• India has the largest single concentration of the poor in the world.
• Poverty means a minimum subsistence level of living rather than a reasonable level of living.
• In pre-independent India, Dadabhai Naoroji first discussed the concept of a Poverty Line.
• He used the menu for a prisoner and used appropriate prevailing prices to arrive at what may be called “Jail Cost of Living”.
• Only adults stay in Jail but society children also.
• He arrived at the factor of three-fourths (1/6) nil + (1/6) half (2/3) full = (3/4) full.
• In 1962, the Planning Commission formed a study group.
• In 1979 Taskforce on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand was formed. Several expert groups were constituted from 1989 to 2005.

Poverty is defined into two categories

The poor and the non-poor: There are many kinds of poor the absolutely poor, the very poor and the poor. There are various kinds of non-poor, the middle class, the upper-middle class, the rich, the very rich and the rich.

Categorising poverty: Always poor and those who are usually poor may sometimes have a little more money (Causal workers) are grouped as the chronic poor.

1. The churning poor regularly move in and out of poverty (small farmers and seasonal workers).
2. Occasionally poor who are rich most of the time but may sometimes have a patch of bad luck are called transient poor.

• Causes of poverty are Landlessness, Unemployment, Size of families, Illiteracy, Poor health or malnutrition, Child labour and Helplessness.
• Poverty means hunger and lack of shelter, lack of drinking water and sanitation facilities and lack of regular jobs at a minimum decent level.
• It is a situation where parents are unable to send their children to school and sick people are unable to afford treatment.
• One of the biggest challenges for independent India has been to bring millions of people out of poverty.

Social exclusion

• Poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to live only in poor surroundings with other poor people, excluded from enjoying the social equality of better-off people in better surroundings.
• It can be both a cause as well as a consequence of poverty in the unusual sense.
• It is a process through which individuals or groups are excluded from facilities, benefits and opportunities that others enjoy.
• For example, people belonging to certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities.
• It can cause more damage than, having a very low income.

Vulnerability

• It describes the greater probability of certain communities (members of a backward caste) or individuals (widows or a physically handicapped person) becoming or remaining poor in the coming years.
• It is determined by the options available to different communities for finding an alternative living in terms of assets, education health and job opportunities.
• These groups face times of natural disasters terrorism etc.
• Additional analysis is made of their social and economic ability to handle these risks.
• It describes the greater probability of being more adversely affected than other people such as a fall in the availability of jobs.

 2. Poverty line

• Poverty is measured based on income and consumption levels.
• A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption level falls below a given minimum level necessary to fulfil basic needs.
• The poverty line may vary with the time and place.
• Each country uses an imaginary line for its existing level of development and its accepted minimum social norms.
• A minimum level of food requirement of clothing, footwear, fuel and light, educational and medical requirements etc. are determined for the poverty line in India.
• The present formula for food requirement while estimating the poverty line is based on the desired calorie requirement
• The calorie needs vary depending on age, sex and the type of work that a person does.
• The average calorie requirement in India is 2400 in rural areas and 2100 calories in urban areas.
• The poverty line for a person was fixed at 816 per month in rural and 1000 rupees for the urban areas for the year 2011-12.
• For a family of five members living in a rural is not less than 4080 rupees per month and 5000 rupees for urban to meet their basic requirements.
• The poverty line is estimated periodically every five years by conducting sample surveys by the National Sample Survey Organisation.
• The World Bank uses a uniform standard for the poverty line: Minimum availability of the equivalent of $1.90 per person per day.
• 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

3. Poverty estimates

• The official data on poverty is made available to the public by the planning commission.
• There is a substantial decline in poverty ratios in India from about 45 per cent in 1993-94 to 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 and 21.9 per cent in 2011-12.
• The percentage of people living in poverty declined.
• The number of poor declined from 407.1 million in 2004-05 to 269.3 million in 2011-12.the average annual decline of 2.2 per cent.
• Governments collected data on the consumption basket, methodology was followed to estimate the poverty line and the number of poor in India.
• Amartya Sen has developed an index known as Sen Index. There are other tools such as the poverty Gap Index and Squared Poverty Gap.

Vulnerable Groups

• The proportion of people below the poverty line is not the same for all social groups and economic categories in India.
• Scheduled castes and scheduled tribe households are the most vulnerable social groups.
• The rural agricultural labour households and the urban casual labour households are the most vulnerable economic groups.
• The average number of people below the poverty line for all groups in India is 22, 43 out of 100 people belonging to scheduled tribes in rural areas are not able to meet their basic needs.
• 34 per cent of casual workers in urban and rural areas are below the poverty line.
• 29 per cent of the scheduled castes are also poor.
• The double disadvantage of being a landless casual wage labour household in the socially disadvantaged social groups of a scheduled caste or scheduled tribe population highlights the seriousness of the problem.
• Except for the scheduled tribes, all other three groups (scheduled castes, rural agricultural labourers and the urban casual labour households) have seen a decline in poverty in the 1990s.
• There is also inequality of income within a family.
• Women, elderly people and female infants are systematically denied equal access to resources available to the family.

