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Economic growth is of no use if a sizeable segment of the society suffers deprivation . Growth is converted into Development only when poverty is eliminated. Imploying that people no longer suffer hunger, dearth or starvation; all people enjoy at least the bare minimum of life,viz.food, clothing, and shelter. Independent India embarked upon the programmes of development with socialistic pattern of society as its central objective. It sought to achieve economic and social equality, focusing on the elimination of poverty. The present chapter analyses the concept of poverty and its diverse dimensions. It discusses the way the poor identified. It offers a theoretical perspective of the remedial measures. Finally, it describes the poverty alleviation programme launched by the government from time to time.
(2) Absolute poverty: In india , the concept of poverty line is used as a measure of absolute poverty. Poverty line refers to that line which expresses per capita average monthly expenditure incurred by the people to satisfy their minimum needs . In india, persons who spend rupees 328 on consumption in rural areasand rupees 459 in urban areas per month at 1999-2000 prices are treated as absolutely poor whose monthly consumption expenditure falls below this line. In india nearly 25 percent of the countrys population is absolutely poor. In terms of the total number of absolutely poor, 25 percent in india covers nearly 50 percent of the absolutely poor in the world.
In the estimation of consumption cutoff , we do not include public expenditure by the government on consumer goods. Only private consumption expenditure is concerned. As components of private consumption expenditure, we consider not only food item but non food items as well. For the consumption of food items , we work out per capita consumption of calories. Frequency distribution is formedwith different class intervals showing the ramge of calorie consumption and the level of calorie consumption. Higher clas shows higher range of calorie consumption. Frequency are recorded against each class interval. Each frequency counts the number of heads belonging to a particular consumption class. Finally head count ratio is worked out showing poor and non poor ( corresponding to poverty line cutoff),separately for the rural and urban areas. The ratio shows the percentage of population below poverty line.
categorizing poverty category 1 :chronic poor: those who are always poor and those who are usually poor. Example: landless workers and casual workers. Category 2: transient poor: (i) those who are changing poor moving in and out of poverty (like seasonal workers) Category 3:never poor: these are categorized as non poor people.
Rural population continues to have an edge over urban poverty, thrugh both have an significant decline over time. Rural poverty has declined from 54 percent in 1972-73 to 21.8 to 21.7 percent during the same period. However , percentage decline by no means should be interpreted to mean the total decline as well. Owing to an explosing rise in population overtime the total number of those below pverty line has continued to swell both in rural and urban areas, despite a fall in percentage values.