Raising Poverty In India

Poverty in India is looked as the main hindrance to the country’s growth. No matter how much our gross domestic product increases, poverty is still not decreasing. This is a much discussed topic throughout the country and around the world. Formulating all the five year plans and many other policies to decrease the poverty has yielded nothing. Rather, it has increased in recent times. Researches all over the world have tried to study what factors cause poverty in India. All writers came up with several reasons, some blaming it on unemployment and overpopulation, some on caste system etc. But poverty took shape under the British colonial rule. When most of the poor people were exploited and harassed by the British officials, treating them as

Recently a new methodology has been devised and put to use, Tendulkar methodology. This method defines poverty in terms of consumption of essential goods by a consumer over a specific period of time and not in terms of annual income. On the other hand the World Bank’s measurement of poverty is on the basis of purchasing power. Developing countries follow a different methodology of measuring poverty compared to the developed countries. In the past India used to measure poverty on the basis of purchasing power parity. According to the Tendulkar line, in the latest research, 32.7% of India’s total population is below the poverty line at 1.25$ per day. There is an expected drop in the next five years according to the planning commission of India.

Who are the poor in India? It is them who are deprived of the basic necessities to live. These include the Dalits, tribal people, labours in urban places and exploited farmers. These constitute the main population who reside below the poverty line in India. The poor can be confined to social groups such as children, ethnic minorities, women and older

They face discrimination when they access services that the society provides. Their living quality is very low as they are paid low wages. These people are exploited for their labour. Muslims constitute a very small portion of the population in India. They are considered as minorities and discriminated from the rest of the society. Women face gender discrimination because India is a patriarchal society. Socially excluded women suffer from oppression and exploitation in the society. People with disabilities also fall in socially excluded people. They are neglected by the rest of the people as they are not well equipped. It is very hard to find employment for these individuals and so many remain unemployed. This results in poverty. Hence social exclusion is directly related to