Poverty in india

1. POVERTY

2. WORLD BANK„S DEFINITION OF POVERTY
 Poverty is an income level below some minimum level
necessary to meet basic needs. This minimum level is usually
called the “poverty line”. What is necessary to satisfy basic
needs varies across time and societies.
 Therefore, poverty lines vary in time and place, and each
country uses lines which are appropriate to its level of
development, societal norms and values.
 But the content of the needs is more or less the same
everywhere. Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter.
Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor.
Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how
to read. Poverty is not having a job, poverty is fear for the
future,.
 Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean
water.
 Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.

3. UN DEFINITION OF POVERTY
 “Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and
opportunities, a violation of human dignity.
 It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively
in society.
 It means not having enough to feed and cloth a family,
not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land
on which to grow one‟s food or a job to earn one‟s living,
not having access to credit.
 It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of
individuals, households and communities.
 It means susceptibility to violence, and it often implies
living on marginal or fragile environments, without
access to clean water or sanitation”

4. WORLD SUMMIT ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN
COPENHEGAN IN 1995
 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.
 It includes a lack of income and productive resources to ensure
sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or
lack of access to education and other basic services; increased
morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate
housing; unsafe environments and social discrimination and
exclusion.
 It is also characterized by lack of participation in decision making and
in civil, social and cultural life.
 It occurs in all countries: as mass poverty in many developing
countries, pockets of poverty amid wealth in developed
countries, loss of livelihoods as a result of economic
recession, sudden poverty as a result of disaster or conflict, the
poverty of low-wage workers, and the utter destitution of people who
fall outside family support systems, social institutions and safety
nets.

5. DEFINITION BY PETER TOWNSEND:
 And there‟s the equally interesting but completely
different definition by Peter Townsend:
 Individuals, families and groups in the population
can be said to be in poverty when they lack the
resources to obtain the types of diet, participate in
the activities and have the living conditions and
amenities which are customary, or are at least
widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to
which they belong.
 Their resources are so seriously below those
commanded by the average individual or family that
they are, in effect, excluded from ordinary living
patterns and activities.

6. DIMENSIONS OF POVERTY
 Poverty can be viewed in
 ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE TERMS.
 OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVES
 PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL DEPRIVATIONS
 POVERTY AND INEQUITY
 POVERTY AND VULNERABILITY
 POVERTY AND EXCLUSION
 POVERTY AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT

7. 1. ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE POVERTY
Poverty can be viewed in absolute and relative
terms.
1.Absolute poverty refers to subsistence below
minimum, socially acceptable living
conditions, usually established based on
income and nutritional requirements and other
essential goods.

8. ABSOLUTE POVERTY
Absolute poverty as the absence of any two of the following eight basic needs:[
1. Food: Body Mass Index must be above 16.
2. Safe drinking water: Water must not come solely from rivers and ponds, and must be available nearby
(less than 15 minutes' walk each way).
3. Sanitation facilities: Toilets or latrines must be accessible in or near the home.
4. Health: Treatment must be received for serious illnesses and pregnancy.
5. Shelter: Homes must have fewer than four people living in each room. Floors must not be made of
dirt, mud, or clay.
6. Education: Everyone must attend school or otherwise learn to read.
7. Information: Everyone must have access to newspapers, radios, televisions, computers, or telephones
at home.
8. Access to services: This item is used to indicate the complete panoply of education, health, legal,
social, and financial (credit) services.

9. ABSOLUTE POVERTY……………….
 This concept of poverty is strongly linked to
destitution and can be applied to all countries or
societies.
 A person who is considered poor under this
criterion is classified internationally in the same way
throughout the world.
 The common international poverty line has in the
past been roughly $1 a day. In 2008, the World
Bank came out with a revised figure of
$1.25 purchasing-power parity(PPP).

