Extra Question & Answers (Part - 1) - Poverty as a Challenge Notes | Study Social Studies (SST) Class 9 - Class 9

1) What kind of people in India are considered poor?

Answer: They could be landless labourers in villages or people living in overcrowded jhuggis in cities. They could be daily wage earners at construction sites or child workers in dhabas. They could also be beggars with children in tatters.

2) Has India the largest single concentration of the poor in the world?

Answer: In India every fourth person is poor. This means roughly 260 million (26 crores) people in India live in poverty. This illustrates the seriousness of the challenge. 

3) What are the dimensions of poverty?

Answer: Poverty means hunger and lack of shelter. Poverty means a lack of clean water and sanitation facilities. It is a situation where sick people cannot afford treatment. It is a situation in which parents are not able to send their children to schools. It also means a lack of a regular job at a minimum decent level. Above all, it means living with a sense of helplessness.  

4) What is one of the biggest challenges of independent India?

Answer: One of the biggest challenges of independent India has been to bring millions of its people out of abject poverty. Mahatma Gandhi always insisted that India would be truly independent only when the poorest of its people become free of human suffering. 

5) What are the social indicators of poverty as seen by social scientists?

Answer: Prevalent factors like illiteracy levels, lack of general resistance due to malnutrition, lack of access to health care, lack of job opportunities, lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation, etc., are the social indicators of poverty as seen by social scientists. 

6) What is the concept of social reclusion?

Answer:  According to this concept, poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to live only in a poor surrounding with other poor people, excluded from enjoying the company of better-off people in better surroundings. 

7) How is social exclusion practised in India?

Answer:  A typical example is the prevailing caste system in India, whereby which people belonging to certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities. 

8) What is the vulnerability of poverty?

Answer: Vulnerability of poverty is a measure, which describes the greater probability of certain communities or individuals becoming or remaining poor in the coming years.  

9) How vulnerability to poverty is determined?

Answer: Vulnerability is determined by the options available to different communities for finding an alternative living in terms of assets, education, health and job opportunities.  

10) What is the 'poverty line'?

Answer: It is an indicator of poverty, i.e. it is a level of income that barely meets sustenance.  

11) When is a person considered poor?

Answer: A person is considered poor if his or her income or consumption level falls below a given 'minimum level' necessary to fulfil basic needs. 

12) How does a country measure its poverty?

Answer: Each country uses an imaginary line that is considered appropriate for its existing level of development and its accepted minimum social norms. For example, a person not having a car in the United States may be considered poor. In India, owning of a car is still considered a luxury.  

13) How is the poverty line determined in India?

Answer: A minimum level of food requirement, clothing, footwear, fuel and light, educational and medical requirement etc. are determined for subsistence. These physical quantities are multiplied by their prices in rupees.  

14) How is the food requirement estimated in the poverty line?

Answer: The present formula for food requirement while estimating the poverty line is based on the desired calorie requirement; food items such as cereals, pulses, vegetables, milk, oil, sugar, etc. together provide these needed calories. 

15) What is the accepted average calorie requirement in India?

Answer:  The accepted average calorie requirement in India is 2,400 calories per person per day in rural areas and 2,100 calories per person per day in urban areas.  

16) Why is the calorie requirement of rural areas more than that in urban areas?

Answer: Since people living in rural areas engage themselves in more physical work, calorie requirements in rural areas are considered to be higher than in urban areas.  

17) How much amount is needed to fulfil the minimum calorie requirement in rural and urban areas?

Answer: On the basis of these calculations, for the year 2000, the poverty line for a person was fixed at `328 per month for the rural areas and ` 54 for the urban areas.  

18) How is the poverty line estimated periodically?

Answer: The poverty line is estimated periodically (normally every 5 year) by conducting sample surveys. These surveys are carried out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).  

19) Which social groups are most vulnerable to poverty?

Answer: The social groups most vulnerable to poverty are scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.  

20) Among the economic groups which are most vulnerable to poverty?

Answer: Among the economic groups the most vulnerable to poverty are the rural agricultural households and the urban casual labour households.  

