POVERTY-Bollywood Style

 Caution:Any person before reading this blog further should get  a fair idea the film दीवार by clicking here .Happy Reading !     

        My earliest idea of what poverty is comes in mind in a scene from Yash chopra's movie DEEWAR which i saw as a child wherein the mother Nirupa Rao is seen carrying her two children Vijay (Amitabh) and Ravi (shashi kapoor) on Mumbai's Marine Drive.So the basic premise of poverty for me remained that the poor person is an individual deprived of  food,proper clothing and a place he can call home..

"All time classic"

          In a progressive nation it is the duty of the Goverment to device policies for the welfare of the poor  and ensure these policies actually work in ground reality so as to help deprived sections of society help come out of the vicious circle of poverty. How does the Government define poverty??.There is a long standing dispute on how poverty should be measured. There are two systems to define Poverty in India.First is the Absolute poverty which is an approach based on material deprivations.The second system is of Relative poverty is an approach based on social exclusions as well. Absolute poverty is based on assessments of minimum subsistence requirements like food, clothing, shelter etc. Relative poverty on the other hand takes into account poverty whose definition relates to standards of particular society at a particular time which means they have lesser opportunities to grow ,to participate in ordinary living patterns (no playgrounds ,hospitals,places of recreation etc),and deprived of  customs and activities.

(Imagine)Nirupa Roy at the "Ration" shop

    Which one among the two above methods would you prefer? I believe most of us people would prefer the second yardstick i.e Relative Poverty because that seems to be the more humane approach in measuring poverty !Let us get back to the DEEWAR example to actually understand the problems faced by the poor.Imagine Ravi and Vijay's mother Nirupa Roy wants to feed her children.So Goverment provides "Swarna Jayanti Shahri Swarozgar Yojana" so that she can earn her livelihood by working in construction activities in city funded by the Goverment.But how can she claim to be poor.Goverment wants proof so she goes to the city municipality and gets the certificate showing income proof that she is BPL i.e Below poverty line as well as jobless.She is now eligible for a job and she can also get monthly ration at susidized rates from Goverment authorized Public Distribution system (PDS) outlets.

Benefits of  "शिक्षा का अधिकार "

          One day while gong to work she  finds that Ravi is watching other children go to school.She takes a vow to send Ravi to school and gets him admitted to nearest Goverment primary school (where thanks to the recently passed RTE i.e Right to Education bill Ravi recieves free education until he is 14 years of age) and she herself works hard through the day to manage family's livelihood and Ravi's education.Ravi turns out to be a bright boy in school but his elder brother Vijay does not attend school for some unknown reasons.The goverment provides various scholarships to Ravi due to his good performance in academics while MoHRD (Ministry of human resource and Development) comes out with vocational training programmes for Vijay so that he can find employment in Industry despite his lack of education.In this way बीस साल बाद  we see that Nirupa Roy has succesfully managed to bring up her two children out of the clutches of poverty and made them stand on their own feet. 

Late Mr.Suresh Tendulkar

         Goverment esablishes a yardstick to measure poverty called as the 'poverty line'.Since Nirupa roy in Deewar was a BPL i.e Below poverty line card holder hence she was able to get the above benefits or rather her 'rights' in legal language.Till 2011 this task of determining the poverty line is with the Late Mr. "Suresh Tendulkar" committee which refined it's methodology of determining poverty line by giving more weight-age to three primary factors i.e food ,education and health.As per 2011-12 figures it comes out to be Rs.816 and Rs 1000 per month for a person living in rural and urban area respectively i.e if a person is living on less than this figure he is declared poor.Whatever be the approach it must ensure the following:
1)Benefits reach the actual poor.
2)Transparency in distribution of resources i.e in Public Distribution system
3)Performance based and long term vision to be used while making welfare policies for the poor.
          If these things are taken into consideration then the country can succeed in reducing the percentage of population living below poverty line which currently stands at 28 % which is roughly 30 crores.