Poverty is a situation that represents poor quality of life, illiteracy, malnutrition, lack of basic and essential elements of living, lower development of the human resource, and others. This is a crucial challenge, significantly hindering the growth of developing nations, like India.

Unemployment is a significant cause of poverty as it leads to a shortage of money and affects the daily lives of people. It also forces people to work against their will in harmful conditions. Poverty leads to social stress due to inequality of income between the rich and the poor. This is exacerbated as people might have to stay out of their homes on roadways, sidewalks, open spaces, and without any shelter. Poverty is an issue that affects people of all demographics and age groups in detrimental ways, causing severe loss and stress for them. This is a concerning factor, and only the Government of a nation can come up with practical ways to reduce the poverty rate.

Poverty is an adverse condition in which people are left in a deprived state without shelter and basic necessities like food, water, clothes, etc. India has a high poverty rate. A major proportion of the population cannot even afford two-time meals, have to sleep on the roadside, wear dirty clothes, drink unclean water, and live in unhealthy and unhygienic conditions. Poor people lack access to proper and healthy nutrition, medical aid, educational assistance, and other essential services required to better their lives and the lives of their children. Children are unable to get an appropriate education, and thus the cycle of poverty continues in the families for generations. This eventually hinders the overall development of the nation.

If we talk about urban India, poverty is rapidly rising due to the rise in urban population as people from many rural areas are shifting towards the urban ones. People move to cities in search of employment and a better lifestyle, but lack of employment opportunities forces them into a financially unstable situation where sometimes they are even forced to work under harmful and unpleasant conditions. In India, more than eight crore people’s income is still lower than the poverty line, and 4.5 crore urban people stand at the verge of the poverty level. A significant number of urban people stay in the slums, and most of them are illiterate.

Despite many initiatives by the Government and NGOs, there is still no satisfying effect regarding lowering of the poverty level. Several reasons lead to poverty, for instance, some of India’s primary causes for poverty are the rising population, poor agriculture, lack of employment opportunities, corruption, epidemic diseases, and many more. For controlling poverty, there are specific measures that we can take to solve the issue and ensure a better lifestyle for people, for instance, farmers must receive proper and necessary access to facilities for better agriculture. People must be given training for family planning and sex education for population control. Every child must go to school, and there must also be new employment opportunities for people.

Archit Rana
UPES Dehradun, semester 2