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Poverty eradication

T. V. Jayaprakash, Palakkad

Statistical surveys provide a structural framework of poverty which is an unidimensional phenomenon based on the cut-off income-line separating the poor from the non-poor.

According to the World Development Report 2000-01, poverty is the result of economic, political and social processes that reinforce and frequently interact with each other in ways that exacerbate the deprivation in which poor people live. Meagre assets, inaccessible market and scarce job opportunities lock people in material poverty.

The poor lack the fundamental freedom of action and choice that the better-off take for granted. Lack of adequate food, shelter, education and health prevents them from leading the kind of life everyone values. They are extremely vulnerable to ill-health , economic dislocation and natural disasters, and powerless to inspire key decisions of the state affecting their lives.

These are all dimensions of poverty as viewed by the poor themselves than the theoretical constructs of economists based on statistical information. Well-being was defined as happiness, harmony, peace, freedom from anxiety and tranquility of mind.

Participatory surveys show that poor people are active agents in their lives but unable to influence the social and economic factors that determine their well-being.

Facilitating the empowerment of poor people in making the state and the social institutions more responsive to them, promoting opportunities to build up their assets by stimulating economic growth and making markets work better are important in reducing poverty.

Ill-being is defined as vulnerability to external and largely uncontrollable events, such as illness, violence, economic shocks, bad weather and natural disasters, that exacerbate their material poverty and weaken their bargaining position.

Poverty is not just a state of having little, but also of losing what one has. Concern with and volatility of incomes is often expressed as a feeling of vulnerability.

A sense of powerlessness is the second dimension and the most fundamental characteristic of poverty. The strategy to attack poverty in the present global context is a comprehensive approach to promote opportunity, facilitate empowerment and enhance secur ity to the poor.

Manifestations of poverty are not the same across regions or communities. At some places people live in a state of abject poverty without electricity, medical care and education.

Levels of material well-being will vary due to accessibility and non-accessibility to social infrastructural facilities such as electricity, medical care, education, entertainment and comfortable transportation.

Bad currency, beggars, bad roads and packed buses are a status symbol of a poor nation.