Poverty in India

Poverty is a situation that gives rise to a feeling of a discrepancy be­tween what one has and what one “should have”. What one should have is an internal construct; hence each person’s feeling and experience of poverty is individual and unique. But the feeling of ‘powerlessness’ and ‘resourcelessness’ is possessed by all poor people.

Berstein Henry (1992) has identified the following dimensions of poverty:

1. Lack of livelihood strategies

2. Inaccessibility to resources (money, land, credit)


3. Feeling of insecurity and frustrations

4. Inability to maintain and develop social relations with others as a consequence of lack of resources

Three precepts are often used to define poverty:

(i) The amount of money required by a person to subsist,


(ii) The life below a ‘minimum subsistence level’ and ‘living standard’ prevalent at a given time in a given place, and

(iii) The comparative state of well-being of a few and the deprivation and destitution of the majority in society.

The last approach explains poverty in terms of relativity and inequality. Whereas the first two definitions refer to the economic concept of absolute poverty, the third definition views it as a social concept, that is, in terms of the share of the total national income received by those at the bottom. We will ex­plain each of the three views separately.

The First View:

In terms of a minimum income required for subsistence, poverty has been defined as an inability to gratify the physiological needs, that is, need for survival, safety and security. These physiological needs are dif­ferent from the social needs (ego-satisfaction and self-esteem), the need for autonomy, need for independence and the need for self-actualization. The minimum requirements for fulfilling the physiological needs are food and nutrition, shelter, and preventive and protective health care. This requires ‘minimum’ income (varying from society to society) to buy necessities and avail of facilities.


Here ‘poverty’ is perceived in terms of ‘poverty line’ which is deter­mined by the prevailing standards of what is needed for health, efficiency, nurturing of children, social participation, and the mainte­nance of self-respect (Becker, 1966:436). In practice, however, the poverty line is drawn on the basis of a barest minimum desirable nutri­tional standard of calorie intake. In India, the poverty line is drawn on the basis of a per capita (adult) daily intake of 2,400 calories for the rural and 2,100 calories for the urban areas. On the basis of this can be worked out the monthly per capita consumption expenditure.

The minimum consumption expenditure in our country as recom­mended in 1962 by the Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission and calculated on the basis of the 1961 prices was Rs. 100 for a household of five persons in the rural areas and Rs. 125 in the ur­ban areas. This came to Rs. 20 per capita per month in the rural areas and Rs. 25 in the urban areas. In 1978-79, this was worked out as Rs. 76 for the rural and Rs. 88 for the urban areas while in 1984-85, the revised poverty line was drawn at a per capita monthly expenditure of Rs. 107 for the rural and Rs. 122 for the urban areas (India, 1990:404).

At 1993-94 price level, a person in a rural area required an income of Rs. 229 and in an urban area Rs. 264 per month to fulfil his food and other basic requirements {Outlook, February 14, 1996:26). Here, the fo­cus is on a ‘minimum subsistence’ level which is different from a ‘minimum adequacy’ level and a ‘minimum comfort’ level.

These three terms can be understood by taking the example of poor people in the US. In 1963, a family of four members with an annual in­come of $2,500 was described as living below “minimum subsistence level”, with an income of $3,500 as living below “minimum adequacy level”, and with an income of $5,500 as living below “minimum com­fort level” (Ornati, 1964: 440).


On this basis, in 1963, 10 per cent of the families in the US were below the minimum subsistence level, 25 per cent were below the minimum adequacy level, and 38 per cent were below the minimum comfort level. The poverty level in the United States for a family of four in 1982 was $8,450 a year (Malgavkar, 1983:3); during 1986 it was $10,989 a year; and during 1990 it was $14,200 a year.

In India, the number of poor people (that is, people be­low minimum subsistence level) in 1993-94 was estimated at 18.1 per cent of the total population by the Planning Commission. After accept­ing Lakdawala Committee’s report in March 1997, the Planning Commission’s estimate of the percentage of BPL people at present is 35.97 or 320 million, with a monthly income as low as Rs. 264 (The Hindustan Times, April 16, 1997).

