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three - Thick poverty, thicker society and thin state: policy spaces for human dignity in India
- Edited by Erika K. Gubrium, OsloMet - storbyuniversitetet, Sony Pellissery, Ivar Lødemel, Gesellschaft für wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung mbH Göttingen
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- Book:
- The Shame of It
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 03 February 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 December 2013, pp 37-60
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
India is home to the largest number of poor people in the world. Of 1.13 billion people, 27.8 per cent live below the conservative income-based poverty line set by the Indian government and can thus be said to live in absolute poverty (Planning Commission, 2012). The face of this deep and persistent poverty is observable in minimal health expenditure, in the fact that more than 50 per cent of the population lives without sanitation facilities, in the presence of undignified ageing, as well as in poor educational standards, malnourished bodies, inferior housing, poor infrastructure resulting in deterioration in the quality of life, widespread child labour and poor service delivery. All of these attributes have severe implications for interpersonal relationships within the Indian household, village, workplace and broader community.
As a polity, India is a democratic country with huge diversity (28 federal states and 7 union territories, over 1,500 languages, 16 climatic regions and various orientations of faith). While this cultural richness of diversity has been celebrated, it has also been a primary challenge to the country's economic progress. This complexity is reflected in the web of social relationships that we allude to in the title for this chapter. This ‘thicker society’ creates poverty and undermines the policy efforts to eliminate poverty. Although India has made tremendous economic strides in recent years, this has primarily been the case in the country's urban centres, yet over 68 per cent of the population still resides in rural areas. While close to 60 per cent of the workforce is involved in the less mechanised agricultural sector, the contribution of agriculture to gross domestic product (GDP) is as low as 15 per cent. Inability to move people from agriculture to industrial or service sectors has been largely due to the limited spread of education, and this is reflected in low literacy rates and a limited supply of skilled manpower. Poor agricultural productivity and limited mobility to other sectors has, in fact, reportedly led to multiple waves of farmer suicides in the past two decades (Reddy and Mishra, 2009). Moreover, while daily casual wage labour in rural and urban areas is considered to be the last resort to make ends meet, this currently represents the situation for approximately 40 per cent of the total workforce.
Poverty in Global Perspective: Is Shame a Common Denominator?
- ROBERT WALKER, GRACE BANTEBYA KYOMUHENDO, ELAINE CHASE, SOHAIL CHOUDHRY, ERIKA K. GUBRIUM, JO YONGMIE NICOLA, IVAR LØDEMEL, LEEMAMOL MATHEW, AMON MWIINE, SONY PELLISSERY, YAN MING
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- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy / Volume 42 / Issue 2 / April 2013
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 28 January 2013, pp. 215-233
- Print publication:
- April 2013
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- Article
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Focussing on the psychosocial dimensions of poverty, the contention that shame lies at the ‘irreducible absolutist core’ of the idea of poverty is examined through qualitative research with adults and children experiencing poverty in diverse settings in seven countries: rural Uganda and India; urban China; Pakistan; South Korea and United Kingdom; and small town and urban Norway. Accounts of the lived experience of poverty were found to be very similar, despite massive disparities in material circumstances associated with locally defined poverty lines, suggesting that relative notions of poverty are an appropriate basis for international comparisons. Though socially and culturally nuanced, shame was found to be associated with poverty in each location, variably leading to pretence, withdrawal, self-loathing, ‘othering’, despair, depression, thoughts of suicide and generally to reductions in personal efficacy. While internally felt, poverty-related shame was equally imposed by the attitudes and behaviour of those not in poverty, framed by public discourse and influenced by the objectives and implementation of anti-poverty policy. The evidence appears to confirm the negative consequences of shame, implicates it as a factor in increasing the persistence of poverty and suggests important implications for the framing, design and delivery of anti-poverty policies.