Poverty dropped faster in villages than cities

Maninder Dabas @ManDabas

A new report by the rural development ministry says that poverty in rural Maharashtra has reduced more than in urban centres in the state in the five years to 2009-10. According to data, poverty in rural Maharashtra has reduced faster than that in rural parts of Gujarat and Haryana. This is being attributed to growth in industrial and non-farm activities, perhaps even migration of people to urban areas in search of better opportunities. The Rural Development Report 2012-13 states that the poverty ratio that was 47.9% in rural Maharashtra in 2005-06 dropped to 29.5% in 2009-10, as compared with urban Maharashtra where the poverty ratio reduced from 25.6% in 2005-06 to 18.3% in 2009-10. Poverty reduced a lot quicker in Maharashtra than in Gujarat where the poverty ratio was 39.1% in 2004-05 and 26.7% in 2009-10. In Haryana, the poverty ratio reduced from 24.8% to 18.6% in the same period. “There could be various reasons for the pace of reduction of poverty,” said an official in the Ministry of Rural Development. “One is rapid industrialisation in rural areas of states like Maharastra which has reduced the dependency on agriculture as a source of employment. Non-farm activities, like poultry, have also given people other options. The migration from rural areas to urban centres might be another reason for the decline in the poverty ratio,” he said. In the decade to 2005-06 the pace of reduction was slower. In 1993-94, the poverty ratio in rural Maharastra was 59.3% which came down to 47.9% by 2005-06. According to the report, the percentage of severely poor people in rural Maharashtra has also declined considerably. In 2005-06, the percentage of severely poor was 22.5 and this came down to just 8.6 in 2009-10. The severely poor constitute nearly 30% of the poor. Interestingly, this reduction is again better than Gujarat where the percentage of severely poor dropped from 17.3 in 2005-06 to 5.7 in 2009-10. However, the severely poor comprise about 20% of the poor people in Gujarat. A majority of the poor are still from the lower castes. But the report states that there has been a substantial decline in the these numbers too. In 1993-94 the poverty ratio among scheduled tribes and scheduled castes was 74.1% and 73.9% respectively and this went down to 51.7% and 37.6% respectively in 2009-10. The reported noted that rural poverty is becoming increasingly concentrated in states like Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh where about 65% of the country’s poor live. This was about 50% in 1993. Source::: DNA, 07-10-2013, p.07, http://epaper.dnaindia.com/story.aspx?id=53017&boxid=31635&ed_date=2013-10-07&ed_code=820009&ed_page=7