21) How are women, children and old people the poorest of the poor?

Answer: Women, elderly people and female infants are systematically denied equal access to resources available to the family. Therefore, they are the poorest of the poor.  

22) Which states of India are the poorest?

Answer: Odisha and Bihar continue to be the two poorest states with poverty ratios of 47 and 43 per cent respectively.  

23) Which states of India have seen a significant decline in poverty?

Answer: There has been a significant decline in poverty in Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal.     

24) How have Kerala and West Bengal reduced their poverty?

Answer: Kerala has focused more on human resource development. In West Bengal land reform measures have helped in reducing poverty. 

25) How has poverty reduced in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu?

Answer: In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu public distribution of food grains could have been responsible for the improvement in poverty.  

26) How are China and South-Eastern Asian Countries able to control poverty?

Answer:  Poverty declined substantially in China and South-East Asian countries as a result of rapid economic growth and massive investments in human resource development. 

27) What is the historical cause of poverty in India?

Answer: It is the low level of economic development under the British Colonial administration. The policies of the colonial government ruined traditional handicrafts and discouraged the development of industries like textiles. This resulted in less job opportunities and a low growth rate of incomes. This was accompanied by a high growth rate of the population.  

28) How did unemployment lead to poverty?

Answer: Unable to find proper jobs in cities, many people started working as rickshaw pullers, vendors, construction workers, domestic servants, etc. With irregular small incomes, these people could not afford proper housing and started living in slums leading to poverty.  

29) What are the causes of huge income inequalities in rural areas?

Answer: One of the major reasons for this is the unequal distribution of land and other resources. Major policy initiatives like land reforms, which aimed at the redistribution of assets in rural areas, have not been implemented properly, leading to poverty in India. 

30) What are the socio-cultural and economic factors responsible for poverty?

Answer: In order to fulfil social obligations and observe religious ceremonies, people spend a lot of money. Since poor people hardly have any saving, they borrow. Unable to repay because of poverty they become victims of indebtedness, an important cause of poverty.  

31) Which are the two planks on which the anti-poverty strategy of the government is based?

Answer:

(i) Promotion of economic growth.
(ii) Targeted anti-poverty programmes. 

32) How is economic growth linked with poverty reduction in India?

Answer: Economic growth widens opportunities and provides the resources needed to invest in human development. This also encourages people to send their children, including the girl child, to schools in the hope of getting better economic returns from investing in education.  

33) What is the full form of MGNREGA?

Answer:MGNREGA is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 

34) What are the conditions of MGNREGA?

Answer:  

• The Act provides 100 days of assured employment every year to every rural household in 200 districts.
• Under the programme, if an applicant is not provided employment within 15 days, he/she will be entitled to a daily unemployment allowance. 

35) What was the National Food for Work Programme?

Answer:  It was launched in 2004 in the 150 most backward districts of the country. It is a centrally sponsored scheme, in which food grains are provided free of cost to the states. The programme is open to all poor who are in need of wage employment and desire to do manual unskilled work. 

36) What does PMRY stand for?

Answer:  It stands for Prime Minister Rozgar Yojana, started in 1993. The aim of the programme is to create self-employment opportunities for educated unemployed youth in rural areas and small towns. 

37) What is Rural Employment Generation Programme?

Answer: Launched in 1995, the aim of the programme is to create self-employment opportunities in rural areas and small towns.  

38) What were the targets of SGSY?

Answer: The Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana was launched in 1999. It aims at bringing up the assisted poor families above the poverty line by organizing them into self-help groups through a mix of bank credit and government subsidy.  

39) What was PMGY?

Answer:   It was Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojna launched in 2000. Accordingly, additional central assistance is given to the states for basic services such as primary health, primary education, rural shelter, rural drinking water and rural electrification.  

40) What is India's most compelling challenge?

Answer:  India's most compelling challenge remains poverty reduction. Wide disparities in poverty are visible between rural and urban areas and among different states. 

41) What are the bigger challenges before India?  

Answer: Providing health care, education and job security for all and achieving gender equality and dignity for the poor are the bigger challenges before India.  

