E-CONTENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCE FOR CLASS-IX

NAVODAYA VIDYALAYA SAMITI

CHAPTER-3

POVERTY AS A CHALLENGE

Prepared by :Momin Hazarika

PGT (Economics)

JNV, Sonitpur (Assam)

Introduction

• In our daily life, we come across many people who we think are poor.
• They could be landless labourers in villages or people living in over crowded Jhuggis in cities.

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• They could also be beggars with children in tatters.
• We see poverty all around us.
• In fact, every fourth person in India is poor.

• This means, roughly 260 million (or26 crore) people in India live in poverty.
• This also means that India has the largest single concentration of the poor in the world.
• This illustrates the seriousness of the challenge.

Two Typical Cases of poverty: Urban Case

Story of Ram Saran

• Thirty-three year old Ram Saran works as a daily-wager in a wheat flour mill near Ranchi in Jharkhand.
• He earns around Rs 1,500 a month when he finds employment which is not often.
• The money is not enough to sustain his family of six— that includes his wife and four children aged between 12 years to six months.
• He has to send money to his old parents who live in a village near Ramgarh. His father a landless labourer, depends on Ram Saran .
• Ram Saran lives in a one-room rented house which is built of brick and clay tiles in a crowded basti in the outskirts of the city.

• His wife Santa Devi, works as a part time maid in a few houses

and earn another Rs 800.

• They manage a meagre meal of dal and rice twice a day, but

never enough for all of them.

• His elder son works as a helper in a tea shop to supplement the

family income and earns another Rs 300.

• His 10- year-old daughter takes care of the younger siblings.
• None of the children go to school. They have only two pairs of

hand-me-down clothes. Shoes are a luxury.

• The children have no health care when they fall ill.

Rural Case

Story of Lakha Singh

• Lakha Singh belongs to a small village near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh.
• His family doesn’t own any land, so they do odd jobs for the big farmers. Work is erratic(irregular) and so is income.
• At times they get paid Rs 50 for a hard day’s work. But often it’s in kind like a few kilograms of wheat or dal or even vegetables for toiling in the farm through the day.
• The family of eight cannot always manage two square meals a day.
• Lakha lives in a kuchha hut on the outskirts of the village.

• The women of the family spend the day chopping fodder and collecting firewood in the fields.
• His father a TB patient, passed away two years ago due to lack of medication.
• His mother now suffers from the same disease .
• Although, the village has a primary school, Lakha never went there.
• He had to start earning when he was 10 years old.
• New clothes happen once in a few years. Even soap and oil are a luxury for the family.

What do they show?

• These two typical cases show that poverty means landlessness, child labour, hunger, unemployment, poor health and lack of shelter.
• Poverty also means Illiteracy, lack of clean water and sanitation facilities.

Poverty as seen by social scientists

• Along with income and consumption they use some other indicator like illiteracy level, malnutrition.
• They show that poverty means hunger and lack of shelter.
• Poverty also means lack of clean water and sanitation facilities.

Social exclusion

• 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.

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Vulnerability

• Vulnerability describes the greater probability of certain communities  or individuals of becoming, or remaining, poor in the coming years.
• The people from backward cast, individuals like widows, physically handicapped are  more vulnerable.
• They possess greater risks at the time of natural disasters.

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Poverty in India 2000: �Most vulnerable Groups

Poverty line

• A common method used to measure poverty is based on the income or consumption levels.
• A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption level falls below a given “minimum level” necessary to fulfill basic needs.

Poverty line

• The present formula for food requirement while estimating the poverty line is based on the desired calorie requirement.

Poverty line

• 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.

Poverty line

• Since people living in rural areas engage themselves in more physical work, calorie requirements in rural areas are considered to be higher than urban areas.

Poverty line in terms of Income

• Poverty line varies with time place.
• For the year 2009-10, the poverty line for a person was fixed at  Rs.673 per month for rural area and Rs. 860 for the urban areas.
• The poverty line is estimated periodically by conducting sample surveys by National Sample Survey Organisation. ( NSSO)

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• There has been significant decline in global poverty. However, it is marked with great regional differences. Poverty has declined more in China and South-East Asian countries.
• World bank has defined poverty as the people earning less than 1.25 $ per day.
• The Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations call for reducing the proportion of people below poverty line to half the 1990 level by 2015.

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Global Poverty Scenario:�

Poverty: Comparison among Some Selected Countries

Source:Poverty and equity Database.World bank data;(databank.worldbank.org)

Causes of Poverty

• There are a number of causes for the widespread poverty in India.
• One historical reason is the low level of economic development under the British colonial administration.
• The failure at both the fronts: promotion of economic growth and population control continued the cycle of poverty.

Causes of Poverty

• There are some other reasons.
• These are :

1. Rapid growth of population, particularly among the poor is considered a major cause of Indian poverty.

• 2. Our agricultural sector has failed to generate much employment opportunities for the farm labourers. Similarly, our industries could not provide much job for the job seekers.
• 3. One of the major causes of poverty is the unequal distribution of land and other resources. Various land reform measures introduced after Independence could not improve the life of millions of rural poor because of their poor implementation.
• 4. Social factors :
• People in India, including the very poor, spend a lot of money on social occasions like marriages, festivals, etc. Poor people hardly have any savings; they are, thus forced to borrow. Unable to pay because of poverty, they became victims of indebtedness.
• Joint family system has prevented people from doing hard work.

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Causes of Poverty

• Illiteracy
• Unemployment
• Poor health
• Child labour
• Poor sanitation facilities
• Helplessness
• Landlessness
• Huge income inequalities.
• Socio-cultural factors.
• Economic factors.

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Anti-Poverty Measures By the Indian Government

• The current anti-poverty strategy of the government is based broadly on two planks
• (1) Promotion of economic growth.
• (2) Targeted anti-poverty programmes.

II. National Food for Work Programme (NFWP), which was launched in 2004

The National Food for Work Programme was launched by minister of rural development, Central Government on 14^th November 2004 in 150 of the most backward districts of India with the objective of generating supplementary wage employment. The programme is open to all rural poor who are prepared to do manual, unskilled labours.

III.Prime Minister Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) is another scheme which was started in 1993

The aim of PMRY is to create self-employment opportunities for educated unemployed youth in rural areas and small towns .(By starting a target to establish seven lakh micro ventures by the jobless educated youth.)

IV. Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP) .

• It 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.

The Challenges Ahead

• Challenges that still remain: providing health care, education and job security for all, and achieving gender equality and dignity for the poor.
• These will be even bigger tasks.

The Challenges Ahead

• But despite the progress, poverty reduction remains India’s most compelling challenge.
• Wide disparities in poverty are visible between rural and urban areas and among different states.
• Certain social and economic groups are more vulnerable to poverty.

The Challenges Ahead

• Poverty reduction is expected to make better progress in the next ten to fifteen year.
• This would be possible mainly due to higher economic growth, increasing stress on universal free elementary education, declining population growth, increasing empowerment of the women and the economically weaker sections of society.

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