Abstract
This paper discusses the grassroots level understanding of poverty and wellbeing. There is rich debate and ever expanding literature on the meaning of wellbeing and poverty and their relationship in developing countries. In recent times wellbeing and poverty have been scrutinised within the discourse on multidimensionality of poverty. Most research outputs though are grounded in quantitative data. Investigations that focus on the perceptions and understandings of poor people about their situations remain sparse in the literature. The current study is an attempt to address this gap. The paper explores the common grounds and the points of departure between the researchers’ views of poverty and wellbeing and the perception at the grassroots. The paper presents findings of primary research conducted by the author in Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh and Madhubani district of Bihar in India. Semi-structured survey instruments were deployed to interview a selection of poor, marginal and non-poor households. In addition to identifying the commonalities in grassroots and researchers’ understandings of poverty, the paper draws attention to factors that may be outside the radar of the researchers. It is envisaged that mapping a more holistic understanding of poverty and wellbeing will have important long-term policy implications for poverty reduction.
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Notes
The Human Development Report uses three basic dimensions of human development—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living captured through life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate (with two-third weight) and the combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment ratio (with one-third weight) and GDP per capita to calculate the Human Development Index (HDI).
The Consultations with the Poor study is published in three volumes—Volume 1: “Can anyone hear us?” (Narayan et al. 1999) synthesised 81 participatory poverty assessments conducted in 50 countries, Volume 2: “Crying out for Change” (Narayan et al. 2000), Volume 3: From Many Lands, Narayan and Petesch 2002).
The four Indian states classified as having the lowest Development Indicators of income poverty, infant mortality and literacy are: Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, labelled the BIMARU states—also a Hindi word meaning ‘ill’ or ‘unwell’.
The states with the highest growth rates during the 1990s were Gujarat 9.6%, Maharashtra 8.0%, West Bengal 6.9%, Tamil Nadu 6.2%, Rajasthan 5.9% and Kerala 5.8%.
Here BPL indicates those below poverty line and APL represents those above poverty line. The poverty line here is the national poverty line of Rs 365 per month (Rs 12 per day) and not the World Bank’s dollar a day poverty measure. Those below poverty line are given a red book by the state government.
The author is grateful to Gina Crivello for drawing attention to this point.
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Acknowledgements
Valuable assistance for the primary research provided by Prof Alakh Sharma, Institute of Human Development, New Delhi, Uma Sharmistha, R.S. Gautam and Mahendra Singh are also duly acknowledged.
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Tiwari, M. Poverty and Wellbeing at the ‘Grassroots’—How Much is Visible to Researchers?. Soc Indic Res 90, 127–140 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9316-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9316-6