An economic study of rural poverty and inequality in Sivagangai district Tamil Nadu

Abstract

newlineIn India, poverty reduction is a major goal and issue. The World Bank estimated 1.29 billion people were living in absolute poverty in 2008. Of this, about 400 million people lived in India and 173 million people in China. Absolute poverty is a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to social services. Therefore, a critical minimum effort is required to address the issue and in order to formulate policy and programmes, poverty is to be measured as a first step. India is severely facing the problem of poverty. Even today, every third poor man of the world is an Indian. It means one third of the world s poor people are living in India. Further, in India out of five Indian youth, one is unemployed and of every four Indian farmers, one is in utter poverty. It is found that 70 per cent agriculturists are distressed and disappointed with farming. Among the agriculturists, the female headed households are the worst affected. Further, in the single crop area poverty is high. Major part of the income is spent on food items only. The earning of the farmers, landless agricultural labourers and artisans is not sufficient to cover even the basic necessities of life. Further, in the era of globalization, agriculture is facing structural transformation. A move from subsistence agriculture to commercial agriculture is in progress. In this process, the labourers are the worst affected lot. The male labourers are slowly thrown out of agricultural employment and they are forced to seek some other employment. newline newline The study analyses the income, savings, loans and repayment of the individuals. Interview schedule has been used to collect data from the sample respondents and 500 sample respondents have been selected by using the snow balling method. This is an empirical study in the selected taluks of (Tiruppattur, Kalaiyarkovil, Illayangudi Manam