From: Subject: BEFORE VOTING ASSESS MANIFESTOES: HOW TO REMOVE MASS POVERTY AND MASS UNEMPLOYMENT
BEFORE VOTING ASSESS MANIFESTOES: HOW TO REMOVE MASS POVERTY AND MASS UNEMPLOYMENT Dear Members, You must have read in my opinion article entitled “THINK BEFORE ADVOCATING POLITICAL PARTY”. Therefore, we need to understand problems of India. I have observed dire poverty not in the backward areas only but even in the villages of well developed state of Gujarat. We can’t assess development on the basis of big cities, looking large malls or seeing only higher middle class or higher income class or income of city dwellers. Therefore I want to draw attention of our Indian voters on the two major problems of India facing which are mass poverty and mass unemployment. They are interconnected. People are poor because they do not have income. That is because they are unemployed. There are also cases where people are employed and poor. For centuries, the problem of poverty is there in India. Reducing poverty is one of the major goals of planning in India. Politicians must have knowledge about the poor and their precise social and economic circumstances. Only then the political party can adopt effective policies for removing poverty. At present as per Government of India, poverty line for the urban areas is Rs. 296 per month and for rural areas Rs. 276 per month. That is people who earn less than Rs. 10 per day is considered to be below the poverty line. As per GOI, this amount will buy food equivalent to 2200 calories per day, medically enough, to prevent death. At this level of earning in India, survival on Rs. 10 per day is a nightmare. The greater developmental tragedy in India is that about 260 million people are still living without even Rs. 10 per day. In addition to the income based or economic view of poverty, there are other dimensions of poverty. For example, one can think of being housing poor, healthcare poor, education poor, and poor in the possession of desirable physical or mental attributes. Therefore we need to examine the manifestoes of all the political parties looking multi- dimensionally. Generally, households with lowest income per person tend to be large, with many children or economically dependent members. Over a typical year, the poor spend nearly all their income on consumption of one sort or another and half of this consumption is likely to be in the form of food. Naturally the relative prices of food staples (food grains, pulses, oil, vegetables) are crucial to their welfare. Poor households generally invest in education for boys than for girls. The poor play little part in politics. In one sense they are disenfranchised. Of course, there are some exceptional cases. Crime, ill-health and lack of access to the poor are considered other correlates of poverty. In India poverty is correlated with caste and race also. The extent of poverty in a country depends mainly on two factors: (1) the average level of national income and (2) the degree of inequality in its distribution. Before assessing the programmes of political parties, it is needed to know about types of poverty in India and what steps the political party suggested in their manifestoes. TYPES OF POVERTY (1)Absolute poverty and Relative poverty When people do not have adequate food, clothing and shelter, we say they are in absolute poverty. Relative poverty refers to differences in income among different classes of people or people within the same group or among people of different countries. If we divide the population of a country into different class intervals based on income and if we compare say, the top 20 percent of population with the bottom 20 percent of population, then we can say we are studying about relative poverty. (2) Temporary or chronic poverty In countries like India, when there is poor rainfall, the crops fail and the farmers temporarily enter into a poverty sample. But when they are poor for long, then we call it chronic or structural poverty. For example, when agriculturists in many poor countries are dependent upon rain and when agriculture is marked by low productivity, we say farmers are in chronic poverty. (3) Primary Poverty and Secondary Poverty Rowntree (1901) made a distinction between primary poverty and secondary poverty. Primary poverty refers to “families whose total earnings are insufficient to obtain the minimum necessities for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. “Secondary poverty refers to a condition in which earnings would be sufficient for the maintenance for merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure, either useful or wasteful such as drink, gambling and inefficient housekeeping.” Rowntree said that secondary poverty prevented many more people from meeting what he called “human needs standard” than did primary poverty (that is, inadequate incomes). (4) Rural Poverty and Urban Poverty A majority of the people in rural areas are poor because they do not own assets like land and they work as agricultural labourers; their wages are low and they get work only for a few months in a year. The urban poor, on the other hand, work for long hours but they get low incomes. They are employed mostly in the unorganized or informal sector. They are “sub-employed”. Sub-employed are those 1) who work part- time but want full - time work; 2) family heads working full time who do not earn enough to bring their families over the poverty line and 3) discouraged workers who no longer seek work. Dr.Y.C.Zala, Anand,Gujarat,India *** exposing the hidden truth for further educational research only *** CAVEAT LECTOR *** In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. NOTE: Some links may require cut and paste into your Internet Browser. Please check <http://tinyurl.com/33c9yr> http://tinyurl.com/33c9yr for more real news posts and support the truth! 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