POVERTY
It is the inability to fulfill the minimum requirement of life like food, clothing, housing, education and health facilities etc. Relative poverty refers to poverty of people in comparison to other people in different regions or nations. Absolute poverty refers to the total number of people living below the poverty line. Absolute poverty is measured on the basis of two criteria:- 1.Minimum Calories Consumption Criteria. 2.Minimum Consumption Expenditure Criteria.
Who Are Poor
The poor people possess few assets and reside in kutcha hutments(temporary house) and mostly they are landless. Starvation and hunger are the key features of the poorest households. They lack literacy and skills. Therefore very limited economic opportunities and they face unstable unemployment. Malnutrition is alarmingly high among the poor. There is evidence of greater gender inequality. Scholars identified the poor on the basis of their occupation and ownership of assets.
How Are Poor People Identified
In pre-independent India, Dadabhai Naoroji was the first to discuss the concept of a poverty line. In post-independent India, there have been several attempts to work out a mechanism to identify the number of poor in the country. For instance, in 1962, the Planning Commission formed a Study Group. In 1979, another body called the ‘Task Force on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand’ was formed. In 1989 and 2005, ‘Expert Groups’ were constituted for the same purpose.
For the purpose of defining poverty we divide people into two categories: (1. The poor and) (2.The non-poor and the poverty line separates the two. However, there are many kinds of poor, the absolutely poor, the very poor and the poor. Also there are various kinds of non-poor: the middle class, the upper middle class, the rich, the very rich and the absolutely rich.
Categorizing Poverty:
1. Chronic Poor: Those who are always poor and those who are usually poor e.g., Landless workers.
2. Transient Poor: Those who are moving in and out of poverty and occasionally poor.
3. Never Poor: These are categorized as non-poor people.
Poverty line:
There are many ways of measuring poverty. One way is to determine it by the monetary value (per capita expenditure) of the minimum calorie intake that was estimated at 2,400 calories for a rural person and 2,100 for a person in the urban area.
Economists state that a major problem with this mechanism is that it groups all the poor together and does not differentiate between the very poor and the other poor. There are many factors, other than income and assets, which are associated with poverty like social factors which are excluded in the existing mechanism for determining the Poverty Line.
Development is about removing the obstacles to the things that a person can do in life, such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, or lack of civil and political freedoms.
Due to various limitations in the official estimation of poverty, scholars have attempted to find alternative methods. For instance, Amartya Sen., noted Nobel Laureate, has developed an index known as Sen Index.
There are other tools such as Poverty Gap Index and Squared Poverty Gap. The Number of Poor People in India . When the number of poor is estimated as the proportion of people below the poverty line, it is known as ‘Head Count Ratio’.
What Causes Poverty? The causes of poverty lie in the institutional and social factors that mark the life of the poor. The poor are deprived of quality education and unable to acquire skills which fetch better incomes. Also access to health care is denied to the Poor. The main victims of caste, religious and other discriminatory practices are poor. These can be caused as a result of:
- Social, economic and political inequality
- Social exclusion
- Unemployment
- Indebtedness
- Unequal distribution of wealth.
● Aggregate poverty is just the sum of individual poverty. Poverty is also explained by general, economy-wide problems, such as
- low capital formation
- lack of infrastructure
- lack of demand
- pressure of population
- Lack of social and welfare nets
As over 70 percent of Indians were engaged in agriculture throughout the British Raj period, the impact on that sector was more important on living standards than anything else. British policies involved sharply raising rural taxes that enabled merchants and moneylenders to become large landowners. The British Raj impoverished millions of people in India. Our natural resources were plundered, our industries worked to produce goods at low prices for the British and our food grains were exported. Many died due to famine and hunger.
Even today agriculture is the principal means of livelihood and land is the primary asset of rural people; ownership of land is an important determinant of material well-being and those who own some land have a better chance to improve their living conditions. Since independence, the government has attempted to redistribute land( land reforms). However, this move was successful only to a limited extent Also most of the Indian states failed to implement land redistribution policies.
A large section of the rural poor in India are the small farmers. The income from these small land holdings is not sufficient to meet the family’s basic requirements. A large section of urban poor in India are largely the overflow of the rural poor who migrate to urban areas in search of employment and a livelihood. But industrialization has not been able to absorb all these people. The urban poor are either unemployed or intermittently employed as casual laborers. Casual laborers are among the most vulnerable in society as they have no job security, no assets, limited skills, sparse opportunities and no surplus to sustain them.
● All this has created two distinct groups in society: those who possess the means of production and earn good incomes and those who have only their labor to trade for survival.
