Theoretical concepts:

Amartya Sen (1981)

- Even the identification of the poor and the diagnosis ofpoverty may
be far from obvious when we move away from extreme and raw poverty.
- Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough
food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.
- Starvation statements are about the relationship of persons to the
commodity (or that commodity group); The contrast between commodities on the one
hand and the relationship of commodities to persons on the other is central also to
many other economic exercises
- The end of starvation in developed countries and China reflects a
shift in the entitlement system, both in the form ofsocial security and�more
importantly�through systems of guaranteed employment at wages that provide exchange
entitlement adequate to avoid starvation.
- When famines are accompanied by sharp changes in relative prices� and
in particular a sharp rise in food prices�there is much comparative merit in being
a share-cropper rather than an agricultural labourer, especially when the capital
market is highly imperfect.
A fixed money wage may offer no security at all in a situation of
sharply varying food prices (even when employment is guaranteed). In contrast, a
share of the food output does have some security advantage in terms of exchange
entitlement.
- The exercise of describing the predicament of the poor in terms of
the prevailing standards of 'necessities' does, of course, involve ambiguities,
which are inherent in the concept of poverty (2018.2)
- Poverty and inequality relate closely to each other, but they are
distinct concepts and neither subsumes the other (2016.2)
- Wheat, rice, potatoes, etc., are commodities, while calories,
protein, vitamins, etc., are characteristics of these commodities that the
consumers seek.2 Ifeach characteristic could be obtained from only one commodity
and no others, then it would be easy to translate the characteristics needs into
commodity needs.
But this is very often not the case, so that characteristics
requirements do not specify commodity requirements. (2016.3)
- The ranking of rural living standards in different states in India
changes significantly when the basis of comparison is shifted from command over
commodities to command over characteristics such as calories and protein.
There is little doubt that ultimately characteristics provide the more
relevant basis for specification of basic needs, but the relative inflexibility of
taste factors makes the conversion of these basic needs into minimum cost diets a
function not merely of prices but also of consumption habits. (2016.2)
- the family rather than the individual is the natural unit as far as
consumption behaviour
- The income short-fall of a person whose income is less than the
poverty-line income can be called his 'income gap'
- Poverty can reflect relative deprivation as opposed to absolute
dispossession. It is possible for poverty to exist, and be regarded as acute, even
when no serious starvation occurs. Starvation, on the other hand, does imply
poverty, since the absolute dispossession that characterizes starvation is more
than sufficient to be diagnosed as poverty,
World Bank (2016)
- There is a strong correlation between household consumption per
capita and access to basic services, reflecting the fact that richer households can
afford to move to better neighborhoods, or may have more clout to bring public
services to the places where they live.
- There is also a strong correlation between access to services and
urbanization. Not surprisingly, urban households tend to have both higher
consumption levels and better access to services than rural households.
-
CONCEPTIONS IN CALCULATING POVERTY
DIRECT METHOD: to check
the set of people whose actual consumption baskets happen to
leave some basic need unsatisfied; it does not involve the use of any income
notion, in
particular not that ofa poverty-line income
INCOME METHOD: to calculate
the minimum incomeTT at which all the specified minimum needs
are satisfied. The next step is to identify those whose actual
incomes fall below that poverty line.

the former is not based on particular assumptions

of consumption behaviour which may or may not be accurate.
Indeed, it could be argued that only in the absence of direct
information regarding the satisfaction of the specified needs can
there be a case for bringing in the intermediary ofincome, so that
the income method is at most a second best. its role as a way of approximating what
would
have been yielded by the direct method had all the detailed
consumption data been available.
The income method can also be seen
as a way of taking note of individual idiosyncrasies without
upsetting the notion ofpoverty based on deprivation. The ascetic
who fasts on his expensive bed of nails will be registered as
poor under the direct method, but the income method will offer a
differentjudgement in recognition ofhis level ofincome, at which
typical people in that community would have no difficulty in
satisfying the basic nutritional requirements. The income of a
person can be seen not merely to be a rough aid to predicting a
person's actual consumption, but also as capturing a person's
ability to meet his minimum needs (whether or not he, in fact,
chooses to use that ability).
The income method has the advantage ofproviding a metric of
numerical distances from the 'poverty line', in terms of income
short-falls. This the 'direct method' does not provide, since it has
to be content with pointing out the short-fall of each type of
need. On the other hand, the income method is more restrictive
in terms of preconditions necessary for the 'identification'
exercise. First, if the pattern of consumption behaviour has no
uniformity, there will be no specific level of income at which the
'typical' consumer meets his or her minimum needs. Second, if
prices facing different groups ofpeople differ, e.g. between social
classes or income groups or localities, then the poverty line will be
group-specific, even when uniform norms and uniform consumption
habits are considered. That the assumption of a uniform poverty line
for a given society distorts reality seems reasonably certain. What
is much less clear, however, is the extent to which reality is thus
distorted, and the seriousness of the distortion for the purposes for
which the poverty measures may be used. (An argument for decentralization of
certain things)

