33 Chapter Poverty as a Challenge Overview dhabas. They could also be beggars with This chapter deals with one of the most children in tatters. We see poverty all difficult challenges faced by independent around us. In fact, every fifth person in India—poverty. After discussing this India is poor. (This means, roughly 270 multi-dimensional problem through million (or 27 crore) people in India live examples, the chapter discusses the way in poverty 2011-12.) This also means that poverty is seen in social sciences. Poverty India has the largest single concentration trends in India and the world are of the poor in the world. This illustrates illustrated through the concept of the the seriousness of the challenge. poverty line. Causes of poverty as well as anti-poverty measures taken by the Two Typical Cases of Poverty government are also discussed. The chapter ends with broadening the official Urban Case concept of poverty into human poverty. Thirty-three year old Ram Saran works as a daily-wage labourer in a wheat Introduction flour mill near Ranchi in Jharkhand. In our daily life, we come across many He manages to earn around Rs 1,500 people who we think are poor. They could a month when he finds employment, be landless labourers in villages or people which is not often. The money is not living in overcrowded jhuggis in cities. They enough to sustain his family of six— could be daily wage workers at that includes his wife and four children construction sites or child workers in aged between 12 years to six months. Picture 3.1 Story of Ram Saran Poverty as a Challenge 29 2021–22 He has to send money home to his old Rural case parents who live in a village near Lakha Singh belongs to a small village Ramgarh. His father a landless near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. His labourer, depends on Ram Saran and family doesn’t own any land, so they his brother who lives in Hazaribagh, do odd jobs for the big farmers. Work for sustenance. Ram Saran lives in a is erratic and so is income. At times one-room rented house in a crowded they get paid Rs 50 for a hard day’s basti in the outskirts of the city. It’s a work. But often it’s in kind like a few temporary shack built of bricks and kilograms of wheat or dal or even clay tiles. His wife Santa Devi, works vegetables for toiling in the farm as a part time maid in a few houses through the day. The family of eight and manages to earn another Rs 800. cannot always manage two square They manage a meagre meal of dal and meals a day. Lakha lives in a kuchha rice twice a day, but there’s never hut on the outskirts of the village. enough for all of them. His elder son The women of the family spend the works as a helper in a tea shop to day chopping fodder and collecting supplement the family income and firewood in the fields. His father a earns another Rs 300, while his 10- TB patient, passed away two years year-old daughter takes care of the ago due to lack of medication. His younger siblings. None of the children mother now suffers from the same go to school. They have only two pairs disease and life is slowly ebbing away. of hand-me-down clothes each. New Although, the village has a primary ones are bought only when the old school, Lakha never went there. He clothes become unwearable. Shoes are had to start earning when he was 10 a luxury. The younger kids are years old. New clothes happen once undernourished. They have no access in a few years. Even soap and oil are to healthcare when they fall ill. a luxury for the family. Study the above cases of poverty and discuss the following issues related to poverty: • Landlessness • Unemployment • Size of families • Illiteracy • Poor health/malnutrition • Child labour • Helplessness Picture 3.2 Story of Lakha Singh 30 Economics 2021–22 These two typical cases illustrate many both a cause as well as a dimensions of poverty. They show that consequence of poverty in the usual poverty means hunger and lack of shelter. sense. Broadly, it is a process through It also is a situation in which parents are which individuals or groups are not able to send their children to school excluded from facilities, benefits and or a situation where sick people cannot opportunities that others (their afford treatment. Poverty also means lack “betters”) enjoy. A typical example is of clean water and sanitation facilities. It the working of the caste system in also means lack of a regular job at a India in which people belonging to minimum decent level. Above all it means certain castes are excluded from living with a sense of helplessness. Poor equal opportunities. Social exclusion people are in a situation in which they thus may lead to, but can cause more are ill-treated at almost every place, in damage than, having a very low farms, factories, government offices, income. hospitals, railway stations etc. Obviously, Vulnerability nobody would like to live in poverty. One of the biggest challenges of Vulnerability to poverty is a measure, independent India has been to bring which describes the greater millions of its people out of abject poverty. probability of certain communities Mahatama Gandhi always insisted that (say, members of a backward caste) India would be truly independent only or individuals (such as a widow or a when the poorest of its people become free physically handicapped person) of of human suffering. becoming, or remaining, poor in the coming years. Vulnerability is Poverty as seen by social scientists determined by the options available Since poverty has many facets, social to different communities for finding scientists look at it through a variety of an alternative living in terms of indicators. Usually the indicators used assets, education, health and job relate to the levels of income and opportunities. Further, it is analysed consumption. But now poverty is looked on the basis of the greater risks these through other social indicators like groups face at the time of natural illiteracy level, lack of general resistance disasters (earthquakes, tsunami), due to malnutrition, lack of access to terrorism etc. Additional analysis is healthcare, lack of job opportunities, lack made of their social and economic of access to safe drinking water, ability to handle these risks. In fact, sanitation etc. Analysis of poverty based vulnerability describes the greater on social exclusion and vulnerability is probability of being more adversely now becoming very common (see box). affected than other people when bad time comes for everybody, whether a Social exclusion flood or an earthquake or simply a fall in the availability of jobs! According to this concept, poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to live only in a poor Poverty Line surrounding with other poor people, At the centre of the discussion on poverty excluded from enjoying social equality is usually the concept of the “poverty line”. of better-off people in better A common method used to measure surroundings. Social exclusion can be poverty is based on the income or Poverty as a challenge 31 2021–22 consumption levels. A person is higher amount for urban areas has been considered poor if his or her income or fixed because of high prices of many consumption level falls below a given essential products in urban centres. In “minimum level” necessary to fulfill the this way in the year 2011-12, a family of basic needs. What is necessary to satisfy five members living in rural areas and the basic needs is different at different earning less than about Rs 4,080 per times and in different countries. month will be below the poverty line. A Therefore, poverty line may vary with time similar family in the urban areas would and place. Each country uses an need a minimum of Rs 5,000 per month imaginary line that is considered to meet their basic requirements. The appropriate for its existing level of poverty line is estimated periodically development and its accepted minimum (normally every five years) by conducting social norms. For example, a person not sample surveys. These surveys are having a car in the United States may be carried out by the National Sample Survey considered poor. In India, owning of a car Organisation (NSSO). However, for is still considered a luxury. making comparisons between developing While determining the poverty line in countries, many international India, a minimum level of food requirement, organisations like the World Bank use a clothing, footwear, fuel and light, uniform standard for the poverty line: educational and medical requirement, etc., minimum availability of the equivalent of are determined for subsistence. These $1.90 per person per day (2011, ppp). physical quantities are multiplied by their prices in rupees. The present formula for Let’s Discuss food requirement while estimating the Discuss the following: poverty line is based on the desired calorie requirement. Food items, such as • Why do different countries use different cereals, pulses, vegetable, milk, oil, sugar, poverty lines? etc., together provide these needed • What do you think would be the calories. The calorie needs vary depending “minimum necessary level” in your on age, sex and the type of work that a locality? person does. The accepted average calorie requirement in India is 2400 calories per Poverty Estimates person per day in rural areas and 2100 It is clear from Table 3.1 that there is a calories per person per day in urban substantial decline in poverty ratios in areas.