Poverty as a Challenge

1. What does poverty look like?

Poverty has many faces. Picture a landless farm labourer in a village who has no land of his own, or a rag-picker child in a city slum who works instead of going to school. The poor face hunger and starvation, lack of shelter, dirty water and poor sanitation, no regular jobs, illiteracy and helplessness. Two typical case studies in the NCERT are Urban Case — Ram Saran, a daily-wage labourer in a flour mill who earns barely enough to feed his family, and Rural Case — Lakha Singh, a landless farm worker who depends on big farmers for irregular work. Both live in overcrowded homes, send their children to work, and have no savings, no security and no voice in society.

2. Two ways to look at poverty: social scientists' view

Earlier, poverty was measured only by income and consumption levels. Today social scientists look at poverty through many other indicators too — the level of illiteracy, lack of general resistance due to malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare, lack of job opportunities, and lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation. New ideas like social exclusion (the poor are forced to live only with other poor, excluded from the facilities the better-off enjoy) and vulnerability (the greater probability that certain communities or individuals will become or stay poor in the coming years) help us understand poverty far better.

3. The poverty line

The poverty line is a level of income or consumption below which a person is considered poor. In India it is fixed by working out a minimum level of food, clothing, footwear, fuel, light, education and medical needs. A key part is the calorie requirement: a person needs about 2400 calories per day in rural areas and 2100 calories per day in urban areas (urban needs are lower because people do less hard physical work). For the year 2011–12, the poverty line was fixed at about ₹816 per person per month for rural areas and ₹1000 per person per month for urban areas. A family is poor if its total income falls below the line. This line is revised over time for rising prices, and is estimated by the NSSO (National Sample Survey Organisation) through regular sample surveys.

4. Poverty estimates — the good news

There is real progress to celebrate. The proportion of poor people in India has come down steadily — from about 45% in 1993–94 to about 37.2% in 2004–05, and further down to about 22% in 2011–12. Although the percentage has fallen, the actual number of poor stayed around 270 million for a long time because the population kept growing. The trend, however, is encouraging and shows that targeted policies do work.

5. Vulnerable groups and inter-state differences

Poverty does not fall equally on everyone. The most vulnerable social groups are the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and the worst-affected economic groups are rural agricultural labour households and urban casual labour households. Within a poor family, women, female infants and elderly people often suffer the most. Poverty also varies hugely between states. States like Bihar, Odisha, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh still have very high poverty, while states like Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal have reduced poverty sharply — Kerala through human resource development, Punjab through high agricultural growth, West Bengal through land reforms, and Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh through public distribution of food.

6. Global poverty

Poverty has fallen worldwide too. The proportion of people in extreme poverty (living on less than about $1.90 a day) in developing countries dropped from about 36% in 1990 to much lower levels later. China and Southeast Asian countries cut poverty fast through rapid economic growth and big investment in human resources. In Sub-Saharan Africa poverty fell only slowly, and in some regions like Bangladesh it remained high. Global poverty is now concentrated in a few countries, showing the world still has work to do.

7. Causes of poverty in India

Several linked reasons explain India's poverty. British colonial rule ruined traditional handicrafts and discouraged industries, leaving low economic development at independence. High population growth kept per-capita income low. Lack of jobs and underemployment, especially in agriculture, trapped people in low incomes. Unequal distribution of land and resources meant a few owned most assets while many owned nothing. Many of the poor borrow to meet even basic needs and fall into a debt trap — high-interest loans they can never repay. Social and cultural factors, such as spending heavily on ceremonies, also push families into debt.

8. Anti-poverty measures: the two-fold strategy

The government fights poverty using a two-fold strategy — (a) promotion of economic growth and (b) targeted anti-poverty programmes. Faster growth since the 1980s created more resources to spend on the poor. Important programmes include: MGNREGA 2005 (the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), which promises 100 days of guaranteed wage employment every year to rural households and reserves one-third of jobs for women; PMRY (Prime Minister Rozgar Yojana) for self-employment of educated unemployed youth; REGP (Rural Employment Generation Programme); SGSY (Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana) to bring poor families above the poverty line through self-help groups; PMGY (Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana) for basic rural services like health, education and water; and AAY (Antyodaya Anna Yojana) providing cheap food grain to the poorest. The challenge is that many schemes still suffer from poor implementation, corruption and overlap.

9. The challenge ahead

India has made progress, but poverty remains a huge challenge. The official poverty line is a narrow, “survival” measure — many people just above it are still extremely poor. The wider goal is now human poverty reduction: ensuring adequate food, health, education, equal opportunity and dignity for all. As living standards rise, the very definition of an acceptable life rises too, so the fight against poverty must continue with better-targeted, honestly-run programmes.