Poverty And Social Exclusion Chronic Poverty In India

Essay from the year 2007 in the subject Economics - Case Scenarios, grade: 1,0, University of Linz, course: Armut und soziale Ausgrenzung, language: English, abstract: Poverty was and remains among the gravest and most intractable problems worldwide. While still being a matter of concern for most governments, this issue is of paramount importance for developing countries, where most of the world's impoverished live, and where a large proportion of the population suffers severe and often multi-dimensional deprivations. The incidence of poverty varies greatly between countries and regions, but generally South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are the regions most plagued both in terms of severity and proportion of the population affected. According to statistics a fifth of all people on earth live on less than $1 a day, and almost half of them are in South Asia.1 India, being a part of one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world, is not spared the fate of its neighbours. Estimates of the number of people below the poverty line vary between 260 and 400 million, making India the country with the largest number of poor people in the world. For most of them poverty is both severe and prolonged. Many spend the better part of their lives impoverished, and some even die without ever knowing the delights of financial security, having suffered deprivations in all aspects of their existence all life long.

Despite India’s record of rapid economic growth and poverty reduction over recent decades, rising inequality in the country has been a subject of concern among policy makers, academics, and activists alike. Poverty and Social Exclusion in India focuses on social exclusion, which has its roots in India’s historical divisions along lines of caste, tribe, and the excluded sex, that is, women. These inequalities are more structural in nature and have kept entire groups trapped, unable to take advantage of opportunities that economic growth offers. Culturally rooted systems perpetuate inequality, and, rather than a culture of poverty that afflicts disadvantaged groups, it is, in fact, these inequality traps that prevent these groups from breaking out. Combining rigorous quantitative research with a discussion of these underlying processes, this book finds that exclusion can be explained by inequality in opportunities, inequality in access to markets, and inequality in voice and agency. This report will be of interest to policy makers, development practitioners, social scientists, and academics working to foster equality in India.

Based on a decade of research by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre, this volume includes material on inter-generational transmission, the importance of assets and vulnerability, and conflict, and new thinking about the close relationship between social exclusion and adverse incorporation.

Focusing on the nature and politics of chronic poverty in India, this book provides an analysis of poverty reduction policies from a chronic poverty perspective. Using quantitative and qualitative data, the volume offers an account of the major causes and consequences of chronic poverty. Among other concerns the book explores: the phenomenon of chronic poverty among rural casual labourers; the effect of involuntary displacement and relocation on marginal groups that are chronically poor; the opportunities afforded by technology for empowerment of the poor and the underprivileged; and possible ways and means to strengthen existing safety nets for the vulnerable section of India′s population.

This book discusses critical policy issues that need to be addressed if India wishes to achieve the SDG 1 based elusive goal of ending poverty in the country. In its nine chapters, it takes the readers through trends and estimates of poverty in India, explains changes in the way it has been measured over time and the factors that lead to persistence of poverty, draws attention to the fact that hunger is both a cause and an effect of poverty and has gender and age dimensions too. The book revisits strategies that were successful in addressing poverty emanating from situations of conflict, presents a discussion on migration as a critical coping mechanism among poor, analyses the links between ill health and poverty as well as education and poverty to draw attention to the policy imperatives that need attention. India’s report card on poverty remains dismal even though there is recognition of the importance of reducing or eliminating or ending it at both national and global levels. Despite rapid economic growth and improvement on a range of development indicators, an unacceptably high proportion of India’s population continues to suffer poverty in multiple dimensions. SDG 1 or “ending poverty in all its forms everywhere” cannot be achieved unless policies and poverty alleviation programmes understand and address chronic poverty and its dynamics. This requires that we estimate and understand the extent of poverty, the factors that lead to people getting stuck in it and the ways this can be addressed. It also requires understanding the dynamic nature of poverty or the fact that many of those who are poor are able to move out of poverty as well as the fact that many others who are not poor become impoverished. These are the issues that are comprehensively examined and addressed in this book. In addition to students, teachers and researchers in the areas of development, economic growth, equity and welfare, the book is also of great interest to policy makers, planners and non‐government agencies who are concerned with understanding and addressing poverty-related issues in the developing countries.

Inclusive growth needs to be achieved to reduce poverty and other disparities and raise economic growth. This book develops a poverty profile for India in view of the ongoing national and global efforts toward ensuring inclusive growth and bringing poverty levels down. This poverty profile will enable academics and policy makers to reassess and improve on the existing methodologies in estimating poverty rates, evaluate the effectiveness of existing poverty programs, and suggest alternative and complementary options for strategic intervention based on the lessons drawn from program implementation both at the state and national levels.

This paper attempts to su ...