IME Journal

Poverty can be defined as a phenomenon in which a section of the society is unable to fulfil even its basic necessities of life. Poverty could be classified in two categories-Absolute and Relative. Absolute poverty of a person means that his income or consumption expenditure is so meagre that life is below a minimum subsistence level (even the required calorie intake is not available). On the other hand, relative poverty indicates the large inequalities in the form of assets, income and there are regional inequalities due to development gaps. Laster R. Brown in his book World Without Borders explains the poverty “unfortunately, it is not an economic abstraction, it is a human condition”. It is despair, grief and pain. It is the despair of the father with a family of seven children… when he joins the swelling ranks of unemployed with no prospects of unemployment compensation. Poverty is the longing of a young boy playing outside a village school, unable to enter because his parents lack a few rupees needed to buy text books. Poverty is a grief of parents watching a three year old child die of a routine childhood disease because they cannot afford any medical care. We inherited poverty right from the time of our Independence in 1947 (per capita income at prices then prevailing was just Rs. 247, few had jobs outside agriculture, literacy rate was 17 percent and life expectancy at birth was 32 years). In 72 years, all indicators have improved, millions have moved out of agriculture and hold jobs in the organized sector, the literacy rate is 73 percent, per capita income at 2018 prices is 1, 12, 835) and life expectancy has also gone up due to a number of factors for example sanitation, sewage treatment, clean drinking water, immunisation, control of small pox, TB and Malaria, better medical facilities, awakening for good health, reduction in Infant mortality rate, child mortality rate, maternal mortality rate etc.

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Source: Daily HT, 30th April 2019, P.19 ‘What is behind India's Life Expectancy going up? ’by Bibek Debroy1

Poverty has been a big issue during our general elections-it was still a big issue in 2019. In this paper, poverty as a multi-dimensional issue has been examined statistically.