Chapter Poverty as a Challenge

1 Poverty as a Challenge 29 OverviewThis Chapter deals with one of the mostdifficult challenges faced by independentIndia Poverty . After discussing thismulti-dimensional problem throughexamples, the Chapter discusses the waypoverty is seen in social sciences. Povertytrends in India and the world areillustrated through the concept of thepoverty line. Causes of Poverty as well asanti- Poverty measures taken by thegovernment are also discussed. Thechapter ends with broadening the officialconcept of Poverty into human our daily life, we come across manypeople who we think are poor. They couldbe landless labourers in villages or peopleliving in overcrowded jhuggis in cities. Theycould be daily wage workers atconstruction sites or child workers inPoverty as a ChallengeChapterdhabas. They could also be beggars withchildren in tatters.

2 We see Poverty allaround us. In fact, every fifth person inIndia is poor. (This means, roughly 270million (or 27 crore) people in India livein Poverty 2011-12.) This also means thatIndia has the largest single concentrationof the poor in the world. This illustratesthe seriousness of the Typical Cases of PovertyUrban CaseThirty-three year old Ram Saran worksas a daily-wage labourer in a wheatflour mill near Ranchi in manages to earn around Rs 1,500a month when he finds employment,which is not often. The money is notenough to sustain his family of six that includes his wife and four childrenaged between 12 years to six as a Challenge33 Picture Story of Ram Saran2021 2230 EconomicsHe has to send money home to his oldparents who live in a village nearRamgarh. His father a landlesslabourer, depends on Ram Saran andhis brother who lives in Hazaribagh,for sustenance.

3 Ram Saran lives in aone-room rented house in a crowdedbasti in the outskirts of the city. It s atemporary shack built of bricks andclay tiles. His wife Santa Devi, worksas a part time maid in a few housesand manages to earn another Rs manage a meagre meal of dal andrice twice a day, but there s neverenough for all of them. His elder sonworks as a helper in a tea shop tosupplement the family income andearns another Rs 300, while his 10-year-old daughter takes care of theyounger siblings. None of the childrengo to school. They have only two pairsof hand-me-down clothes each. Newones are bought only when the oldclothes become unwearable. Shoes area luxury. The younger kids areundernourished. They have no accessto healthcare when they fall caseLakha Singh belongs to a small villagenear Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.

4 Hisfamily doesn t own any land, so theydo odd jobs for the big farmers. Workis erratic and so is income. At timesthey get paid Rs 50 for a hard day swork. But often it s in kind like a fewkilograms of wheat or dal or evenvegetables for toiling in the farmthrough the day. The family of eightcannot always manage two squaremeals a day. Lakha lives in a kuchhahut on the outskirts of the women of the family spend theday chopping fodder and collectingfirewood in the fields. His father aTB patient, passed away two yearsago due to lack of medication. Hismother now suffers from the samedisease and life is slowly ebbing , the village has a primaryschool, Lakha never went there. Hehad to start earning when he was 10years old. New clothes happen oncein a few years. Even soap and oil area luxury for the the above cases of povertyand discuss the following issuesrelated to Poverty : Landlessness Unemployment Size of families Illiteracy Poor health/malnutrition Child labour HelplessnessPicture Story of Lakha Singh2021 22 Poverty as a Challenge 31 These two typical cases illustrate manydimensions of Poverty .

5 They show thatpoverty means hunger and lack of also is a situation in which parents arenot able to send their children to schoolor a situation where sick people cannotafford treatment. Poverty also means lackof clean water and sanitation facilities. Italso means lack of a regular job at aminimum decent level. Above all it meansliving with a sense of helplessness. Poorpeople are in a situation in which theyare ill-treated at almost every place, infarms, factories, government offices,hospitals, railway stations etc. Obviously,nobody would like to live in of the biggest challenges ofindependent India has been to bringmillions of its people out of abject Gandhi always insisted thatIndia would be truly independent onlywhen the poorest of its people become freeof human as seen by social scientistsSince Poverty has many facets, socialscientists look at it through a variety ofindicators.