It should, however, be noted that the ‘poor’ are not a homogeneous group. They can be classified into four sub-groups: the destitute (who spent less than Rs. 137 a month at 1993- 94 prices, extremely poor (who spent less than Rs. 161 a month), very poor (who spent less than Rs. 201 a month), and the poor (who spent less than Rs. 246 a month).

The Second View:

This view maintains that poverty has three main aspects of want of mate­rial goods or materialistic possessions:

(i) Those necessary to avoid physical suffering and needed to fulfil the requirements of hunger and shelter, that is, those needed to survive;

(ii) Such as are essential to meet human needs of health, that is, to get nutrition and to avoid disease; and

(iii) Those needed to maintain a minimum subsistence level.

In simple terms, this refers to a minimum amount of food intake, adequate hous­ing, clothing, education and health care. At the 1993-94 prices, this refers to the ability to spend Rs. 259 a month (per person) in the rural ar­eas and Rs. 294 a month in the urban areas.

Gross and Miller (1946:83) attempted to explain poverty in terms of three factors: income (covert and manifest), assets, and availability of services (educational, medical, recreational.) But others have considered the concept of poverty with this perspective elusive. For example, in the United States, out of those families living ‘below the poverty level’ in 1960, 57.6 per cent had a telephone, 79.2 per cent owned a TV set and 72.6 per cent possessed a washing machine (Becker, 1966:435).

The as­sets or the materialistic possessions, therefore, cannot be the basis of specifying poverty. Likewise, poverty cannot be related to the ‘income’ factor. If there is an increase in the ‘price level’, people may not be able to provide the necessities of life for their family members. Obviously then, poverty has to be related to time and place.

The Third View:

This view defines poverty as a condition of falling below the minimum standards of subsistence appropriate to each society, or “the absence of enough money to secure life’s necessities”, or “a condition of acute physical want—starvation, malnutrition, disease, and want of clothing, shelter and medical care”.

The latter is measured by comparing the con­dition of those at the bottom of the society with the other segments of the population. It is, thus, a matter of subjective definition rather than of ob­jective conditions. Poverty is determined by the standards that exist within a society. Miller and Roby (1970:34-37) have said that in this ap­proach, poverty is sharply regarded as ‘inequality’. From a sociological point of view, this definition is more important in terms of the impact which inequality of income has on the life situation and life chances of the poor.

Absolute poverty can be reduced/eliminated by putting money into the hands of the poor but ‘inequality’ cannot be solved by moving people above a certain relative line. As long as there are people at the bottom of the income scale, they are in some way poor. Such a condition will continue to exist as long as we have social stratification.

Harrington (1958:83) defined poverty with reference to ‘depriva­tion’. According to him, poverty is the deprivation of those minimal levels of food, health, housing, education, and recreation which are com­patible with the contemporary technology, beliefs and values of a particular society. Rein (1968:116) identifies three elements in poverty: subsistence, inequality and externality.

Subsistence emphasizes the pro­visions of sufficient resources to maintain health and working capacity in the sense of survival, and capacity to maintain physical efficiency. In­equality compares the lot of individuals at the bottom layer of stratified income levels with that of the more privileged people in the same soci­ety. Their deprivation is relative. Externality focuses on the social consequences of poverty for the rest of society, apart from the impact on the poor themselves.

Sociologically speaking, the poor are caught up in vicious circles. Being poor means living in poor neighborhood, which means being un­able to send children to schools, which means not only the poor themselves but their children too will have low-paying jobs or no jobs at all, which means being doomed to remain poor forever.

Also, being poor means eating poor food, which means having poor health, which in turn means being handicapped or too weak to handle the heavy manual work, which also means accepting low paid work, which leads to re­maining poor forever. Thus, each circle begins and ends with being poor. No wonder, sociologists like Thomas Gladwin (1967:76-77) give more importance to ‘inequality’ or the social concept of poverty.

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