Research Reports:

- WB (2016):
- As a result, India�s share of the global extreme poor declined from
30 percent in 2005 to 26 percent in 2012. However, despite the enormous progress
poverty remains widespread. One in every five Indians is poor, nearly 270 million
people. And, at the global poverty line, India is home to the largest number of
poor in the world today.
- The growth in consumption for the bottom 40 percent was four times
faster towards the end of the period than it had been at the beginning. But despite
the fourfold increase, it still lagged behind the growth in consumption for the
population as a whole.
- Between 2005 and 2012 India ranked 16th among 51 MICs based on the
consumption growth rate of the overall population, but it only ranked 27th based on
the consumption growth rate of the bottom 40 percent of its population.
- But the Gini index considers the entire population, and can remain
stable if inequality among the bottom 40 percent or the top 60 percent declines
while inequality between the two groups increases. (2016.2)
- For the period from 2005 to 2012, its elasticity of poverty reduction
to economic growth ranks in the 35th percentile among the 116 developing countries
for which data are available.
- Put differently, in roughly two thirds of developing countries growth
was more inclusive than in India during this period. This relatively low elasticity
is the reason why despite India being among the top performers in terms of economic
growth it was just above the 60th percentile of developing countries in the rate of
poverty reduction.
- The elasticity of poverty reduction to economic growth more than
tripled from 1994-2005 to 2005-2012, with much of the improvement occurring in the
last two years of this period. In 1994- 2005, one percentage point of economic
growth brought about a 0.24 percent reduction in the poverty rate at the $1.90
line. By 2005-2012, the corresponding decline in the poverty rate had accelerated
to 0.93 percent. And it had reached an impressive 2.24 percent in 2010-2012.
(2018.3)
- However, most of those who escaped poverty between 2005 and 2012
moved into the vulnerable group and not into the middleclass. As a result, the
vulnerable continued to be the largest population group (around 40 percent of the
population) over the period.
- Many households that escaped poverty after 2005 still had consumption
levels that were precariously close to the poverty line in 2012.
- Consistent with the reduction in monetary poverty, non-monetary
indicators of welfare have also improved steadily in India over the last two
decades. But they have done so to a lesser extent than in other developing
countries. For instance, in 1994, child and infant mortality rates were higher in
Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia than in India, but they were lower in 2014.
- A particular area of concern remains undernourishment among children.
Some Indian states, including a few high-income ones, show stunting and underweight
rates that compare poorly with the averages for low-middle income countries, sub-
Saharan Africa, and some of the other countries in South Asia.
- The prevalence of diarrheal disease is thought to be one of the main
reasons behind these high levels of malnutrition, and diarrhea is triggered by poor
hygiene.
- In 2015, 60 percent of the Indian population lacked access to
improved sanitation, and 44 percent practiced open defecation. Both shares are
higher than in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan, despite all three countries having
lower income levels.
- In India the share of households with access to electricity is
similar across small and large rural areas, or across small and large urban areas,
but urban areas as a whole have substantially higher access.
- Household expenditures, on the other hand, grow quite steadily across
the four types of locations, from less to more urban places (Idea tat more people
may prefer to move from rural to urban areas, rather than upward into larger rural
areas); the same increase in household expenditures is associated with a stronger
improvement in wellbeing when it results from moving from rural to urban areas
(Connect with recent issue of electrification definitions)
- SCHEDULED TRIBES:
Households belonging to the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled
Castes stand out for not just entrenched poverty, but also more deprivation on non-
monetary dimensions of wellbeing such as health and education.
These groups are sizeable: in 2012, Scheduled Tribes
accounted for 9 percent of India�s population and Scheduled Castes for 19 percent.
At 43 percent, Scheduled Tribes have the highest poverty rate among all social
groups. twice as high as the India average.
Poverty has declined at a slower pace among Scheduled
Tribes.
While upward mobility was widespread after
2005, it was more limited among households
from Scheduled Castes and especially from
Scheduled Tribes.
A greater share of Scheduled
Tribes than other groups have stayed poor in
2005 and 2012, indicating higher levels of
chronic poverty

Fewer adults from

Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes have
completed secondary school; nearly two in
every five are illiterate (figure 12). In addition,
these two disadvantaged groups have lower
access to drinking water in their homes and
practice higher rates of open defecation than
other groups.

