural areas and (2) examine the extent to which changes in these consumption patterns over time have been associated with the introduction of agricultural technology as well as the advent of other agricultural changes. The data base for the analysis comes from the Indian National Sample Survey and the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau.