Academic Discourses on Causes of and Solutions to Poverty in India

This paper analyses academic discourses about factors that cause/perpetuate or eliminate poverty. It finds that the academic debates on the subject have been dominated by economists and have concentrated mainly on economic backwardness and/or unequal distribution of productive assets as the major causes of poverty in India. The consensus that emerges from these suggests that growth is important but other factors such as the growth of employment and real wage rates are equally important since the majority of the poor in India are rural labour households with marginal or no landholdings. The alternative discourse by political scientists highlights the importance of political factors and unequal distribution of power and resources in causing poverty and therefore suggests land reforms, empowerment, the need for inclusive policies/politics and peoples’ movement as some of the solutions. Sociological studies of poverty bring out the role of social institutions such as the caste system (a system of institutionalized inequality) and patriarchy in bringing a disproportionate burden of poverty on certain disadvantaged sections of society such as the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, women, etc. State level studies highlight the importance of ‘Quality of Governance’ while village level studies provide useful insights based on the people’s experience of falling in and out of poverty. The paper thus finds that the understanding of causes of poverty is affected by – (a) Academic Disciplines of the researchers; (b) Ideology of the researchers and (c) the level of enquiry, i.e. national, state, district or village.&nbsp