poverty as a challenge

POVERTY AS A CHALLENGE

BY: -PANKAJ .P. PANDEY

IX - B

CONTENT

• INTRODUCTION• POVERTY IN INDIA

• IMAGES• TYPES OF POVERTY

• CAUSES• WAYS TO REDUCE POVERTY

• SOME OTHER IMAGES

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INTRODUCTION

• Poverty is general scarcity or dearth, or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money.Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the deprivation of basic human needs, which commonly includes food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, health care and education. Relative poverty is defined contextually as economic inequality in the location or society in which people live.

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POVERTY IN INDIA

• Poverty in India is widespread, and a variety of methods have been proposed to measure it. The official measure of Indian government, before 2005, was based on food security and it was defined from per capita expenditure for a person to consume enough calories and be able to pay for associated essentials to survive. Since 2005, Indian government adopted the Tendulkar methodology which moved away from calorie anchor to a basket of goods and used rural, urban and regional minimum expenditure per capita necessary to survive.

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TYPES OF POVERTY

• ABSOLUTE POVERTY• Absolute poverty refers to a set standard which is consistent over

time and between countries. First introduced in 1990, the dollar a day poverty line measured absolute poverty by the standards of the world’s poorest countries. The World Bank defined the new international poverty line as $1.25 a day for 2005 (equivalent to $1.00 a day in 1996 US prices) but have recently been updated to be $1.25 and $2.50 per day. Absolute poverty, extreme poverty, or abject poverty is "a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services." The term 'absolute poverty', when used in this fashion, is usually synonymous with 'extreme poverty': Robert McNamara, the former President of the World Bank, described absolute or extreme poverty as, "...a condition so limited by malnutrition, illiteracy, disease, squalid surroundings, high infant mortality, and low life expectancy as to be beneath any reasonable definition of human decency". Australia is one of the world's wealthier nation.

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RELATIVE PROPERTY• Relative poverty views poverty as socially defined and dependent on

social context, hence relative poverty is a measure of income inequality. Usually, relative poverty is measured as the percentage of population with income less than some fixed proportion of median income. There are several other different income inequality metrics, for example the Gini coefficient or the Theil Index.

• Relative poverty is the "most useful measure for ascertaining poverty rates in wealthy developed nations." Relative poverty measure is used by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Canadian poverty researchers. In the European Union, the "relative poverty measure is the most prominent and most–quoted of the EU social inclusion indicators."

• "Relative poverty reflects better the cost of social inclusion and equality of opportunity in a specific time and space."

• "Once economic development has progressed beyond a certain minimum level, the rub of the poverty problem – from the point of view of both the poor individual and of the societies in which they live – is not so much the effects of poverty in any absolute form but the effects of the contrast, daily perceived, between the lives of the poor and the lives of those around them. For practical purposes, the problem of poverty in the industrialized nations today is a problem of relative poverty.

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• OTHER ASPECTS• Economic aspects of poverty focus on material needs,

typically including the necessities of daily living, such as food, clothing, shelter, or safe drinking water. Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is lacking in the basic needs for a minimum standard of well-being and life, particularly as a result of a persistent lack of income.

• Analysis of social aspects of poverty links conditions of scarcity to aspects of the distribution of resources and power in a society and recognizes that poverty may be a function of the diminished "capability" of people to live the kinds of lives they value. The social aspects of poverty may include lack of access to information, education, health care, or political power.

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Causes

• One cause is a high population growth rate, although demographers generally agree that this is a symptom rather than cause of poverty. While services and industry have grown at double-digit figures, agriculture growth rate has dropped from 4.8% to 2%. About 60% of the population is employed in agriculture whereas the contribution of agriculture to the GDP is about 18%.[77] The surplus of labour in agriculture has caused many people to not have jobs. Farmers are a large vote bank and use their votes to resist reallocation of land for higher-income industrial project.

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• Inheritance of Poverty• Families that have had a lifetime of poverty tend to pass on the

situation to their children. They cannot afford education for their children and children grow with no skills. Children work on the same family farms, and marry into families with similar conditions as they turn adults. They in turn pass on the tradition to their children.

• Education, Training and skills• People who are educated or had some training or skills are in a

better position to apply ideas and knowledge into fixing basic problems and enhancing their livelihoods. They are able to plan, follow instructions and get reach out to access information, tools and support that can improve their livelihoods. In the absence of training, skills or education, people cannot help themselves. They cannot prevent diseases, and cannot apply new ways of doing things. The result is that their poverty situation is worse of and are even more vulnerable than before.

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• Conflicts and Unrests• About 33% of communities in absolute poverty live in

places of conflict. In the past, countries like Rwanda and Sri-Lanka have suffered poverty as a result of years of tribal and civil wars. In recent years, Afghanistan, Iraq and the like are all going through difficult times and poverty is rife in these areas. Unrests result in massive loss of human live, diseases, hunger and violence, destruction of property and infrastructure, economic investments and quality labour. It is also a put-off for foreign investments. Wealth can never be created in such an environment.

• Gender discrimination• In many African communities, girls were not allowed to be

in school. Families preferred to invest in boys’ education than in girls. Women were also not allowed to do major economic activity and had less ownership of lands and assets. This idea negatively impacts on the well-being of women, and the development of their children is also impacted negatively.

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WAYS TO REDUCE POVERTY

• 1. Education• Quality education empowers people to take advantage of

opportunities around them. It helps children get knowledge, information and life skills they need to realize their potential. Training teachers, building schools, providing education materials and breaking down that prevent children from accessing education are important features of poverty alleviation programmes.

• 2. Health, food and water• Many programs aim at feeding kids at school and providing health

services as well. This encourages parents to send the children to school and keep them there. If children have food to eat, and are healthy, they can learn and respond to the needs of the programme.

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• 3. Provision of skills and Training• The youth and able-to-work in the communities

are provided skills to help with farm work or other economic activity, which helps them earn money to make a living and take care of their families.

• 4. Income redistribution• It is important that the government extends its

development programs such as roads, bridges, and other economic facilities to rural areas, to make it easy for goods and services and farm produce to move to and from the farming communities.

• With a bit of effort in the areas mentioned above, it won’t take long to see real improvements in the living conditions of the community.