Dimensions of Poverty in India

                                                        Sajjad Shaukat

Sociologists and economists have continuously been focusing on poverty as one of the major problems in the Third World. Poverty reflects a condition in which an individual fails to maintain a living standard sufficient for his physical and mental existence. Renowned economist, Adam Smith remarks, “Man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessities, the conveniences and the amusements of human life.” 

Although India has rapidly been making progress in modern technologies-especially arms and ammunition with the help of the US-led western countries, yet it has the world’s largest number of poor people. According to a report, “of its more than 1 billion inhabitants, nearly 260.3 million are below the poverty line, of which 193.2 million are in the rural areas and 67.1 million are in urban areas. More than 75% of poor people reside in villages. Poverty level is not uniform across India. It is below 10% in states like Delhi, Goa, and Punjab etc. whereas it is below 50% in Bihar 43% and in Orissa 47%. It is between 30-40% in Northeastern states of Assam, Tripura, and Mehgalaya and in Southern states of Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh.”

There are great socio-economic disparities between urban and rural regions of India.  People of rural areas are forced to move out of villages to seek some subsistence living in the cities. In this process, they even lose some little saving what they had in their native villages. In the cities, they have to live without food and other basic amenities. Thus they are compelled to adopt the profession of begging in the urban areas.

It is misfortune of India that a select few families have good standards of living, one can compare to the richest in the world, but the majority cannot get two meals a day.

Dimensions of rural and urban poverty in India are manifold such as lack of facilities or poor arrangement in the fields of heath, education, sanitation, nutrition etc. including low income. The overdependence on monsoon with non-availability of irrigational facilities often results in crop-failure and low agricultural productivity, forcing farmers in the vicious circle of debt-traps. In most of villages, people do not have clean-drinking water.

According to an Indian study, “our economic development since Independence has been lopsided. There has been increase in unemployment, creating poverty. Population is growing at an alarming rate. The size of the Indian family is relatively bigger averaging at 4.2.The other causes include dominance of caste system which forces the individual to stick to the traditional and hereditary occupations.”

Although the matter is worse in the rural areas, yet in urban regions, the principle of minimum wage for maximum work binds the workers and manual labour to a system which results into a number of social and economic perplexities for the people. The poor are compelled to accept very low wages as they have no other option.

It is notable that about 100 infants in Madhya Pradesh’s tribal districts of Satna and Khandwa have been reported in 2008, aggravated by malnutrition and hunger. More than 60% of children are malnourished according to the official National Health Survey. Although the government officials attribute the deaths to disease and not starvation, but in fact, lack of food evidently played a role in hastening their deaths.

Public health system in India suffers from many problems which include insufficient funding and shortage of facilities.

Indian Planning Commission has admitted in its report that the “country has a shortfall of six lakh doctors, 10 lakh nurses and two lakh dental surgeons. This has led to a dismal patient-doctor ratio in the country. For every 10,000 Indians, there is just one doctor.” In this regard, in the recent past, the much publicized National Urban Health Mission aimed at providing accessible, affordable and effective basic health care facilities especially to the urban poor badly failed in its objectives.

India has been facing multiple health problems like, hair lice, headache, painful menstruation, dental problems and short sight etc. Owing to these problems, Psychological dilemma also arises like emotional disturbances and depression.

Particularly, emotional abuse is due to the neglect and maltreatment of children and women. It involves a disregard of the physical, emotional, moral and social requirements of the children and women. Besides these, there are social abuses of children like kidnapping and forcing them to beg in streets including murder. According to National Crime Records Bureau, “crimes against children have increased by 3.8% nationally-14,975 cases in 2005 from 14,423 in 2004.” And latest estimate shows 10% percent increase in these crimes.

As regards poor arrangement of education, A Pratham survey report indicated decline in number of out-of–school children in India. In most of the cases, teachers do not take interest in teaching due to lower wages which bring about a number of problems for them. Even in major Indian cities, teachers are found absent from the class rooms. In Bihar, two of every five teachers were reported absent, while the figure in UP was reported to be one-third of the total teachers.

Especially, women are suffering in India. UNICEF released the State of World’s Children Report-2009 with some shocking findings regarding maternal mortality status in India. Avoidable complications during child birth are killing 78,000 women in India every year. One woman dies from complications of pregnancy and childbirth every seven minutes. One million children born in India are dying every year.

Another dimension of Indian poverty is that working women have to face a number of problems just by virtue of their being women. In this regard, Indian women face a multi-faceted dilemma which emanates from a gender-biased society of the country. As regards ladies, injustice of unequal salaries and wages for the same job—adductions and rapes are very common in the country. Recently, there have been several cases of sexual harassment involving even the senior women officials, working in civil and military establishments. The psychological pressure of all this easily leads to a woman to quit her job, making her vulnerable to crime or suicide. Divorce is very common dilemma of the Indian woman. In recent years many married couples in India are walking away from their marriages. Court data from crime record bureau reveals that over the past decade, divorce rates have doubled and in some cities even trebled.

Sometimes, this deteriorating situation has compelled Indian women to take relief through alcohol and smoking. In this respect, the third edition of the Tobacco Atlas released in Dublin by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation points out, “more women in India are turning smokers and oral users of tobacco. India has the third highest number of female tobacco users in the world.”

So far as crimes are concerned, even foreigners are not spared. Theft, robbery and rape which have become routine matter in India have also been conducted against the western nationals form time to time.

One of the horrible dimensions of poverty in India is that the total number of HIV/AIDS infections in 2007 was 33 million-the highest ever, which is rapidly increasing as disclosed by a UN report.

However, there are several laws in India so as to control various anti-social activities and crimes, but the same has failed due to their non-implementation.

Similarly from time to time a number of plans and schemes have been launched by the Indian subsequent governments to improve the poor standard of living by ensuring food security, promoting self-employment, increasing wage employment and improving access to basic social services including raising the status of women, but all these proved unsuccessful owing to ineffective implementation coupled with high corruption among the officials. In this connection, even five years plans of New Delhi could not be utlilised fully owing to the corrupt government officers.

All this gives rise to a feeling of discrepancy in a multi-cultural society of India. Directly or indirectly, acute poverty in the country has resulted into ethnic riots, movement of separations and violence of various forms—social strife, economic crisis and political instability under the so-called democracy of India.

It is owing to these reasons which have placed India at the lowest rank in the human development index. The Indian state has undoubtedly failed in its responsibilities towards its citizens over the last 60 years.

Sajjad Shaukat writers on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations

Email: sajjad_logic@yahoo.com