Income-poverty and beyond: human development in India

Income-poverty and Beyond: Human Development in India emphasizes the need to go beyond the conventional definition of poverty and look at the various human aspects of the problem. It takes a comprehensive view of poverty to include the concept of human poverty, seen as 'the denial of opportunities and choices most basic to human development'.
In this volume, eminent social scientists - Suresh Tendulkar, Abusaleh Shariff, R. Radhakrishna, M.S.S. Meenakshisundaram, Seeta K. Prabhu, Ravi Srivastava, and the editors Raja J Chelliah and R. Sudarshan study poverty, in its wider sense, in the light of the latest data available for India. This volume includes edited versions of the papers commissioned by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for a South Asia Poverty Monitor. Special care has been taken to make the information and analysis. accessible to the general reader. The broad conclusion which has emerged is that more public action is needed to counter the high prevalence of human poverty. Therefore, measures to reduce Income poverty, including higher rates of economic growth, are not sufficient. The first two chapters dwell on the concept of income poverty, interstate and inter group disparities, and poverty trends in India over the decade 1983-94. Chapters 3 to 7 go beyond income poverty to examine human development in rural India, availability of food for the poor, various programmes aimed at removing poverty, the indices for human poverty and public financing of social services, human priority expenditures, and human expenditure ratios for the Indian states. The perceptions of the poor themselves in assessing their own poverty and in developing policies to improve their status are discussed in Chapter 8. The Epilogue appeals to the national and international community to take serious note of human poverty in the midst of which we all live.