Seven of the 36 states and union territories

account for 45 percent of India�s population
but nearly 62 percent of its poor. These
so-called low-income states are Bihar,
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa,
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh (figure 13). As
a result, low-income states as a group � with
Rajasthan as the exception � have a poverty rate
that is twice that of the rest of the country.

This lack of
convergence is a salient characteristic of India,
relative to other major federal entities. The US and
the European Union operated as �convergence
machines�, gradually bringing poorer members of
the federation closer to the living standards of
richer ones.
Poverty reduction in the low-income states
has also not been as responsive to economic
growth as in the other states.

Structural transformation also took the form

of greater integration, reflected in stronger
inter-sectoral linkages. Growth in one sector
now transmits its gains elsewhere to a greater
extent than in the pre-liberalization era (before
1991). Back then rural growth, especially in the
farm sector, was what mattered most for poverty
reduction. But in recent times, it is more difficult
to attribute poverty reduction to the performance
of any specific sector.c

In absolute numbers, the contribution of the

non-farm sectors towards poverty reduction is
by now larger than that of the farm sector. The
tertiary sector alone has contributed nearly twothirds
of the post-1991 poverty reduction, and
the secondary sector about a quarter. But this
is simply because the non-farm sector
accounts for a larger share of GDP and grows
faster than the farm sector. It is not due to
growth in the non-farm sector being intrinsically
more pro-poor than growth in the rest of the
economy.

The growth of cities, which encompasses both

bigger population and higher productivity, has
been good for overall poverty reduction in India.
In the pre-1991 period, while urban growth
reduced urban poverty, it contributed little to
poverty reduction as a whole. This reflected
the weak linkages between cities and the rural
economy. Post- 1991, rural growth, though still
important, has been displaced by urban growth
as the most important contributor to even faster
poverty reduction (figure 17). Put differently, the
poor living in rural areas have gained more from
urban growth than from rural growth.

areas. While agriculture continued to

be important for many, there were fewer days
spent working on the farm and a significant
shift towards non-farm activities. This shift was
more noticeable among households that escaped
poverty. Jobs in the non-farm sector were mainly
created by the construction sector. These jobs
were far from ideal in terms of regularity in
wage payments, job security, or social protection
coverage. But they offered higher earnings
compared to farm labor.

Higher wages for the unskilled in rural areas and

a massive transition out of farming supported
the rapid poverty reduction observed in recent
years. But in the absence of a vibrant creation
of regular jobs in large villages and small towns,
where most of the Indian population lives,
building a large middle class will remain an
elusive goal

The third jobs deficit characterizing the period

2005-2012 was the shortage of suitable jobs for
women. One of the most striking developments
during this period was the decline in the share of
working-age women who work or actively seek work
The rate remains relatively stable in urban
areas, but at a very low level as only one in five
working-age women living in cities is economically
active. As a result of this downward trend, India
today is near the bottom in female LFPR among
countries with similar income levels.
Poverty fell rapidly in India between 2005 and
2012, but it would have fallen even faster had
female LFPR remained constant at its 2005 level.
Since then, many rural households lost out on the
earnings of their female members who became
inactive. Beyond short-term living standards,
economic inactivity undermines agency by
women, and slows down progress towards gender
equality. Gainful work by women, and especially
paid employment, is correlated with their agency
at the household level and in society more
broadly, and with better development outcomes,
including greater investments in children�s health
and education

A common explanation for the decline in female

LFPR is the expansion in access to secondary
education. Girls are staying longer in school, hence
working less at younger ages. This is a welcome
development, both from a skills perspective and
from a gender equality perspective. However, this
explanation can only account for a fraction of the
observed decline. Most of the observed decline
in female LFPR actually occurred among older
women. And it took place in spite of their higher
educational attainment.

