3 Review(s)

Rural poverty is a much studied topic. However, in most of the studies, poverty is measured on the basis of an unidimensional measure of nutritional inadequacy. This study deviates from the other studies in capturing several other aspects of poverty like income insufficiency, resource deprivation and low quality of life. In all seventeen indicators are used. Poverty profiles of 64 regions are prepared on the basis of these indicators. An attempt is then made to understand these poverty situations with the help of structural (agrarian), geophysical and policy variables. Though multivariate regression method is also used as a tool of analysis, main stress is on preparing a typology of poverty and its correlates using cluster analysis. The study makes it possible to find answers to questions like why different poverty situations emerge from similar policy mixes and why these have not happened as desired. As such, it is not merely and exercise in numbers which soon becomes outdated but is an exercise in understand the processes which generate poverty in all its dimensions.