write there reason
for poverty in India and explain it
Answers
Explanation:
1. Lack of Inclusive Economic Growth:
The first important reason for mass poverty prevailing in India is lack of adequate economic growth in India. In the first three decades of planned development (1951-81) in India, annual average growth in national income had been 3.6 per cent.With 2.1 per cent per cent per annum growth in population, per capita income grew by only 1.5 per cent per annum during this period. In addition, with the increase in saving rate from about 9 per cent in 1950-1951 to 20 per cent of GDP in 1979-80, increase in per capita consumption expenditure was too small to make any significant dent on the problem of poverty. Besides, because of prevailing income inequalities per capita consumption expenditure of the poor could have hardly risen.In the next two decades of development (1981-2000) national income increased on an average by 5.5 per cent per annum. With about 2 per cent per annum growth in population, per capita income rose by 3.5 per cent which was quite high and, as seen above, did result in some decline in poverty ratio both in the rural and urban areas.
But this could not sufficiently reduce poverty because land reforms could not be implemented in agriculture and industrial growth did not generate much employment opportunities. Besides strategy of growth benefited the rich more than it helped the poor.Capital intensive and labour-displacing technology was adopted in the growing industries. As a result, unemployment and underemployment increased. Besides, due to the increase in income inequalities during this period, rise in average per capita income could not bring about significant rise in per capita income of the weaker sections of the society..
2. Sluggish Agricultural Performance and Poverty:
Many economists have pointed out that in the year of good agricultural output, poverty ratio declines. Good performance in agriculture leads to more employment opportunities and fall in prices of food grains. More employment opportunities and lower food price cause poverty ratio to decline. The experience of Punjab and Haryana shows that with agricultural growth through use of new high yielding technology (popularly called green revolution), poverty ratio can be significantly reduced.
However, in various states of the country such as Orissa, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Assam, East Uttar Pradesh, where poverty ratio is still very high new high-yielding technology has not been adopted on a significant scale and as a result agricultural performance has not been good. As a result, poverty prevails to a larger extent in them.
Further, Indian policy makers have neglected public sector investment in agriculture, particularly irrigation for quite a long period since 1980-81. As a result, irrigation facilities whose availability ensures adoption of new high-yielding technology and leads to higher productivity, income and employment, are available in not more than 33 per cent of cultivable land. As a result, many parts of the country remain semi-arid and rain-fed areas where agricultural productivity, income and employment cannot be sufficient to ensure significant reduction in poverty.
3. Non-implementation of Land Reforms:
Equitable access to land is an important measure of poverty reduction. Access to adequate land, a productive asset, is necessary for fuller employment of members of an agricultural household. Most of the rural poor are agricultural labourers (who are generally landless) and self-employed small farmers owning less than 2 acres of land.
They are unable to find employment throughout the year. As a result, they remain unemployed and under-employed for a large number of days in a year. No wonder that these landless agricultural labourers and self- employed small farmers remain poor. Land-reforms were intended to provide them equitable access to land.
An important type of land reforms was to redistribute land through implementation of callings on land holdings so that poor landless labourers and small farmers should have access to adequate land for having fuller employment and enough income to meet their basic needs. Another important land reforms measure related to tenancy reforms, which were intended to protect the poor tenants from eviction of land cultivated by them and fixation of fair rents to be charged by the landlords. Further, ultimately ownership rights over land are to be conferred on the tenants cultivating the land.
With security of tenure and fair rents they would have incentives to cultivate land and adopt the new green revolution technology. In this way with the implementation of land reforms, poor agricultural labourers, small farmers and tenants were expected to rise above the poverty line.
But with the exception of West Bengal and to some extent Kerala land reforms remain unimplemented with the result the rural poverty did not decline adequately. On the other hand, in West Bengal implementation of land reforms have led to a faster decline in rural poverty.