A second explanation focuses on the socalled

�income effect�. It is argued that in a
predominantly patriarchal society the relative
prosperity of recent years has allowed more
women to stay at home, a preferred choice for
their husbands. This explanation is plausible,
but on closer examination it can only account for
about a fourth of the decline in female LFPR. It

A more plausible explanation has to do with the

increasing scarcity of �suitable� jobs for women.
In a traditional society, women�s work is more
acceptable if it takes place in environments
perceived as safe and provides enough flexibility
to simultaneously perform household duties
and chores. Working in the family farm matches
this description, and indeed female LFPR is high
in small villages, where agriculture remains the
main economic activity. Work outside the family
house is also more acceptable if it takes place in
a relatively protected environment, such as an
office or a factory. But in recent years the number
of farm jobs has dropped dramatically in India,
without a parallel emergence of regular jobs in
offices and factories.

The scarcity of suitable jobs for women has

become particularly marked in the rapidlyexpanding
areas that are neither truly rural
nor fully urban. Between 2005 and 2012, farm
jobs collapsed in the villages, whereas regular
employment only expanded significantly in large
urban areas. The combination of these two trends
created a �valley� of suitable jobs for women
along the rural-urban gradation

These observations call for a deeper

understanding of the spatial patterns of mobility
and exclusion. A greater spatial granularity is
especially pertinent in the case of India, where
states are massive entities.

a CASE FOR BETTER TRANSPORT:

It is not only where a household lives that
matters for living standards, but also next to what
it lives. Places with high location premiums tend
to be close to each other, forming clusters of high
living standards. These clusters are most often
situated around a top urban location, but they can
spread out over a vast catchment area with still
substantially high location premiums. Catchment
areas encompass both urban and rural places.
Many of these clusters and their catchment areas
include high-performing villages.
The best places do not share their prosperity
evenly, however. For instance, both Bangalore
and Delhi are among India�s top places. The
location premium is slightly higher in Bangalore,
which suggests that it is a more productive city.
But households in the catchment area of Delhi do
substantially better than those in the catchment
area of Bangalore. The location premium is still
positive and large up to 200 km away from core
Delhi, while it almost vanishes 100 km from core
Bangalore.
Places with the lowest location premiums tend to
be contiguous as well. They are concentrated central India and happen to be in many
of the
low-income states. They are mainly rural � but
include few small towns � and they are home to
a large share of the Scheduled Tribes (figure 26).
This suggests that social exclusion is closely
intertwined with spatial exclusion in India.

The first challenge has to do with internal

migration. A sending place may be growing
more slowly than a place receiving migrants
because its population has a shrinking share of
people with characteristics (in terms of age or
education) that make them more productive, and
not because the place is becoming less productive
in any fundamental way. To get around this issue,
one would consider convergence in location
premiums (rather than convergence in household
expenditures per capita) as they refer to an
average household with the same characteristics
in all places across India.
Governance,
infrastructure, market access, economic
structure, types of jobs, inclusion, human
capital and climate are among the potentially
relevant characteristics to consider

The results suggest that the

most important predictor of subsequent growth
is belonging to an urban cluster, and preferably to
one with a large population. Major urban centers
with vast catchment areas, such as Delhi, share
their prosperity deep into surrounding places
which can be administratively rural. The second
most important set of indicators is related to
infrastructure, and includes access to electricity
and density of roads (density of railways, less so).
Market access, the average distance to places
with high levels of economic activity, comes next

The economic structure of the place also appears

to be an important predictor of subsequent
economic growth. Places with a larger share of
medium-size and large firms grow faster, as do
places with a more diversified economic structure.
The share of the local labor force having a regular
job also appears to be a strong predictor of rapid
growth

Other indicators related to the economic

structure, such as the share of the construction
and manufacturing sectors in total employment,
matter as well (but minimally)

inclusion seems to contribute

to faster local growth. Starting with financial
inclusion: places that grow faster had initially a
larger share of households with access to finance.
The same holds true, although to a lesser extent,
for places with a larger share of firms borrowing

various forms of social exclusion appear to be

detrimental to subsequent growth. For example,
places with low literacy rates and primary
school enrollment, or with large gender gaps in
educational attainment, grow more slowly.

