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Poverty - Lecture notes 7
General Sociology-I (SWB-103)
Aligarh Muslim University
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POVERTY
INTRODUCTION
Poverty is widespread in India, and various methods for measuring it have been proposed. Prior to 2005, the Indian government's official measure of food security was based on per capita expenditure for a person to consume enough calories and be able to pay for associated essentials to survive.
DEFINITION & CONCEPT OF POVERTY
Poverty is a social phenomenon in which a segment of the population is unable to meet even the most basic of human needs.
C. Kurien defined poverty as a socio-economic phenomenon in which a society's resources are used to satisfy the wants of a few while many people go without even their most basic needs. Low incomes, insufficient housing, poor health, limited or no education, high infant mortality, low life and work expectancy, and, in most cases, a general sense of despondency and despair characterise poverty. Poverty is closely associated with inequality and can also be linked to unemployment. Higher levels of inequality will tend to be associated with higher levels of poverty, given the average income level. Poverty has always had multiple, intertwined meanings, and is always defined by the conventions of the society in which it occurs. It is defined as a state in which an individual cannot meet his minimum needs for healthy living in a given social environment in an economic sense. Many social scientists treat poverty as if it were only about deprivation, but it is much more complex than that. As a result, poverty can be defined as economic, cultural, social, or psychological.
Martin Rein's definition of poverty is based on the concepts of subsistence, inequality, and externality. Subsistence refers to the bare minimum required to
maintain one's health and working capacity. Since the concept of poverty must be understood in the context of society as a whole, inequality is concerned with the relative position of income groups to one another. Finally, rather than focusing on the needs of the poor, externality considers the social consequences of poverty for the rest of society. However, there are two major issues with defining the concept of poverty. The first is a problem of identifying the "poor," while the second is a measurement issue.
- Rowntree was the first person in Britain to consider the difficulties of defining poverty in depth, and he recognised that his approach was based on absolute line. If a family's total earnings were 'insufficient' to obtain the bare necessities for maintaining merely physical efficiency, they were considered poor. In the United States, Orshansky has adopted a definition of poverty based on 'estimates' of minimum food expenditure that is similar to Rowntree's. Even after so many measures have been taken by various governments and international organisations to eradicate global poverty, a study of national poverty has a greater relevance today because mass poverty exists in vast areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Even developed nations have pockets of extreme poverty. However, the issue is particularly acute in developing countries, particularly India. Poverty has its origins in feudalistic production relations. The mass poverty that has degraded hundreds of millions of people is a shocking commentary on the whole texture of human existence as well as the true content of apparent human values in the developing world, if not the entire world. A situation in which a large percentage of the population suffers from a chronic shortage of food and other basic needs such as clothing, housing, medical, and educational facilities, and thus suffers from ill-health, disease, sheer animal hunger, reduced longevity, and ignorance, which is an obvious phenomenon in any third-world country, is known as mass poverty. The concentration of mass poverty in developing countries and economic affluence in developed countries, on the other hand, has only existed for about two centuries. The developed countries did not have a civilization
this standard are classified as poor. This concept is inextricably linked to the concept of a minimum level of consumption. The majority of Indian poverty studies have focused on counting the number of people living in absolute poverty, as this issue is widespread across the country and affects the majority of the population. The majority of Indian poverty studies have used caloric norms of food intake to determine the poverty line. As a result, estimates of the population living in poverty in the 1960s and 1970s were made at various points in time.
CAUSES OF POVERTY
Poverty is thought to be a never-ending cycle. It is the result of a variety of factors. Some thinkers have attributed it to a single cause, but because poverty is a multi- faceted issue, multiple factors are to blame. Personal ownership and monopoly of individual on the land, according to Hennery George, is the main cause of poverty. "You will find extremes of poverty and luxury in great cities where land is so valuable that it is measured by foot," he writes. According to Marx, the main causes of poverty are capitalists' exploitation of workers. Poverty rises, according to Malthus, because, while food production rises in arithmetical progression, population rises in a geometric progression. These viewpoints emphasise a single cause of poverty, whereas modern social scientists believe that poverty is caused by a combination of factors.
1. Agriculture is the key
This implies that the government's first priority should have been to overhaul the agricultural sector. It would have directly alleviated poverty for hundreds of millions of people by increasing agricultural productivity (just like in China did in the 1990s). What happened, however, was quite different. Cities and the services sector (particularly banking, insurance, finance, real estate, and IT services) were given disproportionate priority by governments, in an attempt to bypass the traditional
economic development pattern of agriculture to manufacturing to services (in terms of importance in the economy).
2. Economic reforms and causes of poverty in India
When managed properly, manufacturing can provide hundreds of millions of jobs to workers fleeing rural areas. After that, you'd usually invest in education, which would lead to the emergence of the service sector. At this stage of development, the services sector, particularly IT and finance, typically employs a small number of people. Despite accounting for 50% of India's GDP, the tertiary sector (services) employs only... 2 million people! Many Indians have a valid point when they say that globalisation and modernization only benefit the wealthy.
Major Sector of Indian Economy
The primary sector is entirely reliant on natural resources to carry out the various processes and produce the goods and services required to keep the operation running.
Secondary Sector: Natural ingredients are used to create products and services that are then consumed in this sector of the national economy. Manufacturing and transportation are two of the most prominent examples of this industry.
Tertiary Sector: The tertiary sector of the Indian economy, also known as the service sector, plays an important role in the development of the other two sectors. It adds value to a product in the same way that the secondary sector does.