10.  Purchasing power parity(PPP) is an economic
theory and a technique used to determine the
relative value of currencies, estimating the amount
of adjustment needed on the exchange
rate between countries in order for the exchange to
be equivalent to (or on par with) each
currency's purchasing power.
 It asks how much money would be needed to
purchase the same goods and services in two
countries, and uses that to calculate an implicit
foreign exchange rate. Using that PPP rate, an
amount of money thus has the same purchasing
power in different countries

11. RELATIVE POVERTY
 Relative poverty compares the lowest segments of a
population with upper segments.

12. RELATIVE POVERTY………………………………
 In this system, if everyone's real income in an economy
increases, but the income distribution stays the same,
then the rate of relative poverty will also stay the same.
 This means, by its very nature, that there will always be a
family living in (relative) poverty, even if they have a
very high living standard, unless everyone has almost
exactly the same income.

13. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVES
 Poverty can be approached from objective or
subjective perspectives.
 The objective perspective (sometimes referred to
as the welfare approach) involves normative
judgments as to what constitutes poverty and what
is required to move people out of their
impoverished state.
 The subjective approach places a premium on
people‟s preferences, on how much they value
goods and services (hence the emphasis on
individual utility).

14. OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE PERSPECTIVES………………………
 Economists have traditionally based their work on the
objective approach, mainly because of the obstacles
encountered when trying to aggregate multiple individual
utilities across a population.
 Subjective poverty lines are based on the opinion held by
individuals on themselves in relation to society as a whole.
 In other words, the concept of poverty used in these lines to
divide the population into poor and not poor is based on the
perception of households and individuals themselves.

15. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE
POVERTY
 When using subjective focus for measuring poverty, it is
assumed that "each individual is the best judge of their own
situation”.
 Advocates of objective approach use the argument that
individuals are not always the best judge of what is best for
them.
 For example, most poverty measurement systems focus on
nutritional attainments. Although all individuals value food
consumption,some may place higher value on certain food
types or food quantities that are not best for their physiological
well being. It is conceivable that the subjective approach could
both undervalue or overvalue food consumption when
compared to the welfare approach, leading to conflicting
assessments as to who are the poor.

16. PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL DEPRIVATIONS
 PHYSIOLOGICAL
 Regarding the “physiological”, the line of thinking is as
follows: people are poor because they lack income,
food, clothing and shelter.
 Both the income and basic needs concepts of poverty
stem from physiological deprivations (although some
advocates of the basic needs concept set the
parameters beyond physiological needs).
 Strategies to reduce poverty emerging from these
approaches focus on increasing the
income/consumption of the poor and their attainment of
“satisfiers” of basic needs, such as health and
education.

17. PERSPECTIVE OF SOCIOLOGICAL
 The concepts of poverty emerging from the perspective of sociological
deprivations are rooted in underlying structural inequities and inherent
disadvantages.
It is also called as structural poverty. It can be defined as Deprivation
which is reinforced by administrative, economic and social barriers
preventing access to new life skills, employment opportunities, improved
health care and better housing.
 They are based on observations that even when resources are flowing
into sectors dominated by the poor, the latter may not be able to take full
advantage of them because of structural impediments.
These constraints hamper access by the poor to “external” assets, such
as credit, land, infrastructure and common property (i.e., the natural
environment), and “internal” assets, such as health, nutrition and
education.
The fundamental causal factors lie in power structures and governance
issues, as well as in the inequities imbedded in macropolicy frameworks
and distributional systems.

18. POVERTY AND INEQUITY
 Whereas poverty refers to different forms of deprivation
that can be expressed in a variety of terms (i.e., income,
basic needs, human capabilities), equity is concerned
with distribution within a population group.
 Despite the clear distinction between the two concepts,
analysis of poverty often employs indicators of equity
because of inherent linkages between the two.
 Recent studies have concluded that in certain country
contexts it is easier to reduce poverty under relatively
egalitarian conditions.

19. POVERTY AND VULNERABILITY
 Although poverty and vulnerability are often related, they are not synonymous.
 Some groups may be at risk of becoming poor because of inherent
vulnerabilities (i.e., different types of discrimination based on
class, gender,ethnicity, or factors such as disability, region of
residence and family configuration).
 Furthermore, certain combinations of vulnerability may be strongly
correlated with poverty, such as female-headed households or
families
 living in remote and isolated mountainous regions.
 But not all members of a particular vulnerable group are invariably
poor—hence the need to distinguish between the two when dealing
with indicators.
 In short, poverty relates to deprivation, while vulnerability is a
function of external risks, shocks, stresses and internal
defenselessness.