Anonymous and non-anonymous measures of wellbeing

Government schemes under the Twelfth Five Year Plan

The important Plan Schemes are:
1. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA);
2. National Rural Livelihood Mission;
3. Mid-Day Meal Programme (MDM);
4. National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP);
5. Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS);
6. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA);
7. National Health Mission (NHM);
8. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY);
9. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM);
10. Indira Awas Yojana (IAY);
11. National Rural Drinking Water Programme;
12. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA); and,
13. National Urban Livelihood Mission
I. Rural Schemes
1) Wage employment programmes
2) Self-employment programmes
3) Food security programmes
4) Social security programmes
5) Urban poverty alleviation programmes

II. Urban Schemes

1) Wage employment programmes
2) Self-employment programmes
3) Food security programmes
4) Social security programmes
5) Urban poverty alleviation programmes

News Articles:

2015:

1.
-
2016:

1. Economic growth alone is not enough to achieve key Sustainable Development

Goals. It must translate into jobs for the poor and marginalised
- Challenges are pervasive and weeding them out will require clear evidence-based
data-driven solutions.
- Goal 1 and 2 of the United Nation�s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) envision
eradicating poverty and ending hunger by 2030.
- Poverty is a multidimensional concept, which involves reduction in choices to
pursue freedom. So is hunger.
- GHI: Countries and regions are also classified in terms of the level of hunger.
Those falling in the <= 9.9 category are classified as having a �low� level of
hunger, those in the 10.0-19.9 category are �moderate�, those in the 20-34.9
bracket are �serious�, those between 35 and 49.9 are classified as �alarming�, and
those <50 are �extremely alarming�.
- First, developing countries have a major stake in reducing hunger levels. Overall
hunger has come down by 29 per cent since 2000 in these countries.
- India is placed at a dismal 97th rank among the 118 countries considered for the
index. The country has improved its score from 46.4 in 1992 to 28.5 at present,
which is considerable, but its overall level continues to be �serious� on the
index.
- First, the report notes that poverty in India has declined considerably from 1994
to 2013. Over the commensurate time frame, those below India�s official poverty
line have reduced from 45 per cent to 22 per cent. This means that 133 million
people have been lifted out of poverty.
- The report notes that India�s growth has not been very inclusive. It is because
roughly two-thirds of the countries� inclusive growth performance is better than
India�s in the 2005-2012 period.
- These include the Scheduled Tribes (STs), 43 per cent of whom were below the
poverty line in 2012, and the Scheduled Castes, 29 per cent of whom were below the
poverty line. Poverty also seems entrenched among the STs, with the pace of poverty
reduction slower than that witnessed in other groups between 2005 and 2012.
- The top States for poverty in absolute terms in India are Uttar Pradesh (60
million poor), Bihar (36 million) and Madhya Pradesh (24 million). The top seven
States account for roughly 62 per cent of India�s poor.
- Almost one in five Indians is poor and out of every five poor people, four live
in rural areas. Also, the poverty rate is just 7 per cent in big cities with a
population of more than 1 million.
- The poor also own fewer assets and spend more on food, fuel, and light. This
reduces the percentage they have for spending on critical things like education and
health, and it makes them prone to a vicious poverty trap.
- The States which have lagged behind on growth rates are also the ones where there
are low GSDP (gross state domestic product) per capita and in turn higher levels of
poverty. Thus both growth and redistribution are necessary for poverty alleviation.
- Growth alone will not be enough but must get translated into jobs for the poor
and marginalised for it to become truly inclusive.

2. Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of
poverty in India : C. Rangarajan
- What is alarming in India is that the difference between NAS and NSS is widening
over time. For example, the difference was less than 10% in the late 1970s; it rose
to almost 50% in 2009-10.
- It was Simon Kuznets who had argued in a famous paper in 1955 that in the early
period of economic growth distribution of income tends to worsen, and that only
after reaching a certain level of economic development an improvement in the
distribution of income occurs. In this context, measuring inequality is not the
same as measuring the changes in level of poverty.
- Even if the Gini coefficient remains the same or picks up, the poverty ratio can
be declining. This has been true of India.

