Income-Poverty and Beyond: Human Development in India

Income-Poverty and Beyond: Human Development in India emphasizes the need to go beyond the conventional definition of poverty and look at the various human aspects of the problem. It takes a comprehensive view of poverty to include the concept of human poverty, seen as ‘the denial of opportunities and choices most basic to human development’. In this volume, eminent social scientists–Suresh Tendulkar, Abusaleh Shariff, R. Radhakrishna, M.S.S. Meenakshisundaram, Seeta K. Prabhu, Ravi Srivastava, and the editors–Raja J. Chelliah and R. Sudarshan study poverty, in its wider sense, in the light of the latest data available for India. This volume includes edited versions of the papers commissioned by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), for a South Asia Poverty Monitor. Special care has been taken to make the information and analysis accessible to the general reader. The broad conclusion which has emerged is that more public action is needed to counter the high prevalence of human poverty. Therefore, measures to reduce income-poverty, including higher rates of economic growth, are not sufficient.