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Analysis of poverty and its dimensions are various as the ways in which poverty affects the daily sustenance of the poor. Poverty, many a times is simply viewed as an issue of income. What poverty means for the poor is a wide range of dynamic aspects. This paper presents results of analysis that emanate from Participatory Poverty Assessment (PPA) which was conducted in Sohenkhera village, Chittorgarh district of Rajasthan. Using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, entire households of the village were covered for the study. Results revealed the indicators of wealth as land ownership, livestock and possession of agricultural machinery. While categorising rich and poor, a ‘Very poor’ category emerged representing a whopping 62 per cent of village population. Livelihood analysis exposed the highly skewed patterns of housing, land holding, livestock ownership patterns and income sources and expenditure patterns. Further, crisis analysis revealed that the poor and medium farmers are perpetually indebted to moneylenders. The exercise provided data on the otherwise hidden and side lined indicators of poverty and crisis management in villages which are otherwise unavailable through official surveys. Address for correspondence: M.V.Sajeev (Agricultural Extension), Zonal Project Directorate, Zone III, Barapani, Meghalaya, India. Telephone: +919436707013, E-mail: sajeevmv@yahoo.co.in INTRODUCTION Poverty is widespread in India, with the nation estimated to have a third of the world’s poor. World Bank estimates that 80% of India’s population lives on less than $2 a day. According to a 2005 World Bank estimate, 41% of India falls below the international poverty line of US $ 1.25 a day (PPP, in nominal terms 21.6 a day in urban areas and 14.3 in rural areas); having reduced from 60% in 1981 (World Bank 2010). According to the criterion used by the Planning Commission of India, 27.5% of the population was living below the poverty line in 2004– 2005, down from 51.3% in 1977–1978, and 36% in 1993-1994 (Anonymous 2007). A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 645 million poor living under the MPI in India, 421 million of whom are concentrated in eight north India states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations. Estimates by NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research), show that 48% of the Indian households earn more than 90,000 (US$1,953) annually (or more than US$3 PPP per person). According to NCAER, in 2009, of the 222 million households in India, the absolutely poor households (annual incomes below 45,000) accounted for only 15.6 % of them or about 35 million (about 200 million Indians). Another 80 million households are in income levels of 45,00090,000 per year (Singhal 2008). Since the 1950s, the Indian government and non-governmental organizations have initiated several programs to alleviate poverty, including subsidizing food and other necessities, increased access to loans, improving agricultural techniques and price supports, and promoting education and family planning. These measures have helped eliminate famines, cut absolute pov8 M.V. SAJEEV, S. NASKAR, G. BISWAS, N.K. MEENA ET AL. erty levels by more than half, and reduced illiteracy and malnutrition (World Bank 2006). People’s participation is the foundation of current thinking in any developmental issue. Farmers have become the focal point and major stakeholder in agricultural research. The 21st century has opened up new possibilities for the farmer and now he has become more aware and has started to demand a variety of technologies for him to choose from. The researchers have to identify the researchable problems and give possible solutions within no time. Field experience and teamwork is needed to succeed in the endeavour of good research where the researcher knows what the farmer needs and how the solutions can be evolved. PRA provides a ‘basket of techniques’ for development practitioners interested in measuring various socio-economic indicators of rural development. In India, the dimensions of rural poverty are varied and linked with unemployment, underemployment, low levels of productivity, severe demographic pressures and illiteracy. Agricultural development must take into account the differences in wealth among farmers in order to determine the priorities for research and to develop the interventions and technical packages that are to be adopted by the majority of the farmers (Barbara 1988). Wealth ranking is a PRA tool based on the assumption that community members have a good sense of who among them is more or less well off (Theis and Grady 1991). It refers to placing the people on different categories according to their own criteria. The purpose is to find out the persons of the village, who belong to the rich, middle, poor and very poor group categories as perceived by the villagers themselves. Wealth ranking is based on the assumption that the community members have a good sense about fellow villagers in their own village and are able to categorize themselves. Wealth ranking and resultant livelihood analysis helps the extension workers, developmental staff, researchers and other concerned for rural and agricultural development to find out the inequalities and differences in wealth in every farmer and which in turn lead to overall understanding of socio-economic conditions of entire village community. This will also help in selecting the right type of beneficiaries for the various programmes. The present study was undertaken to identify the wealth status of the people of a typical Indian village and to understand various indicators used by the villagers for classifying their own economic status. |
