Measuring Human Poverty in India : An Inter State Analysis

Poverty has many dimensions and as such difficult to define in a simple way. Poverty may be defined as the inability of a person to get the minimum needs fulfilled with respect to consumption for leading a simple and healthy life. These minimum needs include food, clothing, housing, education and basic health requirements. It is the individual who suffers being poor. In the light of this paper examines the three types of deprivations viz longevity, knowledge and economic. Based on these deprivations, human poverty index (HPI) has been constructed for different Indian states. Paper concludes that states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh are the worst performing states in respect of these deprivations and HPI. Overtime from 1991 and 2005 not much change has been occurred in their position rather the gap between the best performing (with lesser deprivations) states like Kerala, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana and Maharashtra and the worst performing states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa has widened on the basis of these deprivations. The worst performing states have higher proportion of deprived people in term of these deprivations. In spite of state intervention through many pro poor policies the worst performing states are not showing any signs of reduction in the proportion of people having either of these deprivations. It seems that the benefits of these policies are not reaching the poor due to inefficient administration and high levels of corruption prevailing in these states