Introduction
- In our daily life, we see poverty all around us. They could be landless laborers in villages, people living in overcrowded jhuggis in cities, daily wage workers or child workers in dhabas. According to facts, in India every fourth person is poor.
- Poverty in India : Roughly 270 million (or 27 crore) people in India live in poverty 2011-12. India has the largest single concentration of the poor in the world.
- Dimensions of poverty : Landlessness, Unemployment, Size of families, Illiteracy, Poor health/malnutrition, Child labour, Helplessness
- Poverty indicators (used by social scientists) : levels of income and consumption, illiteracy level, lack of general resistance due to malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare, lack of job opportunities, lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation, etc.
- Social Exclusion : Social Exclusion is a process through which some individuals or groups are excluded from facilities, benefits and opportunities that others enjoy. It can be a cause of poverty (by being denied opportunities, one might end up poor) as well as a consequence of poverty (poverty can lead to someone not being able to access certain opportunities) Eg : working of the caste system in India in which people belonging to certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities.
Poverty Line and Estimates
(Poverty Line) Income and consumption method – A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption level falls below a given “minimum level” necessary to fulfill the basic needs. What is necessary to satisfy the basic needs is Different at different times and different Countries. Therefore the poverty line may very with time and People.
In India, the poverty line is based on the calorie requirement of a person as follows:
| Calories required (per day) | Money required (per month; 2011-12 prices) | |
| Rural Areas | 2400 per person | Rs. 816 per person |
| Urban Areas | 2100 per person | Rs. 1000 per person |
- Since people living in rural areas engage themselves in more physical work, calorie requirements in rural areas are considered to be higher than in urban areas.
- Despite less calorie requirements, the poverty line for urban areas is higher because of high prices of products in urban centers.
- The poverty line is estimated periodically (normally every five years) by the
- National Sample Survey Organisation through conducting sample surveys.
For making comparisons between developing countries, many international organizations like the World Bank use a uniform standard for the poverty line: minimum availability of the equivalent of $1.90 per person per day (2011, PPP).
Poverty Ratio of any group = (Number of poor people in that group / Total Population of that group) * 100.
Poverty ratio of women in Uttarakhand= Number of poor women in Uttarakhand / Total number of women in Uttarakhand * 100
- Poverty Estimates in India: There is a substantial decline in poverty ratios in India from about 45 percent in 1993-94 to 37.2 percent in 2004-05 to about 22 percent in 2011-12. The number of poor declined from 407 million in 2004-05 to 270 million in 2011-12.
- Vulnerable Groups: Social groups, which are most vulnerable to poverty are Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households.
- Economic groups, which are most vulnerable to poverty are rural agricultural labor households and urban casual labor households.
- Punjab and Haryana: High agricultural growth rates
- Kerala: Human Resource Development
- West Bengal: Land Reform Measures
- Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu: Public distribution of food grains
- Extreme economic poverty (defined by the World Bank) : A person living on less than $1.90 per day. The global poverty ratio as per this definition has fallen from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015.
Region-wise Analysis :
China and Southeast Asia :
The poverty ratio in China has come down from 88.3% in 1981 to 14.7% in 2008 to 0.7% in 2015.
In South Asia (comprising India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan), the poverty ratio has fallen from 34% in 2005 to 16.2% in 2013.
The number of poor people has also declined significantly from 510.4 million in 2005 to 274.5 million in 2013.
Sub-Saharan Africa: The poverty ratio in Sub-Saharan Africa has decreased from 51% in 2005 to 41% in 2015. However, the number of poor people in the region is going up.
Latin America: The poverty ratio in Latin America has decreased from 10% in 2005 to 4% in 2015.
Some former socialist countries: Poverty has also resurfaced in some of the former socialist countries like Russia, where officially it was non-existent.
Region-wise table showing poverty ratios of some countries.
Causes of Poverty
Historical Reason: There was a low level of economic development under
British colonial administration. Traditional local industries were destroyed leading to low
rates of growth. This meant fewer job opportunities, lower incomes. In addition to this,
the population was growing swiftly.
Lack of Jobs: Even after the Green Revolution, the new agricultural job
opportunities were limited to few parts of India. Industries were also not well-developed
to absorb job seekers. Incomes were low and people started living in slums in urban
areas.
Unequal distribution of resources: Land and other resources are not
distributed equally. This leads to a situation where some people have an abundance of
resources while others have little or no resources for themselves. Policies like
the redistribution of resources are aimed at reducing these inequalities. However, policies
like land reforms through redistribution of land have not been implemented properly and effectively.
Socio-cultural and economic factors: People need to ful)l certain social,
cultural and religious obligations. The ceremonies involved may need a lot of spending and may lead to poverty for some classes of people.
Sometimes people end up in a vicious cycle of debt trap where they borrow money and
are unable to repay the loan. This high level of indebtedness can cause poverty by taking
a major portion of any earned income from poor people. High levels of indebtedness can
also arise from poverty if people have to keep borrowing to survive.
Anti Poverty Measures
Economic Growth: Economic growth widens opportunities and provides the
resources needed to invest in human development. Since the 1980s, India’s economic
growth has been one of the fastest in the world. The growth rate jumped from the
average of about 3.5% a year in the 1970s to about 6% during the 1980s and 1990s. The
higher growth rates have helped significantly in the reduction of poverty.
However, some poor people may not be able to take direct advantage from the
opportunities created by economic growth.
Targeted Programmes (MNREGA) –
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005
100 days of wage employment to every household to ensure livelihood security in rural
areas.
One-third of the proposed jobs have been reserved for women.
The share of SC, ST, Women person days in the scheme are 23 per cent, 17 per cent and
53 per cent respectively.
The scheme provided employment to 220 crores person days of employment to 4.78
crore households.
(2) ( ( ),1993) –
Self-employment opportunities for educated unemployed youth in rural areas and small
towns
(2) ( E ! G (EG ),
1995) –
Self employment opportunities in rural areas and small towns
(2) (#$!G #$ (#G#),
1999) –
Organising poor families into self help groups through a mix of bank credit and
government subsidy
(2) ( %G ! ( G),2000) –
Central assistance is given to states for basic services such as primary health, primary
education, rural shelter, rural drinking water and rural electri2cation
Schemes have shown limited effectiveness due to a lack of proper implementation and
right targeting, overlapping of schemes, bene2ts not reaching the deserving poor, etc