(i) Human poverty: The official definition of poverty is about a “minimum” subsistence level of living rather, than a “reasonable” level of living. Many scholars advocate that we must broaden the concept into human poverty which includes not only minimum subsistence level of living but also education, shelter, health care, job security, self-confidence, caste and gender equality. With development, the definition of what constitutes poverty also changes.
(ii) Poorest of the poor: 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 (especially the girl child) and old people are the poorest of the poor.
(iii) Main features of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 20O5: The
main features of the Act are as follows :
(a) Provision for 100 days of assured employment every year to every rural household in 200 districts. Later, the scheme will be extended to 600 districts.
(b) One-third of the proposed jobs would be reserved for women’
(c) Establishment of National Employment Guarantee Funds by the Central Government.
(d) Establishment of State Employment Guarantee Funds by state governments for implementation of the scheme.
(e) Under the programme if an applicant is not provided employment within fifteen days, she/he will be entitled to a daily unemployment allowance.

(l) Developing countries: The proportion of people in developing countries living in extreme economic poverty has fallen from 28 per cent in 1990 to 21 per cent in 2001.
(ii) Regional differences: There are, however great regional differences.
(a) Poverty declined substantially in China and Southeast Asian countries.
(b) Number of poor in China has come down from 606 million in 1981 to 212 million in 2001.
(c) In the countries of South Asia (India, Pakistan. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan) the decline has not been as rapid.
(d) Despite decline in the percentage of the poor, the number of poor has declined marginally from 475 million in 1981 to 428 million in 2001.
(iii) Sub-Saharan Africa: Poverty has risen from 41 per cent in 1gg1 to 46 per cent in 2001.
(iv) Latin America: The ratio of poverty remained the same.
(v) Socialist countries: Poverty has resurfaced in some of the form, socialist countries like Russia, where officially it was non-existent earlier. It may be mentioned here that the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations calls for reducing the proportion of people living on less than $ 1 a day to half the 1990 level by 2015.

The main reasons for poverty in India are follows:
(i) Low level of economic development under the British colonial administration: The policies of the colonial government ruined traditional handicrafts. It discouraged development of industries like textiles. The low rate of growth persisted until the nineteen- eighties. This resulted in less job opportunities and low growth rate of incomes
(ii) High growth rate of population : The growth in population neutralises the increase in job opportunity. The failure at both- the fronts – promotion of economic growth and population control perpetuated the cycle of poverty.
(iii) The Green Revolution and industrial development in public and private sector provided job opportunities to some people but as many people could not get a proper job, they started working as rickshaw-pullers, vendors and domestic servants. These people could not earn much and started living in the slums and it led to increase in poverty in urban areas.
(iv) Unequal distribution of land and other resources also led to increase in poverty in rural areas particularly because the land reforms were not implemented properly.
(v) People spend too much money on religious ceremonies. They even take loans from the moneylenders for such expenditure that leads more poverty.
(vi) Small farmers take loans from moneylenders to busy seeds and fertilisers. Since poor people hardly have any savings they are unable to repay which leads to high level of indebtedness and poverty.
(vii) some other causes of poverty are excessive dependency on agriculture, social factors such as illiteracy, large size of family, law of and inheritance and caste system.

A common method used to measure poverty is based on the income or consumption
levels. While determining the poverty line in India, a minimum level of food requirement, clothing, footwear, fuel, light, educational and medical requirement, etc’ are determined for subsistence. These physical quantities are multiplied by their prices in rupees. The total minimum food requirement is measured in calories which is 2,400 per person per day in rural areas and 2,100 calories in urban areas. The total equivalent-amount for these requirements is considered as poverty line. It may be mentioned here that the calorie requirements in rural areas is higher than the urban areas because rural people do more physical work. The monetary expenditure per capita needed for buying these calorie requirements is revised periodically taking into consideration the rise in prices. Thus poverty line in 2000, for a person was fixed at ₹328 per month for the rural areas and ₹454 for the urban areas Despite less calorie requirements, the higher amount for urban areas was due to higher prices in the urban areas. The poverty line is estimated periodically (after 5 years) by conducting sample surveys by the National Sample Survey Organisation.