3. The dynamic nature of poverty

- Most of our anti-poverty policies rely on identifying the poor by using Below
Poverty Line (BPL) Censuses conducted approximately once every 10 years.
- Poor households may move out of poverty and the non-poor may become poor over a
period of time
- Poverty occurs not simply due to the accident of birth or as defined in terms of
where and in which family people are born, but also due to the accident of life
caused by the occurrence of disease, disability and unemployment.
- Our approach to poverty is that we want to cover the maximum number of people,
consequently diluting the support that we are able to provide the poor.
- In spite of a decline in poverty, the proportion of the population receiving
welfare benefits has risen sharply. The IHDS shows that between 2004-05 and 2011-
12, the proportion of the population deemed to be poor fell from 38 per cent to 22
per cent. But the proportion of households receiving any of the benefits under
different government schemes, such as old age pension, widow pension, and the
Janani Suraksha Yojana, or scholarships and other benefits, grew from 13 per cent
in 2004-05 to 33 per cent in 2011-12.
- The proportion of households covered by all these schemes taken together grew
from 35 per cent to 68 per cent of the total population over the period under
study.
- The burden of these programmes on the public exchequer may be huge, their impact
on households is relatively limited.
- The number of welfare schemes has proliferated beyond belief; authors (Desai and
Thorat) discovered that 131 schemes were in operation in one of the study
districts. However, most of the supposed beneficiaries had never heard of these
schemes.
- The more the number of schemes, the greater is the likelihood of leakage and
inefficiency. Moreover, our country has the tendency to initiate schemes without
setting aside enough funds to successfully implement them, thereby almost willing
them to failure.
- The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) covers hospital costs but not
outpatient services. Consequently, many patients delay treatment until the severity
of their medical conditions forces them into hospitalisation, which, in turn
adversely affects their health and increases public expenditure.
- The focus on cereals in the PDS encourages people to obtain most of their
calories from cereals and reduces dietary diversity.
- Fundamentally restructuring social safety nets necessitates meeting three key
challenges:
- identifying those in need of assistance in the context of rapid
economic changes;
- efficiently delivering this assistance to prevent unintended
consequences which may pervert the very purpose of social safety nets; and,
- ensuring that this assistance is meaningful rather than simply
tantamount to applying a bandage to a cancer.
- Each of these challenges needs to be addressed through a pragmatic
approach devoid of the burden of any ideology.
- It would make sense to divide social safety net policies into three categories:
- first, provision of back-up manual work at below market wages to
those who are able to work;
- second, provision of insurance against catastrophic events such as
health-care emergencies or crop failure that push people into poverty; and,
- third, provision of cash support, say in the form of old age pension,
to people who are no longer able to work.
- MGNREGA offers an excellent model for employment programmes in rural areas, which
could be expanded to urban areas.
- The number of crop and health insurance programmes is growing but a better
framework is needed to prevent cost escalation, as has been observed in the United
States.
- While old age and disability pension schemes exist, they need to provide a
greater level of benefits and offer easier access.

2017:

1. India has 31% of world�s poor kids: report

- About 31% of the world�s �multidimensionally poor� children live in India, when
assessed under the capability approach
- �In terms of countries, fully 31% of the 689 million poor children live in India,
followed by Nigeria (8%), Ethiopia (7%) and Pakistan (6%),� noted the survey,
titled �Global Multidimensional Poverty Index [MPI], 2017�.
- In terms of the number of such multidimensionally poor children as a proportion
of the total population, India stood 37th among 103 countries. (IHDS 2011-12)

2. Climate-proofed and inclusive:

- a paradigm shift has taken place in the last three decades or so: income alone
is no longer considered as being sufficient to estimate and address poverty.
- One can have assets and a reasonable income and yet be poor in terms of
education, nutrition, health and other living conditions. Nevertheless, in India
and many other countries, governments continue to use income or consumption to
estimate poverty, with specified thresholds associated with the �poverty line�
- Measures such as MPI help us to estimate not only how many people are poor, but
also the quality and depth of their poverty. One can also estimate the number of
people who are likely to become poor as a result of slight additional deprivations,
as well as those who are in extreme poverty.
- The adverse effects of climate change that are anticipated in South Asia are
droughts, floods, heat waves, sea level rise and related problems such as food
shortages, spread of diseases, loss of jobs and migration.
- Development policies that consider the context of climate change are often called
�climate proofing development�.
- Doing consistent surveys, with MDP considerations - It may of course be
impossible to predict, with great certainty, the precise impact of future climate
change at the local scale and estimate how these may interact with current
shortcomings in particular dimensions of poverty.
- If we learn for example that a district with severe nutritional deficiency might
anticipate extended periods of drought from climate change, then the focus ought to
be on improving local food access and to combine this with managing water
efficiently to prepare for future water shortages.
- It is critical to recognise that climate variability and climate change impacts
can prevent us from reaching and maintaining the SDG targets. Measuring poverty
through its different dimensions, along with the consumption measures, would help
policymakers figure out which aspects of poverty expose the poor and exacerbate
their vulnerability to climate change.