42) What are the dimensions of poverty?

Answer:

• Poverty means hunger and lack of shelter.
• It is a situation in which parents are not able to send their children to school or a situation where sick people cannot afford treatment.
• Poverty also means a lack of clean water and sanitation facilities.
• It also means a lack of a regular job at a minimum decent level.  

43)  How is poverty viewed by social scientists?

Answer: Since poverty has many facts, social scientists look at it through a variety of indicators. These social indicators are:

• Illiteracy level.
• Lack of general resistance due to malnutrition.
• Lack of access to health care.
• Lack of job opportunity.
• Lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation, etc.  

44) What does 'social exclusion' mean?

Answer: 

• According to this concept, poverty must be seen in terms of the poor having to live only in a poor surrounding with other poor people, and excluded from enjoying social equality with better-off people in a better surrounding.
• Social exclusion can be both a cause as well as a consequence of poverty in the rural sense.
• It is a process through which individuals or groups are excluded from facilities, benefits and opportunities that others enjoy. An example is the prevalence of the caste system in India in which people belonging to certain castes are excluded from equal opportunities.  

45) How is vulnerability to poverty measured?

Answer:  

• Vulnerability to poverty is a measure that describes the greater probability of certain communities or individuals becoming or remaining poor in the coming years. 
• Vulnerability is determined by the options available to different communities for finding an alternative living in terms of assets, education, health and job opportunities. 
• Vulnerability describes the greater probability of being more adversely affected than other people when bad times prevails for everybody, whether a flood or an earthquake or simply a shortage in the availability of jobs.

46) What is the trend of poverty estimates since 1973? Or Describe poverty trends in India since 1973.

Answer:  

• There was a substantial decline in poverty ratios in India from about 55 per cent in 1973 to 36 per cent in 1993.
• The proportion of people below the poverty line further came down to less than 20 per cent in the next few years.
• Although the percentage of people living under poverty declined, the number of poor remained stable at around 320 million for a long time. The latest estimates indicate a significant reduction in the number of poor to about 260 million. 

47) How do income inequalities exist within a family?

Answer:

• In poor families all suffer, but some suffer more than others.
• Women, elderly people and female infants are systematically denied equal access to resources available to the family.
• Therefore, women, children and old people are the poorest of the poor.  

48)   Which states are most vulnerable to poverty in India?

Answer: 

• The proportion of poor people is not the same in every state.
• Poverty is still existing in Orissa, Bihar, Assam, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh.
• Bihar and Orissa continue to be the two poorest states with poverty ratios of 47 and 43 per cent, respectively. Along with rural poverty, urban poverty also exists in these states. 

49)   Which states report a significant decline in poverty?

Answer: 

• There is a significant decline in poverty in Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal.
• States like Punjab and Haryana have traditionally succeeded in reducing poverty with the help of high agricultural growth rates.
• Kerala has focused on human resource development.
• In West Bengal, land reform measures have helped in reducing poverty.
• In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, public distribution of food grains could have been the cause for the decline in poverty.  

50) What are the major reasons for the less effectiveness of poverty alleviation programmes?

Answer: 

•  It is due to a lack of proper implementation and right targeting.
• There also has been a lot of overlapping schemes.
• Despite good intentions, the benefits of these schemes have not fully reached the poor. 

51) What challenges are ahead of India with respect to poverty alleviation?

Answer:  

• Wide disparities in poverty are visible between rural are urban areas and among different states.
• Certain social and economic groups are more vulnerable to poverty.
• Poverty reduction is expected to make better progress in the next ten to fifteen years. 

52) How is poverty reduction expected to be better?

Answer: 

• This would be possible due to higher growth in income.
• Universal free elementary education would make people literate and enable them to earn.
• Increasing empowerment of the women and the economically weaker sections of society.  

53) What are the main features of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005?

Answer:

• MGNREGA 2005 was passed in September 2005.
• The act provides 100 days of assured employment every year to every rural household in 200 districts.
• Later, the scheme will be extended to 600 districts. One-third of the jobs could be reserved for women. If the government failed to provide employment, the salary for 100 days would be given.