3. Neglecting the poor, once more
However, because the manufacturing sector is finally expanding, there are good chances of reducing massive unemployment and thus addressing one of India's major causes of poverty. But... there's still the issue of rural poverty. To compare once more
6. Land distribution - a marker of development
Almost all developed countries have shown a pattern of very well-distributed land ownership (at least among rural populations) at some point, with up to 70% to 80% of the population owning the land (rather than 5 percent for example). Since then, economic progress has been based on more equal societies. However, land ownership has a significant impact on agricultural productivity because people are more likely to invest in land they own and exploit for themselves. As a result of the increase in agricultural productivity, there will be more growth and less poverty. People begin to nurture their physical and human capital, their children can afford school, and the household achieves a higher social status, reducing social inequalities and resource access issues. As a result, land distribution is inextricably linked to economic, social, and social status. The only snag is that land reforms take a decade or two to take effect in the economy, and long-term prospects are usually a poor motivator in modern politics.
7. Landowners and powerful pressure groups
In fact, there is yet another major stumbling block: landowners. Land reforms have been on and off the political agenda in India since independence, and have always been successfully thwarted by the efforts of landowners, sometimes rightfully so because the state had plans to take their land without compensation. Local officials, on the other hand, have frequently succeeded in evicting countless poor farmers from their homes without compensation, pay, or notice, working hand in hand with property developers. It happened all of a sudden. However, doing so to wealthier farmers would disrupt the social power structure, which is still one of the root causes of poverty in India due to systemic discrimination.
8. Land grabs, another reason for poverty in India
In any case, whether you're a large landowner or a small landowner, you don't just go around taking people's land without compensating them. And it's not about handing over a few symbolic rupees, as is frequently the case. It should be something more substantial, up to a yearly stipend - a genuine and equitable incentive. After all, you're taking the land to make a lot of money, so you might as well play it straight. People have very limited incentives to invest in their land and make it more profitable in a so- called democracy if private property is not respected, if there is no law. They distrust their government and politicians, making any policy implementation even more difficult at the end of the day. In order to continue implementing decades-old land reforms, India still lacks the basic administrative and legal frameworks necessary to make property transfers possible or easier.
9. Caste-based segregation
The caste system in India was officially abolished in the country's Constitution in 1950, but it's still difficult to get rid of an age-old system that organises society. Things are particularly difficult for the dalits (150 million people), also known as the Untouchables or Harijans. They've never had a chance to work in agriculture because they're an out-caste "caste" (i., they're so low in the social hierarchy that they technically don't belong to any caste). Everyone looks down on them, from landowners to local farmers, and refuses to hire them based on stereotypes like "they don't work, they steal."
When the entire society is focused on segregation, it can become quite intense. Indians are obviously not evil, but social classes compete for resources in any society that suffers from extreme poverty. And, in India, the existence of very specific classes aids this process. Of course, the image isn't entirely black and white. Since the adoption of the Constitution, enormous efforts have been made to provide jobs and education for the dalits, while certain groups have lobbied for their civic rights. However, given the size of India, it would take the collective efforts of the entire population for things to change for the better.
the Union budget. The cost of implementing the housing project from 2016 to 2019 is estimated to be Rs 81,975 crore. From 2016 to 2019, it is proposed that one crore households receive assistance for the construction of pucca houses. 5. Unemployment: In search of work, poor people migrate from villages to towns and from one town to the next. Because they are mostly illiterate and unskilled, there are few job opportunities available to them, and many poor people are forced to live unfulfilled lives as a result of unemployment. According to statistics, India's unemployment rate averaged 9% from 1983 to 2011, reaching an all-time high of 9% in December 2010 and a record low of 3 percent in December 2011. The unemployment rate in India is calculated as the number of people actively looking for work as a percentage of the total workforce. 6. Hygiene and sanitation: These people have a poor understanding of hygiene and sanitation. They are completely unaware of the negative consequences of poor hygiene. The government is taking steps to ensure that they have access to clean, safe water as well as a proper sanitation system.
LETS US SUM UP
- Poverty is widespread in India, and various methods for measuring it have been proposed. Prior to 2005, the Indian government's official measure of food security was based on per capita expenditure for a person to consume enough calories and be able to pay for associated essentials to survive.
- Agricultural labourers in the most economically disadvantaged group account for nearly 42% of the rural poor. Furthermore, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes make up more than half of this group (SCs and STs). SCs and STs make up about a quarter of the rural population, but they account for more than half of the poor.
- According to one theory, the emergence of a distinct class of agricultural labourers in India was caused by the establishment of British rule. According to the second theory, poverty was caused by the emergence of agriculture. Due to a lack of information on
the number of agricultural labourers in India prior to the era of all-India censuses, it is assumed that this class was small on the eve of British rule.
- Poverty persists in India, despite the country's massive GDP growth rate (around 9%), particularly in rural areas, where 70% of the country's 1 billion people live. It has one of the world's fastest growing economies, but its wealth is not evenly distributed across the population.
- Agricultural labourers in the most economically disadvantaged group account for nearly 42% of the rural poor. Furthermore, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes make up more than half of this group (SCs and STs). • There are many causes of poverty, including poor agriculture production, globalisation, market liberalisation, and so on. • Poverty has many consequences, including illiteracy, child labour, unemployment, poor housing, unemployment, social tension, and so on.
Poverty - Lecture notes 7
Course: General Sociology-I (SWB-103)
University: Aligarh Muslim University
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