2018:

1. Southern comfort: India�s global poverty rank improves

- While the national average is 21%, in the five southern States (Kerala, Tamil
Nadu, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh) the average Multidimensional Poverty
(MDP) is 9%
- Between 2005-06 to 2015-16, poverty level came down from 55% to 21%, improving
the country�s MDP ranking.
- Following the drop in poverty levels, India moved to the 26th rank from its
earlier 54, in a decade, among 102 developing countries with MDP.
- Bihar is the poorest State with 43% incidence of poverty. Jharkhand (36%), Uttar
Pradesh (31%), Rajasthan (31%) and Odisha (29%) are also above the national average
(21%), as are the other big States � Madhya Pradesh (28%) and Assam (25%).
- From the total population share and poor population share of States that the
�burden of poverty is disproportionately high for Bihar and U.P.�
- �Integrating Indian States� MPI estimates in global ranking, Bihar stands between
Congo and Yemen, Jharkhand between Cambodia and Comoros, Uttar Pradesh between
Vanuatu and Ghana, and Madhya Pradesh and Odisha between Nepal and Dijibouti.�
- Chhattisgarh, which is affected by Left Wing insurgency, has done well, bringing
down its poverty level from 71% to 22%.
- India did not perform well at least in two indicators of MDP � nutrition and
child mortality.
- Andhra Pradesh has been regularly benchmarking itself with global and national
indices.

2. Over half the people pushed into poverty worldwide due to healthcare expenses
are from India: WHO
- Ministry of health and family welfare�s own figure of the country�s affected
population, calculated through a different methodology is about 63 million
- 800 million people spend at least 10 per cent of their household budget on health
expenses for themselves, a sick child or another family member. : WHO
- India�s rank on Universal health care among 100 countries - 56
- People pushed to extreme poverty every year in India due to healthcare expense-
49 million
- Physicians per 1000 persons in India - 0.7
- Psychiatrists per 1,00,000 persons in India - 0.3
- Surgeons per 1,00,000 persons in India - 2.6
- Hospital beds per 10,000 persons in India - 6.6
- Percentage of people who spend at least 10 percent of their household budgets to
pay for healthcare - 17.33
- India�s expenditure on health care - 1.15 per cent of GDP
- More than 1 billion people live with uncontrolled hypertension, over 200 million
women are inadequately covered for family planning, close to 20 million infants do
not get the required immunisations to protect them from diphtheria, tetanus and
pertussis.
- 17.3 per cent of India�s population spends over 10 per cent of household income
every month to meet healthcare expense while around 4 per cent of the population
ends up spending over 25 per cent of family income for the same.
- The Central Bureau of Health Intelligence, under the health ministry, had
reported that only 27 per cent Indians ( 35 crore) possess some form of health
insurance.

3. Economic reforms without a robust agricultural growth may not have reduced urban
poverty.
- We find from the Indian experience that there are instances in which a public
policy focussed on the reduction of inequality may not result in the elimination of
poverty.
- The long-term strategy should be to tackle these two jointly through the
equalisation of capabilities.
- The experience of poverty for an individual is not necessarily the same as that
of inequality, and poverty reduction often requires particular attention.
- It is only the estimate for 2009-10 that shows a decline in the number of poor in
India once again. This is followed by a quite spectacular decline over the next two
years. To get an idea of the magnitude of the decline, the numbers for 2004-05,
2009-10 and 2011-12 are 407 million, 355 million and 270 million, respectively.
- In three of these years growth came close to breaching the double-digit barrier.
More crucially, however, the reduction took place when agricultural growth was at
its fastest ever.
- Similarly, the 1980s, when poverty reduction first accelerated, had also been a
period of accelerated agricultural growth.
- The relative roles of the reforms and agricultural growth in driving poverty-
reduction after 1991 are clear from the differential trends of rural and urban
poverty. It is only after 2004-05 that we see for the first time ever a reduction
in the number of the urban poor. Till that date this figure has steadily risen
while rural poverty had resumed its downward trend after 1993-94 itself.
- Rural prosperity could have fuelled demand for urban products and, following the
significant decline in rural poverty, migration from the villages, swelling the
numbers of the urban poor, may have slowed.
- The role of agricultural growth in reducing poverty is apparent in the fact that
between 2004-05 and 2009-10 the number of rural poor declined by 15% while the
number of urban poor declined only by 5%.
- The relevant policies have been identified as increased public investment, faster
rate of growth of credit for private investment and the launching of the National
Horticulture Mission.

