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Economic growth, though essential for poverty reduction, is not
enough. Growth must be pro-poor. It must expand the opportunities
and life choices of marginalized people. Economic growth
contributes most to poverty reduction when it provides employment,
productivity, just wages and when public resources are spent to
promote human development.
One of the keys to well-distributed growth is well-distributed
land. Asian economies have shown this, though they have achieved
equitable distribution in different ways. Unfortunately,
India’s land reform program has been less of a priority,
perhaps because most of the rural poor already have access to some
piece of land. Nevertheless, the partition is very unequal, and
only a couple of states have made progress in its
redistribution.
 India has industrialized
without substantially reducing poverty, mainly because of distorted
prices, interest and exchange rates to favor capital-intensive
investment. On the other hand, the positive experiences of the past
two decades show the potential for improving poverty conditions in
India’s primary education and health, low-cost water supply
and sanitation. Progress is also apparent with the emergence of the
middle-class, which was virtually non-existent during India' first
year of liberation from colonial rule.
In numbers, India is home to one-third of the world's poorest
people with 330 million living below the poverty line. 75% of this
figure reside in rural areas. Educationwise, 40% of the population
is illiterate. Around 34% (male) and 62% (female). Among the
children, 63 million are malnourished without assurance for
consistence food supply.
In recent years considerable strides toward eradicating unjust
social and economic aspects of the caste system as practiced in
India have been made through educational and reform movements. The
great leader and catalyst in this endeavor was Mohandas Gandhi. In
the drafted constitution of India, which was published a few days
after Gandhi's assassination in 1948, stated in a special clause
under the heading of Human Rights: "Untouchability is abolished
and its practice in any form is forbidden."
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Further Reading
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