● Measures to Remove Poverty: Combating poverty by accelerating the place of economic growth. Combating inequality of income through fiscal and legislative measures. Combating poverty through population control. Other measures enhance the quality of life of the poor.
Policies and Programmes towards Poverty Alleviation
The Indian Constitution and five year plans state social justice as the primary objective of the developmental strategies of the government. The government’s approach to poverty reduction:
Growth-oriented approach: It is based on the expectation that the effects of economic growth - rapid increase in gross domestic product and per capita income would spread to all sections of society and will trickle down to the poor sections also. This was the major focus of planning in the 1950s and early 1960s. It was felt that rapid industrial development and transformation of agriculture through green revolution in select regions would benefit the underdeveloped regions and the more backward sections of the community.
Poverty alleviation programmes: This approach has been initiated from the Third Five Year Plan (1961 - 66) and progressively enlarged since then. Earlier, under self-employment programmes, financial assistance was given to families or individuals. But after the 1990s,these programmes are encouraged to form self-help groups because it's easy to provide financial assistance to these groups. some of the principle measures adopted by the government to remove poverty are :
Sawranjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY): SGSY is a self employment programme launched with the effect from April, 1991 as a result of restructuring and combining the earlier poverty eradication programmes like IRDP, DWCRA, etc. it aims at promoting micro enterprises and to bring the assisted poor families above the poverty line by organizing them into self-help groups.
Sampoorna Gramin Rozgar Yojana (SGRY): The scheme was launched with effect from 2001. The scheme of jawahar gram samridhi yojana and employment assurance scheme has been fully integrated with SGRY. the scheme aims at providing wage employment in rural areas and food security along with the creation of durable employment social and economic assets
The Swaran Jayanti Shahri Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY): Urban self-employment program and the urban wage employment programmes are two special schemes of SJSRY, initiated in december 1997 which replaced various programmes operated earlier for urban poverty alleviation. SJSRY mainly aims at creating employment opportunities for both self-employment and wage employment in urban areas.
Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana: This programme aims at creating self-employment opportunities in rural areas and small towns. Under this programme, educated unemployed from low-income families and urban areas can get financial assistance in the forms of bank loans, to set up any kind of enterprise that generates employment.
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee: Launched 2005, the aim is to provide guaranteed wage employment to every household. Under this programme, volunteer adults will be provided unskilled manual work for a minimum of 100 days.
There are some other programmes of poverty alleviation like: Development of Small and Cottage Industries, Minimum Needs Programme, Twenty Point Programme, Pradhan Mantri Gramoday Yojana (PGY), Jai Prakash Rozgar Guarantee Yojana (JPRGY).
Addressing poverty by providing Minimum basic amenities to the people. India was among the pioneers in the world to envisage that through public expenditure on social consumption needs provision of food grains at subsidized rates, education, health, water supply and sanitation so that people’s living standard could be improved. Programmes under this approach are expected to supplement the consumption of the poor, create employment opportunities and bring about improvements in health and education.
Three major programmes that aim at improving the food and nutritional status of the poor are Public Distribution System, Integrated Child-development Scheme and Midday Meal Scheme.
Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana, Valmiki Ambedkar Aawas Yojana are also attempts in developing infrastructure and housing conditions.
The government also has a variety of other social security programmes to help a few specific groups like The National Social Assistance Programme. The government has also introduced a few schemes to provide health insurance to poor people. From 2014, a scheme called Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana is available in which people in India are encouraged to open bank accounts.
Poverty Alleviation Programmes - A Critical Assessment
Efforts at poverty alleviation have borne fruit, the percentage of absolute poor in some states is now well below the national average. Despite various strategies to alleviate poverty, hunger, malnourishment, illiteracy and lack of basic amenities continue to be a common feature in many parts of India.
Due to unequal distribution of land and other assets, the benefits from direct poverty alleviation programmes have been appropriated by the non-poor. Compared to the magnitude of poverty, the amount of resources allocated for these programmes is not sufficient. Moreover, these programmes depend mainly on the government and bank officials for their implementation.
Government policies have also failed to address the vast majority of vulnerable people who are living on or just above the poverty line. It also reveals that high growth alone is not sufficient to reduce poverty. Without the active participation of the poor, successful implementation of any programme is not possible.
Poverty can effectively be eradicated only when the poor start contributing to growth by their active involvement in the growth process. This is possible through a process of social mobilization, encouraging poor people to participate and get them empowered. This will also help create employment opportunities which may lead to increase in levels of income, skill development, health and literacy. Moreover, it is necessary to identify poverty stricken areas and provide infrastructure such as schools, roads, power, telecom, IT services, training institutions etc.
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