1. Poverty In India

2. History of India
Indian history and culture is full of richness and
affluence, which undoubtedly has had a
significant impact on the evolution of the
society. Home to the Indus Valley civilization and
a region of historic trade routes and vast
empires, the Indian history is identified with its
commercial and cultural wealth over the past
thousands of years. Four major world
religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and
Sikhism originated here.

3. Poverty
• Poverty in India has dropped sharply.
• From 2004-2005 to 2009-2010, the rate fell from 37.2% to 29.8%, which means
around 360 million people currently live in poverty.
• Rural poverty has declined faster than urban poverty during this period.
• The Planning Commission reason for the reduction in poverty was the
government's increased spending on rural welfare programmes.
• "This is not surprising. Such an outcome is on expected lines as this is the period
when the government increased the expenditure on flagship programmes
substantially," Planning Commission member Mihir Shah was quoted as saying by
The Economic Times.
• "We gave money to the people and the result is a direct impact of that."
• According to the Planning Commission, rural poverty fell by 8%, compared to
urban poverty which declined by 4.8%.

4. Cause Of Poverty?
Lack of a market economy & over government regulation and
red tape, known as License Raj is the main cause of poverty in
India. While other Asian countries also started with the same
poverty level as India after independence, India adopted a
socialist centrally planned, closed economy. India has started to
open its markets since the economic reforms in 1991 which has
cut the poverty rate in half since then. Another cause is a high
population growth rate, although demographers generally agree
that this is a symptom rather than cause of poverty. While
services and industry have grown at double digit figures,
agriculture growth rate has dropping day by day. About sixty
percent of the population depends on agriculture whereas the
contribution of agriculture to the GDP is about eighteen percent.
The surplus of labour in agriculture has caused many people to
not have jobs. Which cause poverty.

5. Effort On Different Area By Poverty
• In rural sector- the major group of the poor
consists of agricultural labourers or those who
own or have access to so little land that they
are forced into wage labour to earn
subsistence

6. • In urban areas- Poverty can be identified with
people who are unemployed, underemployed
or employed in various low productivity
occupations such as porter age, street
pending, etc. or employed in jobs either with
insecure employed or with every low real
wages

7. • In metropolitan cities- Migrant worker are
prominently amongst the poor. This segment
of poverty, in fact, is the extension of the rural
poverty itself. The labour absorption capacity
of land is always limited, and more often than
not it seems to have reached the stagnancy
level.

8. • Even after more than 50 years of Independence
India still has the world's largest number of poor
people in a single country.
• Of its nearly 1 billion inhabitants, an estimated
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. The
poverty level is below 10% in states like Delhi,
Goa, and Punjab etc.

9. War against poverty in India
• The problem of reducing the poverty of India is
referred to elsewhere. The object of this article is
to show the present economic position . Some of
the things which have been done or are
proposed, in order to ensure progress.
• NEW DELHI: In what could turn out to be its
calling card for the 2014 general elections, the
government is finalizing a Rs 7,000 crore scheme
to give one mobile phone to every family living
below the poverty line.

10. • The scheme may be funded from the telecom
department's universal service obligation (USO) funds.
According to a source, 50% of the cost is likely to come
from the bidder who gets the right to provide the
service and the remaining from the USO fund. The fund
is meant to be used to meet USO aims by providing
access to phone services to people in rural and remote
areas at affordable prices. The resources for its
implementation are raised through a service levy fixed
at 5% of the adjusted gross revenue of all telecom
service providers except the pure value added service
providers like internet, voice mail, email etc.

11. Statistics
• 50% of Indians don’t have proper shelter.
• 70% don’t have access to decent toilets (which
inspires a multitude of bacteria to host their own
disease party).
• 35% of households don’t have a nearby water
source.
• 85% of villages don’t have a secondary school
(how can this be the same government claiming
9% growth?).
• Over 40% of these same villages don’t have
proper roads connecting them.

12. What to do?
• Rapid economic growth.
• Stepping up agricultural growth in the less developed
regions.
• Evolving new technology to step up production in rained
agriculture.
• Social development.
• Infrastructural development.
• Accelerating employment in the informal rural non-
agricultural sector.
• Improving the consciousness and education levels of the
poor.
• Strengthening of various beneficiary-oriented programmes.

13. • India also needs a more effective tax system as
its private sector grows.
• Access to markets and education for everyone

15. References
• www.google.com
• Book - Poverty in India Bibhuti Bhushan Malik
• www.thp.org
• www.indexmundi.com