POVERTY — Economics STD 12 Commerce — Question

• One of the major reasons of poverty in India is lack of education, training and skills.
• Low level of education, especially in rural areas prevent the villagers from taking advantage of the use of new technologies in agriculture, new agriculture system, research and benefit of market to sell their products.
• As a result both, per hectare productivity and per labour productivity in agriculture remain low. This is the chief reason for low income of farmers.
• Since the rural youths remain uneducated they cannot get good job opportunities in other fields except agriculture. This also contributes to their poverty.

Gender inequality:

• There has always been gender inequality in the Indian society. Males are preferred over females from day one.
• Society cares less about health of. females. As a result, women face more problems of malnourishment, low weight and weakness. This causes high infant and mortality during childbirth and health problems among new born child.
• Our set-up is such that there is a belief that women need to remain at home and do household works. So, they remain less or even uneducated and they do not get any economic opportunities to work.
• Apart from this at work places, women are paid less compared to males.
• All these reasons bring down the family income and increase poverty.