Question

explain the magnitude of the problem of poverty in india

Answer 1

The issues of poverty and inflation are of the first rank importance in In­dian economy. That 320 million persons or 35.97 per cent of the total population in 1993-94 (37.27% in the rural areas and 32.36% in the urban areas) were living below the poverty line, that today about 5 per cent people are unemployed, that 24 paisa of every rupee that the government earns goes into paying interest on debt, and that 10.7 per cent of our GDP is being spent by the central and the state governments on non-merit subsidies on items like water sup­ply, higher education, irrigation, electricity, etc., all these facts present a shocking image of poverty, income and wealth in our country.

Much de­bate and discussion have taken place on issues like how much of the nation’s wealth and income should be spent on poverty and unemploy­ment alleviation programmes? How can economic development be accelerated? How can economic inequalities be removed? How much should be spent on public services and welfare schemes? What is the role of welfare schemes? Should it be minimal safety-net for the poor or a comprehensive system of security for all? Are the social inequalities in our country the result of economic inequalities or differential income dis­tribution? We will analyse, in this article, a few of these issues.

Answer 2

Answer:

The issues of poverty and inflation are of the first rank importance in

Gross and Miller attempted to explain poverty in terms of three factors: income (covert and manifest), assets or material possessions, and availability of services (educational, medical, recreational). But others have considered the concept of poverty with this perspective elusive. For example, in the United States, out of those families living ‘below the pov­erty level’ in 1960, 57.6 per cent had a telephone, 79.2 per cent owned a TV set and 72.6 per cent possessed a washing machine.

The assets or the material possessions, therefore, cannot be the basis of specifying poverty. Likewise, poverty cannot be related to the ‘income’ factor. If there is an increase in the price level, people may not be able to provide the necessities of life for their family members. Obviously then, poverty has to be related to time and place.

The third view defines poverty as a condition of falling below the minimum standards of subsistence appropriate to each society, or “the ab­sence of enough money to secure life’s necessities”, or “a condition of acute physical want—starvation, malnutrition, disease, and want of cloth­ing, shelter and medical care”.

The latter is measured by comparing the condition of those at the bottom of the society with the other segments of the population. It is, thus, a matter of subjective definition rather than of objective conditions. Poverty is determined by the standards that exist within a society. Miller and Roby have said that in this ap­proach, poverty is sharply regarded as ‘inequality’.

From a sociological point of view, this definition is more important in terms of the impact which inequality of income has on the life situation and life chances of the poor. Absolute poverty can be reduced/eliminated by putting money into the hands of the poor but ‘inequality’ cannot be contained by mov­ing people above a certain relative line. As long as there are people at the bottom of the income scale, they are in some way poor. Such a condition will continue to exist as long as we have social stratification.

Harrington defined poverty with reference to ‘deprivation’. According to him, poverty is the deprivation of those minimal levels of food, health, housing, education and recreation which are compatible with the contemporary technology, beliefs and values of a particular soci­ety. Rein identifies three elements in poverty: subsistence, inequality and externality.

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Subsistence emphasises provision of sufficient resources to maintain health and working capacity in the sense of sur­vival, and capacity to maintain physical efficiency. Inequality compares the lot of individuals at the bottom layer of stratified income levels with that of the more privileged people in the same society. Their deprivation is relative.

Some scholars have referred to poverty-linked characteristics of households to point out that individuals from these households run a greater risk of being poor. The chances increase as the households exhibit more of these characteristics.

The more important among these charac­teristics are: absence of a full-time wage-earner in the household, households where men are above 60 years age, households larly in a developing country like India, by developmental efforts and structural rigidities. The infrastructural, institutional or other bottlenecks restrict production activities and cause scarcities. This causes price m- crease or inflation.

(4) Deficit financing causes excessive money supply with no corresponding increase in the supply of goods. This creates inflationary situation.

(5) Sometimes, the developing countries have to import capital goods to generate growth.