Ela Bhatt [SEWA]: WDR 2000/01: We are poor but so many: “Illiteracy is on the other side of the table”. Portfolios of the poor 21. Frame these questions in a more concrete fashion. (i)  WB norm for poverty is $ One of the least understood problems of living on $ is that you don’t earn $ every day.
That is the average over time. How do you cope with that? (ii)  The poor not only have low incomes, but their income is irregular and unpredictable. Their savings are meagre. But, yet they have to cope with loss of employment, illness and death in the family, lumpy expenditure needs for education and for weddings and festivals?