Despite a high economic growth and several pro-poor programmes being implemented, poverty is still widespread in India. Poverty is one of the main issues, attracting the attention of sociologists and economists.
Then what is poverty or what is meant to be poor? Poverty can be defined as a situation when a certain sections of people are unable to fulfill their basic needs. In clear term, the estimation of poverty is based on the calorie norms. In case of rural poor, a person who is unable to afford or consume 2400 calorie per day is categorized as living below the poverty line. For America, poverty means, when you don’t have T.V and for UN, it is when one income is less than one dollar per day. That is, if one earns less than Rs. 1200 per month, he is poor. While in India, a person needs Rs.327.56 per month for living above the poverty line. In other words, a person has to consume a minimum quantity of 750 gram of rice or wheat per day to live above the poverty line.
India has the world’s largest number of poor people living in a single country. Out of its total population of more than 1 billion, 350 to 400 million people are living below the poverty line. Nearly 75 percent of the poor are in rural areas and most of them are daily wagers, landless laborers and self-employed house holders. According to TermLease report - 60 percent of India’s workforce is in agriculture, generating 18 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. And according to the report by international Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) showed two-thirds of the world’s poor lived in the Asia-pacific region, with 70-80 percent of them concentrated in rural areas. It means out of 1.2 billion chronically poor worldwide, 900 live in rural areas.
In the context of the state of Manipur, the number of poor is found to be very high in rural area as compared with the number of poor in urban area. The number of poor in rural area is six times higher than that of the poor in urban area though the population concentration in urban area is nearly twice times larger than in rural area. Majority of rural people directly depends on agricultural products. Due to the perpetual increase in population coupled with the non-availability of technology have become the biggest hurdles in yielding high productivity. Moreover, the large-scale practice of shifting (jhum) cultivation in rural area has not only impact on the eco-system; it also has turned most of the land into uncultivable barren land. As a result, many rural poor become unemployed and they have come down below the poverty line.
According to new research conducted by the National Sample Surveys, India’s high economic growth since 1991 is, indeed pro-poor and has decisively reduced poverty. During the 1950s and 60s, slightly more than one person in two lived below the poverty line in India. By 1990 this had fallen to one person in three and by 2005, it fell again, and only one in five persons now lives below the poverty line. And again, The Planning Commission reports stated that, the number of population living below the poverty line in India dropped from about 320 million in 1973-74 to about 260 million in 1999-2000. It means less than 26 percent of poverty has been reduced during these periods.
However, notwithstanding the changing scenario in terms of poverty alleviation in the national level, it is quite the opposite in Manipur. The number of poor in Manipur during 1973-74 was five lakhs and it rose to seven lakhs in 1999-2000. It is a clear indication that poverty in Manipur is in the increase state. This contrasting development ranging from region to region in India can best be attributed by the study commissioned by World Bank and Department of International Development. It stated that, “during the last fourty years, India’s economic growth was given more importance than income distribution and inequality�. It further emphasized, “Service sector growth is one of the important sources that India should give more priority to reduce poverty in the land�.
India has six lakhs villages of which one lakhs have less than 200 people, limiting job creation and infrastructural development, which requires size. According to TermLease report, 93 percent of Indians work in the unorganized sector, which is bad for employers, policymakers, employees, tax collectors and cities. The basic reasons of rural poverty are unequal distribution, illiteracy and high population growth.
The poverty figure of Manipur is found by using Assam poverty ratio. This poverty ratio has officially been used for representing poverty figure of Manipur for many years. For a state like Manipur, the phenomenon of poverty is more relevant with the broad definition of poverty which includes deprivation because present poverty line does not include the basic necessities like cloth, shelter etc. Deprivation includes many important components of poverty like nutrition, sanitation, education, health, good environment etc. But so far, no study in this regard has been conducted in the state. Besides that, the pattern of expenditure on social sectors and rural development in Manipur dropped sharply in the past couple of years. If we calculate the per capita rural development expenditure for rural poor, it is found to be a dismal Rs.181 per month. This indicates that expenditures incurred over the alleviation of poverty in rural area were very low.
In order to alleviate rural poverty the following points should be taken into account:
a) Proper implementation and awareness on government’s poverty alleviation programmes such as Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rojgar Yojana (SJSRY), SCP, Self help groups (SHGs) etc.
The subsidy based programmes have been of little help because these programmes can provide only money to the poor but lack a system to educate them to utilize the money in a momentous way. Often this money has been misutilised and proper education and training needs to be imparted for a beneficial use. This problem can be solved by forming Self Help Groups which are very successful in most places especially formed by women. The government and NGOs and volunteers should give more emphasis on such things.
b) Most of the poor are landless laborers and they used to shift to the urban towns and cities to earn for their livelihood. Therefore, Government should extend building up infrastructure in rural places and rehabilitate them.
c) The government system should be more accountable and it should carry out labor and land reforms. Ensure higher credit flow to rural area and improve education to bring down poverty.
d) Rural people should be encouraged to the habit of small saving amount of money in small saving schemes. If one could open a recurring account with an amount of Rs.50/- in his nearest post-office for the duration of 60 months, he will get a maturity value on the 61st month. In this way, not only the person is benefitted but also the govt. will get a profit for the economic development activities in the country.
e) The Small Scale Industries (SSIs) should be promoted to counter unemployment in rural area.
f) The village heads or chiefs need to be trained and educated. Bank finance to rural poor should be increased for easy access. Further, farm to non-farm, rural to urban, unorganized to organized, and subsistence self-employment to decent wage employment should also be implemented.
f) Govt. officers and employees posting in rural area should be encouraged and appreciate and give more benefits in their salary so that it could motivate others to work in rural area.
The writer is a B.tech, IIT Delhi
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