20. POVERTY AND EXCLUSION
 There is no broad consensus on the definition of social exclusion, or its
relationship to poverty.
 At one end of the spectrum, there are those who define social exclusion
within the concept of poverty, focusing on those aspects of social
deprivation that impede people from participating fully in their society and
its development.
 At the other end of the spectrum, there are those whose notion of social
exclusion encompasses a much broader range of issues, including
poverty itself. Needless to say, between these two extremes lies a range
of different approaches to the concept.
 Clearly, the definition of social exclusion depends to a great extent on
how one defines poverty. If one‟s definition of poverty were
narrow, expressed in terms of material deprivation (such as lack of
income), then it would not be surprising that the definition of social
exclusion would be considered in broad terms, including material
deprivation.
 If, however, one‟s definition of poverty is multidimensional, then it is
likely that social exclusion would refer more specifically to issues of
participation, empowerment and social rights.

21. POVERTY AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT
 The distinction between poverty and underdevelopment also
depends on how each is defined. When defined in broad human
deprivation terms, poverty is often viewed as a form of
underdevelopment.
 The Human Development Report 1997 distinguishes between the
two concepts by associating the former with individuals and the latter
with an aggregate perspective.
 “The contrast between human development and human poverty
reflects two different ways of evaluating development. One way, the
„conglomerative perspective,‟ focuses on the advances made by all
groups in each community, from the rich to the poor.

22.  This contrasts with an alternative viewpoint, the „deprivational
perspective,‟ in which development is
 judged by the way the poor and the deprived fare in each
community. Lack of progress in reducing the disadvantages of
the deprived cannot be „washed away‟ by large advances—no
matter how large—made by the better-off people.”
 Given the close relationship between these two concepts, it is not
surprising that many poverty indicators are the same as those
used to measure underdevelopment.
 From a policy and programme perspective, the necessity of
recognizing a distinction between poverty and underdevelopment
depends a great deal on two factors: the degree of equity within a
society, and the prevalence of poverty. Effective anti-poverty
policies and programmes in relatively inegalitarian societies with
small pockets of poverty would look very different from those in
relatively egalitarian societies with extensive poverty

23. DEPRIVATION
 deprivation
 a. The act or an instance of depriving; loss.
 b. The condition of being deprived.

24.  Deprivation can be conceptualised as a continuum which ranges
from no deprivation through mild, moderate and severe deprivation
to extreme deprivation.
 Continuum of deprivation
Mild moderate severe
No Deprivation Extreme
deprivation


25. DEPRIVATION INDICATORS
 In order to measure absolute poverty amongst
children, it is necessary to define the threshold
measures of severe deprivation of basic human
need for:
 1. food
 2. safe drinking water
 3. sanitation facilities
 4. health
 5. shelter
 6. education
 7. information
 8. access to services

26.  Poverty Line
 There is no international consensus on what poverty is and how it should
be measured. The common starting point of many poverty calculations is
a food energy intake requirement of 2,100 calories per person per day
which is a normal requirement of a human body (Ravallion, 1994). The
method of calculation is to use a basket of foods consumed by a
"reference population" to fix the mix of foods and their prices. The total
food quantity is calculated by scaling the mix of foods to achieve the
level of 2,100 calories based on commonly consumed local food items.
The poverty line is the expenditure necessary to achieve this caloric
intake (Pradhan et. al., 2000). In many cases, consumption expenditures
may include other non-food essentials, e.g. clothing, housing and others.
 The World Bank calculated the international poverty lines by
standardizing consumption levels across countries. Purchasing Power
Parity(PPP) is estimated based on new price data generated by the
International Comparisons Program for115 countries. Internationally, an
income of less than $1.25 per day per head of purchasing power parity is
defined asextreme poverty.