6 Usually the indicators usedrelate to the levels of income andconsumption. But now Poverty is lookedthrough other social indicators likeilliteracy level, lack of general resistancedue to malnutrition, lack of access tohealthcare, lack of job opportunities, lackof access to safe drinking water,sanitation etc. Analysis of Poverty basedon social exclusion and vulnerability isnow becoming very common (see box).both a cause as well as aconsequence of Poverty in the usualsense. Broadly, it is a process throughwhich individuals or groups areexcluded from facilities, benefits andopportunities that others (their betters ) enjoy. A typical example isthe working of the caste system inIndia in which people belonging tocertain castes are excluded fromequal opportunities. Social exclusionthus may lead to, but can cause moredamage than, having a very to Poverty is a measure,which describes the greaterprobability of certain communities(say, members of a backward caste)or individuals (such as a widow or aphysically handicapped person) ofbecoming, or remaining, poor in thecoming years.

7 Vulnerability isdetermined by the options availableto different communities for findingan alternative living in terms ofassets, education, health and jobopportunities. Further, it is analysedon the basis of the greater risks thesegroups face at the time of naturaldisasters (earthquakes, tsunami),terrorism etc. Additional analysis ismade of their social and economicability to handle these risks. In fact,vulnerability describes the greaterprobability of being more adverselyaffected than other people when badtime comes for everybody, whether aflood or an earthquake or simply afall in the availability of jobs!Social exclusionAccording to this concept, povertymust be seen in terms of the poorhaving to live only in a poorsurrounding with other poor people,excluded from enjoying social equalityof better-off people in bettersurroundings.

8 Social exclusion can bePoverty LineAt the centre of the discussion on povertyis usually the concept of the Poverty line .A common method used to measurepoverty is based on the income or2021 2232 Economicsconsumption levels. A person isconsidered poor if his or her income orconsumption level falls below a given minimum level necessary to fulfill thebasic needs. What is necessary to satisfythe basic needs is different at differenttimes and in different , Poverty line may vary with timeand place. Each country uses animaginary line that is consideredappropriate for its existing level ofdevelopment and its accepted minimumsocial norms. For example, a person nothaving a car in the United States may beconsidered poor. In India, owning of a caris still considered a determining the Poverty line inIndia, a minimum level of food requirement,clothing, footwear, fuel and light,educational and medical requirement, etc.

9 ,are determined for subsistence. Thesephysical quantities are multiplied by theirprices in rupees. The present formula forfood requirement while estimating thepoverty line is based on the desiredcalorie requirement. Food items, such ascereals, pulses, vegetable, milk, oil, sugar,etc., together provide these neededcalories. The calorie needs vary dependingon age, sex and the type of work that aperson does. The accepted average calorierequirement in India is 2400 calories perperson per day in rural areas and 2100calories per person per day in urbanareas. Since people living in rural areasengage themselves in more physical work,calorie requirements in rural areas areconsidered to be higher than in urbanareas. The monetary expenditure percapita needed for buying these calorierequirements in terms of food grains, etc.

10 ,is revised periodically taking intoconsideration the rise in the basis of these calculations, forthe year 2011 12, the Poverty line for aperson was fixed at Rs 816 per month forrural areas and Rs 1000 for urban less calorie requirement,thehigher amount for urban areas has beenfixed because of high prices of manyessential products in urban centres. Inthis way in the year 2011-12, a family offive members living in rural areas andearning less than about Rs 4,080 permonth will be below the Poverty line. Asimilar family in the urban areas wouldneed a minimum of Rs 5,000 per monthto meet their basic requirements. Thepoverty line is estimated periodically(normally every five years) by conductingsample surveys. These surveys arecarried out by the National Sample SurveyOrganisation (NSSO). However, formaking comparisons between developingcountries, many internationalorganisations like the World Bank use auniform standard for the Poverty line:minimum availability of the equivalent of$ per person per day (2011, ppp).