MyRight: Independence From Poverty

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of,” the statement by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher around 500-400 BC still holds true.

India being a developing country has been facing huge sets of challenges, the rising inequality between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, makes us wonder what the relation would be between India’s growth story and poverty tales.

The issue of poverty simply cannot be ignored. Unemployment, social exclusion, vulnerability to disasters and illiteracy are few of many different causes to poverty. “More than one billion people worldwide live in destitution that is morally unacceptable given the resources and technology available today,” mentioned World Bank Group’s mission.

Each country has its own set of parameters to measure poverty. Poverty is defined as the minimal accepted standard of living for individuals in a country. The standard way of determining if a household is poor is to compare its daily expenditure per capita to a minimum consumption threshold, or poverty line. According to Planning Commission, India is home to an estimated 269.8 million people who live below poverty line.

Poverty in terms of population (%)

Food, Clothing and Shelter are the three basic needs of humans. Many people living below poverty find these basic needs to be a luxury that they can’t afford. India is home to an estimated 195 million undernourished people. “Higher economic growth has not been fully translated into higher food consumption, let alone better diets overall, suggesting that the poor and hungry may have failed to benefit much from overall growth,” stated UN Hunger report- The State of Food Insecurity in the World.

When it comes to poverty alleviation clothing has never been given its due importance. A person’s social status is perceived based on his clothing. Clothes are not only meant for the superficial appearance but also protection from changing temperatures and common diseases. However, there are hardly any development goals that focus on clothing. “More deaths happen in India due to lack of clothing than natural disasters,” said Anshu Gupta, Founder, Goonj. The organisation works to make clothing accessible to the needy.

In a report collated from Census 2011 found that one in every six urban Indian lives in slum housing that is considered “unfit for human habitation”. In other words around 64 million people live in degrading urban environment the report takes into account urban slums in 4,000 cities in India.

Poverty has been found to be one of the root causes to many national problems like malnutrition, unhealthy living, environmental degradation, birth of anti-social elements, illegal activities among many more.

A study report released by Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health analysed different risk factors which contribute to chronic undernutrition among children in India. India’s figure when it came to malnutrition saw almost 40% children having stunted growth and 30% being underweight.  “While asking people to change behaviours and offering piecemeal solutions might provide some short-term relief, such strategies cannot be substituted for the urgent need to improve food and livelihood security,” said S.V Subramanian, Professor and senior author of the study.

The top five factors which contributed to this as per findings were short maternal stature, mothers with no education, poor dietary diversity and maternal underweight. Most of these factors are effects of poverty where the parents are unable to lead a healthy lifestyle thus affecting their decision making capability. “New liberal capitalism policies being initiated by the government are increasing the gap between the poor and rich. The capitalist policies just help in making the rich richer and poor poorer,” said Shamim Modi, Social Activist and Chairperson, Centre for Law and Society, School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance.

A survey done by Assocham called “Rising school expenses irks parents” showed that 65% of parents spend more than half of their take-home pay on their children’s education and their extra co-curricular activities putting pressure on their other expenses. Surprisingly the average cost of private education increased from Rs 35,000 annually in 2005 to over Rs 1,25,000 in 2015. Expressing concern over increasing cost of education, Mr. D S Rawat, Secretary General Assocham said, “If we need to reap the demographic dividend, we need to focus on the quality of school education, which must be made affordable, if not free. The bias should shift back to the government role both at the Central and the States”.

The government launched Skill India initiative to train around 400 million people in India in different skills by 2022. “Skilling youth is a way welcome move, but just creating cheap labour for manufacturing industries won’t help make any difference when it comes to reducing poverty. People living below poverty line will always find it difficult to come out of poverty till the quality of public education system is not improved and is at par with that of private education system,” explained  Modi.

India saw a rapid decline in its poverty levels in the last three decades. Even though the decline was faster and broad-based than in the preceding decades, many experts believe that it could have been more inclusive and responsive to economic growth. As per revised estimate by Rangarajan Committee the new Poverty line works out to monthly per capita expenditure of Rs 972 in rural areas and Rs 1,407 in urban areas in the country.

Poverty is a vicious cycle which not only deprives individuals of basic necessities in their present but also affects their future potential. Economists believe that the cycle of poverty hampers the economic growth of a country. “It is absolutely essential that every Indian should be able to make a good living. While the living standards of the rich will always be superior to those of the less fortunate, there has to be a minimum level of well-being that the state and the economy provide to the bottom of the pyramid. For this to happen there must be abundant ways of earning a livelihood and pro-active creation of assets and resources,” said Anirban Ghosh, Chief Sustainability Officer, Mahindra Group.

We at The CSR Journal believe that a consensus effort from all stakeholders is needed to reduce poverty and improve the well being of the less fortunate. Short term efforts of subsidising, reservations, etc can only give short-term benefits. Capacity building and empowering the under-privileged to improve their livelihood capability, education accessibility would be the key for the change to happen.

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Regards,
The CSR Journal Team