Chapter 3

• Poverty


  A multi-dimensional problem faced by independent India
• Poverty trends in India and the world are illustrated through the concept of the poverty line


  India has the largest single concentration of the poor in the world

  In India, roughly 270 million (or 27 crore) people live in poverty 2011-12.
• People considered poor

  • Landless labourers in villages
  • People living in overcrowded jhuggis in cities
  • Daily wage workers at construction sites
  • Child workers in dhabas
  • Beggars with children in tatters
• Poverty


  • Hunger
  • Lack of shelter
  • Parents unable to send children to school
  • Sick people cannot afford treatment
  • Lack of clean water and sanitation facilities
  • Lack of a regular job at a minimum decent level
  • Living with a sense of helplessness
  • Being ill-treated at almost every place
• Mahatama Gandhi insisted that India would be truly independent only when the poorest of its people become free of human suffering
• Poverty as seen by social scientists


  Looked through indicators related to levels of income and consumption<|>Looked through other social indicators like 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.<|>Analysed based on social exclusion and vulnerability
• Social exclusion


  A process through which individuals or groups are excluded from facilities, benefits and opportunities that others enjoy
• Vulnerability to poverty


  A measure that describes the greater probability of certain communities or individuals of becoming, or remaining, poor in the coming years
• Poverty line


  A minimum level of income/consumption necessary to fulfill the basic needs, which varies with time and place

  poverty line is estimated periodically (normally every five years) by conducting sample surveys. These surveys are carried out by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)
• Determining poverty line in India

  1. Minimum level of food requirement, clothing, footwear, fuel and light, educational and medical requirement are determined

  2. Physical quantities are multiplied by their prices in rupees

  3. Calorie requirement is based on desired calorie intake of 2400 per person per day in rural areas and 2100 per person per day in urban areas

  4. Monetary expenditure per capita needed for buying these calorie requirements is revised periodically
• For 2011-12, the poverty line was fixed at Rs 816 per month for rural areas and Rs 1000 for urban areas

  The higher amount for urban areas has been fixed because of high prices of products in urban centers
• For international comparisons, World Bank uses a uniform poverty line of minimum availability of the equivalent of $1.90 per person per day (2011, ppp)
• Poverty ratio in India declined from about 45% in 1993-94 to 37.2% in 2004-05 and further to 22% in 2011-12
• Number of poor declined from 407 million in 2004-05 to 270 million in 2011-12 with an average annual decline of 2.2 percentage points
• Groups most vulnerable to poverty

  • Scheduled Caste households
  • Scheduled Tribe households
  • Households with elderly, disabled or female heads
  • Landless agricultural labourers
  • Urban informal sector workers
• The percentage of people living below poverty line declined from 407 million in 2004-05 to 270 million in 2011-12 with an average annual decline of 2.2 percentage points during 2004-05 to 2011-12
• If the trend continues, people below poverty line may come down to less than 20 per cent in the next few years
• Poverty ratio


  Percentage of people living below poverty line
• The proportion of people below poverty line is not the same for all social groups and economic categories in India
• Social groups most vulnerable to poverty

  • Scheduled Caste households
  • Scheduled Tribe households
• Economic groups most vulnerable to poverty

  • Rural agricultural labour households
  • Urban casual labour households
• 43 out of 100 people belonging to Scheduled Tribes are not able to meet their basic needs
• 34 per cent of casual workers in urban areas are below poverty line
• 34 per cent of casual labour farm (in rural areas) and 29 per cent of Scheduled Castes are also poor
• The double disadvantage of being a landless casual wage labour household in the socially disadvantaged social groups of the scheduled caste or the scheduled tribe population highlights the seriousness of the problem
• Except for the scheduled tribe households, all the other three groups (scheduled castes, rural agricultural labourers and the urban casual labour households) have seen a decline in poverty in the 1990s
• In poor families, women, elderly people and female infants are denied equal access to resources available to the family
• The proportion of poor people is not the same in every state in India
• States like Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha had above all India poverty level in 2011-12
• Bihar and Odisha continue to be the two poorest states with poverty ratios of 33.7 and 32.6 per cent respectively
• Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal have seen a significant decline in poverty
• Punjab and Haryana have traditionally succeeded in reducing poverty with the help of high agricultural growth rates
• Kerala has focused more on human resource development, West Bengal has implemented land reform measures, and Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have had public distribution of food grains to help reduce poverty
• The proportion of people in different countries living in extreme economic poverty (less than $2.15 per day) has fallen from 16.27 per cent in 2010 to 9.05 per cent in 2019
• Poverty declined substantially in China and Southeast Asian countries as a result of rapid economic growth and massive investments in human resource development
• In the countries of South Asia, the decline in poverty has also been rapid from 12.8 per cent in 2017 to 10.9 per cent in 2021
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty declined from 36.6 per cent in 2017 to 35.4 per cent in 2019
• In Latin America and Caribbean, the ratio of poverty has increased from 4.4 per cent in 2017 to 4.6 per cent in 2021
• Poverty has also resurfaced at 3 per cent in 2000 in some of the former socialist countries like Russia, where officially it was non-existent earlier
• The new sustainable development goals of the United Nations (UN) proposes ending poverty of all types by 2030