4. Global poverty scenario

• The proportion of people living in different countries living in extreme poverty
• There has been a sustainable reduction in global poverty.
• Reduction of poverty in China and Southeast Asia countries results in rapid economic growth and massive investments in human resource development.
• In the countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Bhutan) the decline has been rapid from 34 per cent in 2005 to 15.2 per cent in 2014.
• The number of poor has declined significantly from 510.4 million in 2005 to 274.5 million in 2013.
• Poverty in India is also shown to a higher than the national estimates.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, poverty declined from 51 per cent in 2005 to 40.2 per cent in 2018.
• In Latin America, the ratio of poverty has also declined from 10 per cent in 2005 to 4 per cent in 2018.
• Poverty also resurfaced 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 propose ending poverty of all types by 2030.

5. Causes of poverty

• There were several causes for the widespread poverty in India.
• The low level of economic development under the British rule
• Discouraged development of Industries,
• Fewer job opportunities and low growth of incomes,
• With the high growth rate of the population,
• Low per capita income,
• Failure and promotion of economic growth,
• With the spread of irrigation and the green revolution, many job opportunities were created in the agriculture sector.
• The industries, both in the public and the private sector, provide some jobs.
• The job seekers were unable to find proper jobs in cities, and many people started working as rickshaw pullers, vendors, construction workers, domestic servants etc.
• With irregular small incomes, these people could not afford expensive housing.
• They started living in slums on the outskirts of the cities.
• The problems of poverty, largely a rural phenomenon also became a feature of the urban sector.
• The high poverty rates have been the huge income inequalities.
• Unequal distribution of land and other resources is the major reason for this.
• Major policy initiatives like land reforms which are aimed at the redistribution of assets in rural areas have not been implemented properly and effectively.
• Lack of land resources has been one of the major causes of poverty in India.
• Proper implementation of policy could have improved the lives of millions of rural poor.
• Many other socio-cultural and economic factors are also responsible for poverty.
• To fulfil social obligations and observe religious ceremonies, people in India including the poor spend a lot of money.
• Small farmers need money to buy agricultural inputs.
• Poor hardly have any savings they borrow.
• Unable to repay because of poverty, they become victims of indebtedness.
• A high level of indebtedness is both the cause and effect of poverty.

6. Anti-poverty measures

1. Removal of poverty has been one of the major objectives of the Indian developmental strategy.
2. The current anti-poverty strategy of the government is the Promotion of economic growth and Targeted anti-poverty programmes.
3. Official poverty estimates were about 45 per cent in the early 1950s to early eighties.
4. India’s economic growth has been one of the fastest in the world.
5. It jumped from 3.5 per cent in the 1970s to 6 per cent during the `1980s and 1990s.
6. A higher growth rate helped the reduction of poverty.
7. There is a strong link between economic growth and poverty reduction.
8. Economic growth widens opportunities and provides the resources needed to invest in human development.
9. Growth in the agriculture sector is much below expectations.
10. This has a direct bearing on poverty as a large number of poor people live in villages and are dependent on agriculture.

7. Anti-poverty programmes

• Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005
• To provide 100 days of wage employment to every household to ensure livelihood security in rural areas
• Prime Minister Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) is another scheme which was started in 1993.
• The programme aims to create self-employment opportunities for educated unemployed youth in rural areas and small towns to set up small businesses and industries.
• The Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP) was launched in 1995.
• The programme aims 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.

• The aim is to bring the assisted poor families above the poverty line by organizing them into self-help groups through a mix of bank credit and government subsidies.
• Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana (PMGY) was 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.

Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) was launched in December 2000.

• Aim at reducing hunger among the poorest segments of the BPL population.
• Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (2014) is available in which people in India are encouraged to open bank accounts.
• Promoting savings habits, this scheme intends to transfer all benefits of government schemes and subsidies to account holders directly.

Each bank account holder is entitled to Rs. 1-2 lakh accidental insurance cover.

• The results of these programmes have been mixed.
• One of the major reasons for less effectiveness is the lack of proper implementation and right targeting.
• There have been a lot of overlapping schemes.
• Despite good intentions, the benefits of these schemes are not fully reached to the deserving poor.
• The major emphasis in recent years is on proper monitoring of all the poverty alleviation programmes.