Anybody connected with political science, economics, development studies, democracy, and socialism has to willy-nilly engage in discussions on the marginalised, the deprived, the downtrodden, the destitute… in a word, the poor. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘Poverty is an insult, poverty stinks, it demeans, dehumanises, destroys the body and the mind… if not the soul. It is the deadliest form of violence.’ Perhaps, no other problem receives greater global attention today.

Poverty is indeed a multidimensional phenomenon. Hence, it is difficult to offer a suitable definition. However, what really constitutes poverty has comprehensively been asserted in the Copenhagen Declaration in 1995: “Poverty has various manifestations, including lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments; and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterised by a lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life.”

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Poverty is not simply characterised by a lack of adequate income, it is an all-encompassing issue. The poor and the marginalised have no race, ethnicity, or nationality; their binding identity is that they suffer from deprivation and restrictions. In the words of Amartya Sen: “Poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes, which is the standard criterion of identification of poverty. The perspective of capabilitypoverty does not involve any denial of the sensible view that low income is clearly one of the major causes of poverty, since lack of income can be a principal reason for a person’s capability deprivation.”

Poverty reduction has the overriding objective of development planning. The country has initiated several anti-poverty programmes since the 1950s, but unfortunately the impact has been negligible. Most of the programmes and interventions seem impressive on paper, but are often deeply flawed. Lack of commitment at the highest levels and the absence of a work ethics have led to an almost endemic crisis. And the fallout is obvious ~ India remains a poor country even after 70 years of independence and holds the distinction of having around a third of the world's poor. The GDP indicates impressive growth over a period of time but the income generated by economic growth has been unequally shared, and the newly created resources have not been utilised adequately in order to address social deprivation. Economic growth has led to a very marginal increase in wages and incomes for the poorer sections of the population. The “growth” runs parallel to a failure to generate adequate employment, sometimes described as ‘jobless growth’. Moreover, the country’s seemingly meteoric GDP growth rate is creating economic inequality and two demarcated societies ~ one poor and another rich. The American economist Lant Pritchett has offered an interesting explanation of why things go so shockingly awry in India, and why it is incapable of implementing programmes and policies. He called this the flailing state syndrome ~ ‘a nation state in which the head, that is elite institutions at the national (and in some states) level remains sound and functional but that this head is no longer realisably connected via nerves and sinews to its ownlimbs… ’

Pritchett described flailing as the inability to maintain sufficient control of the administrative apparatus to effectively deliver services through the government 'in spite of democracy and strong capability at the state level.’ In India, it is not just the hand that is not functioning, but also the head. The failure to alleviate poverty can reasonably be ascribed to the failure of policies, priorities of government and politics ~ a failure to integrate growth with development. While the economic growth measures a value of output of goods and services within a time period, the economic development is a measure of the welfare of people in society. ‘High growth, though essential’, says the India Development Report, ‘is not sufficient for poverty reduction on a substantive basis.’ As Amartya Sen has remarked: “We are bombarded by deafening rhetoric on ‘the priority of economic growth,’ with little thought given to health, education and other aspects of the formation of human capabilities ~ reflecting a disarmingly foggy understanding of how long-run growth and participatory development can actually be achieved and sustained.”

Democracies are, without exception, better at avoiding catastrophes and in managing mass starvation. But the political system of democracy does not automatically guarantee equal opportunities to all. On the contrary, there is enough evidence to prove that poverty and income inequalities in most democratic countries are increasing. Professor Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist, has shown that poverty levels are high in several poor countries that have been democratic for decades. Why are democracies so tolerant of poverty? This is because democracy favours direct rather than an indirect attack on poverty. Direct attacks include subsidies, job reservation, transfer of assets and other poverty alleviation programmes, many of which end up as mere doles. These are paraded in the name of the poor but the benefits are reaped by the creamy layer and middle class. Indeed, doles neither assuage the psychological frustrations of poverty-stricken people nor are they economically sustainable. Still these populist measures are preferred because they are far more visible to voters.

Democracy today is essentially majoritarian rather than egalitarian. The middle classes, caught between the high-income group (around 15 per cent of population) and the working class (around 30 per cent of population), have more votes. There is no reason at all for a democracy to favour the bottom 30 per cent. Hence, it makes sense for politicians to encourage entitlements for the benefit of the majority instead of the poorest 30 per cent. Poverty alleviation programmes thus fail to alleviate poverty in society, and suffering of the poor gets hardly mitigated in democracies. But programmes continue to be run in the interest of the vote-bank.

Apart from mismanagement and faulty development models, there are some other factors such as corruption, illiteracy, population explosion, unemployment, and caste system that are responsible for the persistence of poverty in India. Corruption is a collusive act between the bribegiver and bribe-taker. But ultimately the victim is the society as a whole. Gunnar Myrdal rightly said that ‘the prevalence of corruption provides strong inhibitions and obstacles to development’. Hence, corruption is regarded as one of the biggest reasons behind the persistence of poverty in India. Rajiv Gandhi once admitted that merely 15 per cent of the loan subsidy actually reaches the ultimate beneficiaries. Even if we discard this figure as highly pessimistic and assume that say 30-40 per cent of the welfare fund reaches the targeted beneficiaries, the rest is siphoned off by people connected to the implementing government machinery. This is a common way for the people with ‘high connections’ to acquire wealth ~ of course at the cost of the poor who generally have no voice or ability to assert themselves. The end result is that the eligible poor are deprived of their basic rights and entitlements. Numerous scams revealed in recent years explain the saga of corruption. Corruption is not only all pervasive but also endemic to India’s society and economy.

High level of illiteracy, particularly in rural areas and among women, has been a crucial factor not only behind economic backwardness but also for the high population growth. The persistence of illiteracy has created a situation where poverty and population are feeding each other. Education of girls is indeed the best anti-poverty tool. The caste division has also caused social inequality leading to exclusion and marginalisation. Lower caste people have traditionally been excluded from the mainstream society governed by the so-called upper castes. They have historically lived in isolation and in the periphery of villages and townships and performed only those tasks considered 'unfit' for other castes.

As the Old Testament teaches us, society has to consider the least privileged within it in order to thrive: 'When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and widow.' These principles must prevail though we cannot eradicate poverty through charity. However, from the basic elements of biblical social justice an entire body of ethics has emanated.