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Rural poverty in India About two thirds of India’s more than 1 billion people live in rural areas, and almost 170 million of them are poor. Although many rural people are migrating to cities, three out of four of India’s poor people live in the vast rural parts of the country. For more than 21 per cent of them, poverty is a chronic condition. Where are India's rural poor people and who are they? Poverty is deepest among scheduled castes and tribes in the country’s rural areas. India’s poorest people include 50 per cent of members of scheduled tribes and 40 per cent of people in scheduled castes. On the map of poverty in India, the poorest areas lie in parts of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal. Large numbers of India's poorest people live in the country’s semi-arid tropical region. In these areas shortages of water and recurrent droughts impede the transformation of agriculture that the Green Revolution has achieved elsewhere. There is also a high incidence of poverty in flood-prone areas such as those extending from eastern Uttar Pradesh to the Assam plains, and especially in northern Bihar. Why are rural people poor? A major cause of poverty among rural people in India is lack of access for both individuals and communities to productive assets and financial resources. High levels of illiteracy, inadequate health care and extremely limited access to social services are common among poor rural people. Microenterprise development, which could generate income and enable them to improve their living conditions, has only recently become a focus of the government. Women in general are the most disadvantaged people in Indian society, though their status varies significantly according to their social and ethnic backgrounds. Women are particularly vulnerable to the spread of HIV/AIDS from urban to rural areas. In 2005 an estimated 5.7 million men, women and children in India were living with HIV/AIDS. Most of them are in the 15-49 age group and almost 40 per cent of them are women. Source: IFAD |
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