Why we cannot leave public services to private hands?

- An entitlement relation applied to ownership connects one set ofownerships to
another through certain rules of legitimacy and allows enjoying the fruits of one's
own labour.
- Entitlement relations accepted in a private ownership market economy typically
include the following, among others:
(1) trade-based entitlement: one is entitled to own what one obtains by
trading something one owns with a willing party (or, multilaterally, with a willing
set of parties);
(2) production-based entitlement, one is entitled to own what one gets by
arranging production using one's owned resources, or resources hired from willing
parties meeting the agreed conditions of trade;
(3) own-labour entitlement: one is entitled to one's own labour power, and
thus to the trade-based and production-based entitlements related to one's labour
power;
(4) inheritance and transfer entitlement: one is entitled to own what is
willingly given to one by another who legitimately owns it, possibly to take affect
after the latter's death (if so specified by him).
- Social exchange entitlements depend not merely on market exchanges but also on
those exchanges, if any, that the state provides as a part of its social security
programme.
- The exchange entitlements faced by a person depend, naturally, son his position
in the economic class structure as well as the modes of production in the economy.
- ' People must not be allowed to become so poor that they offend or are hurtful to
society. It is not so much the misery and plight of the poor but the discomfort and
cost to the community which is crucial to this view of poverty'' Rein (1971)
(Because then poverty becomes a characteristic of the non-poor, since it reflects
badly on them, as opposed to the humanitarian consideration that poverty calls for
when it is a characteristic of the poor
- The lack of entitlement priveleges afforded to human rights leaves it
unrecognized in a private-based service, and this - in turn - leads to a 'handout'
mentality, which only the government can avoid - the government is accountable to
the people, while private organiations are (or should) not.
- In some discussions one is concerned not with the prevalence ofpoverty in a
country in the form of the suffering of the poor, but with the relative opulence of
the nation as a whole*. These are debates that one commonly sees in the newspaper,
in terms of economic growth and GDP rate discussions. It does not focus on the
causation/actual implications of poverty, but looks at the concept of demand oof
wealth from across the nation as a whole

Middle Income Countries (MICs)

Tendulkar poverty line

In its report, the Tendulkar committee (Planning Commission 2009) noted three
deficiencies of the Lakdawala poverty lines. First, the poverty line baskets
remained tied
to consumption patterns observed in 1973-74. But more than three decades later,
these
baskets had shifted, even for the poor. Second, the consumer price index for
agricultural
workers understated the true price increase. This meant that over time, the upward
adjustment in the rural poverty lines was less than necessary so that the estimated
poverty
ratios understated rural poverty. Finally, the assumption that health and education
would
be largely provided by the government, underlying Lakdawala lines, did not hold any
longer. Private expenditures on these services had risen considerably, even for the
poor.
This change was not adequately reflected in the Lakdawala poverty lines

impoverishment. It is increasingly
recognised that poor people?s capacity (or agency)
to translate development opportunities into
activities to reduce individual and household
poverty is dependent on a number of factors. For
instance, poor people?s capacity for action is
dependent on whether their basic survival needs
are being met (food, shelter, good health), and
whether they are in a position to take a risk - to
forego present income earning opportunities in
order to enhance skills for a potentially higher
earning job in the future. The improving poor can
take advantage of social development interventions.
For the coping poor, however, it may be a risk
that they are either unable, or not prepared, to
take. The declining poor are out of the picture
altogether.

Building on the earlier argument in this paper, social

protection for India?s urban poor corresponds with
a range of activities targeted at individuals,
households and communities to:
? insure the improving poor against a reversal of
fortunes,
? protect the coping poor against risk and to ensure
some graduation prospects,
? provide safety nets for declining households and
individuals, in order to support those who are
unable (and may never be able) to look after
themselves, and to create the possibility for
graduation into the coping and improving
categories.

Analysis of the
causes and symptoms of urban poverty will need to
be improved, and innovative partnerships between
different stakeholders (poor people, as well as
community leaders, governments, the private sector,
NGOs and donors) will need to be developed, so
that high investments in the short term (e.g. in
environmental infrastructure and hygiene
education) reduce costs on other services (e.g. health)
in the longer term