Chapter-3 POVERTY AS A CHALLENGE
1. What are the issues related to poverty which in turn become its causes?
The following issues are related to poverty: • Landlessness • Unemployment • Size of
families • Illiteracy • Poor health/malnutrition • Child labour • Helplessness.
2.What are the different dimensions of poverty?
i) Poverty means hunger and lack of shelter. It also is a situation in which parents are not
able to send their children to school or a situation where sick people cannot afford treatment.
ii) Poverty also means lack of clean water and sanitation facilities
Iii) It also means lack of a regular job at a minimum decent level.
iv) Above all it means living with sense helplessness. Poor people are in a situation in which
they are ill-treated at almost every place, in farms, factories, government offices, hospitals,
railway stations etc.
3. What is meant by social exclusion?
i) According to this concept, poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to live only in
a poor surrounding with other poor people, excluded from enjoying social equality of better
-off people in better surroundings.
ii) Social exclusion can be both a cause as well as a consequence of poverty in the usual
sense.
iii) A typical example is the working of the caste system in India in which people belonging
to certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities.
4. What do you mean by vulnerability of poverty and how is it determined?
i) Vulnerability to poverty is a measure, which describes the greater probability of certain
communities or individuals of becoming, or remaining, poor in the coming years.
ii) Vulnerability is determined by the options available to different communities for finding
an alternative living in terms of assets, education, and health and job opportunities.
iii) Vulnerability describes the greater probability of being more adversely affected than other
people when bad time comes for everybody, whether a flood or an earthquake or simply a fall
in the availability of jobs.
5. What is poverty line? How is it determined?
i) A statistical tool to identify the number of poor people is known as poverty line. It is the
line of demarcation between the rich and the poor.
ii) While determining the poverty line in India, a minimum level of food requirement,
clothing, footwear, fuel and light, educational and medical requirement etc. are determined
for subsistence. These physical quantities are multiplied by their price in rupees
iii) The present formula for food requirement while estimating the poverty line is based on
the desired calorie requirement.
iii) The accepted average calorie requirement in India is 2400 calories per person per day in
rural areas and 2100 calories per person per day in urban areas.
iv)The poverty line fixed for a person in villages was Rs 328 and for cities it was Rs. 454 for
a month in the year 2000.
6. Give an account of inter-state disparities of poverty in India.
i)Poverty in India also has another aspect or dimension. The proportion of poor people is not
the same in every state.
ii)Recent estimates show while the all India Head Count Ratio (HCR) was 21.9 per cent in
2011-12 states like Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pardesh, Bihar and Odisha had above all
India poverty level.
iii)Bihar and Odisha continue to be the two poorest states with poverty ratios of 33.7 and 32.6
per cent respectively.
iv)In comparison, there has been a significant decline in poverty in Kerala, Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal.
v) States like Punjab and Haryana have traditionally succeeded in reducing poverty with the
help of high agricultural growth rates
vi)Kerala has focused more on human resource development. In West Bengal, land reform
measures have helped in reducing poverty. In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu public
distribution of food grains could have been responsible for the improvement.
7. Describe the global poverty trends.----i)The proportion of people in different countries
living in extreme economic poverty— defined by the World Bank as living on less than $2.15
per day—has fallen from 16.27 per cent in 2010 to 9.05 per cent in 2015.
ii)Poverty declined substantially in China and Southeast Asian countries as a result of rapid
economic growth and massive investments in human resource development.
iii)In the countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan,
Afghanistan and Maldives) the decline has also been rapid 34 per cent in 2005 to 15.2 per
cent in 2014.
iv)In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty in fact declined from 36.6 per cent in 2017 to 35.4 per cent
in 2018
v) In Latin America and Caribbean, the ratio of poverty has increase from 4.4 per cent in
2017 to 4.6 per cent in 2018.
vi)Poverty has also resurfaced at 3 percent in 2000 in some of the former socialist countries
like Russia, where officially it was non-existent earlier.
8. Discuss the major reasons for poverty in India. —-i)One historical reason is the low
level of economic development under the British colonial administration.The policies of the
colonial government ruined traditional handicrafts and discouraged development of industries
like textiles.
ii)This was accompanied by a high growth rate of population. The two combined to make the
growth rate of per capita income very low. The failure at both the fronts: promotion of
economic growth and population control perpetuated the cycle of poverty
iii)Major policy initiatives like land reforms which aimed at redistribution of assets in rural
areas have not been implemented properly and effectively by most of the state governments.
iv)In order to fulfil social obligations and observe religious ceremonies, people in India,
including the very poor, spend a lot of money.
v) Small farmers need money to buy agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilizer, pesticides etc.
Since poor people hardly have any savings, they borrow. Unable to repay because of poverty,
they become victims of indebtedness.
9. What were the reasons for becoming anti poverty measures less effective?
● One of the major reasons for less effectiveness is the lack of proper implementation
and right targeting.
● Moreover, there has been a lot of overlapping of schemes.
● Despite good intentions, the benefits of these schemes are not fully reached to the
deserving poor.
● Therefore, the major emphasis in recent years is on proper monitoring of all the
poverty alleviation programmes.
10. Explain the various poverty alleviation measures adopted by the government in
India.
● Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 aims to
provide 100 days of wage employment to every household to ensure livelihood
security in rural areas.
● Prime Minister Rozgar Yozana (PMRY) is another scheme which was started in
1993. The aim of the programme is to create self-employment opportunities for
educated unemployed youth in rural areas and small towns. They are helped in setting
up small business and industries.
● Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP) was launched in 1995. The
aim of the programme is to create self employment opportunities in rural areas and
small towns. A target for creating 25 lakh new jobs has been set for the programme
under the Tenth Five Year plan.
● Swarnajayanthi Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) was launched in 1999. The
programme aims at bringing the assisted poor families above the poverty line by
organising them into Self Help Groups through a mix of bank credit and government
subsidy.
● Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yozana (PMGY) launched in 2000, additional central
assistance is given to states for basic services such as primary health, primary
education, rural shelter, rural drinking water and rural electrification.
