Assignment on Business Society and Environment

BUSINESS SOCIETY
AND
ENVIRONMENT

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Poverty in India
Sustainable development goals are the set of 17 global goals. It has been designed to act as a
blueprint for achieving a better and highly sustainable future for everyone. These goals were
made in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and they have planned to achieve this
by the end of the year 2030. It is a part of UN Resolution 70/1 the 2030 Agenda (Reid, et al
2017). Goals are No Poverty, Zero Hunger, Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education,
Gender Equality, Clean Water and Sanitation, Affordable and Clean Energy, Decent Work
and Economic Growth, Industry innovation and infrastructure, Reducing inequality,
Sustainable Cities and Communities, Responsible Consumption and Production, Climate
Action, Life below Water, Life on Land, Peace justice and strong Institutions, and
Partnerships for the Goals. In the below written essay there will be description of Poverty in
India and the way in which governments and other stakeholder efforts towards achieving No
Poverty have been illustrated.
India has not generated poverty by some incidents rather it exists in India from past centuries.
One of the major reasons for it is the fact that India was divided into classes where the lowest
class in the society were not allowed to take education and they were deprived of any kind of
wealth. Under the British rule this widened up (Karnani, 2016). Many governments post-
Independence tried to remove poverty but they are failing. After liberalisation of the market
in the 1990s, poor and rich gap kept on increasing. Critical nature of the situation can be
understood in terms of the fact that India stands as second most unequal nation among all the
nations as the top 1% people own 58% of the total wealth of the country (Sehrawat & Giri,
2018). An estimate suggests that India’s two-thirds population live in poverty. A report
suggested that 68.8% of population living in the country earns $2 a day. More than 30% of
the people earn lesser pay than $1.25 on daily basis (Alkire & Seth, 2015).
The biggest challenge that government will have to face in elevating poverty is the fact that
there is a very big population of people who are poor (Thorat, Vanneman, Desai & Dubey,
2017). It is also the fact that the population growth among the poor families in India is very
high so when the government plans that they will be elevating poverty under certain time
frame either the people that living under poverty line increases or resource scarcity get
generated (Kattula, et al 2016). It is also the fact that the corruption in India is very high so
when the governments send money for some kinds of projects that could elevate poverty the

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money actually does not reach to the people who are actually in the need. This makes the
situation critical situation in the village areas where the poor people are not even connected to
the formal banking structure. ‘No poverty’ has been the main slogans for the political parties
in the election but they are unable to remove it.
Government of India is highly determined that they will achieve the SDG goal of ‘No
poverty’ under the given time frame so that they can come out from the category of lower
middle income economies. In order to achieve this SDG, Indian government is running many
kinds of poverty elevation programs. These programs are running with the help of state
governments. First thing on which government of India is concentrating upon is education of
the poor people. This is because the best way to elevate poverty is to educate people so that
they can earn their bread. Poor people in India did not have access to formal education hence
they are unable to get proper wages and are unaware about their rights (Dehury & Mohanty,
2015). Even when the governments are running any kinds of schemes people are unaware
about it. Free schooling to the poor people and easy loans for the students that aims to go for
higher education has helped the poor people to improve their chances of getting out of
poverty.
Another major step was to connect all the people with the formal banking system. This was
necessary for removing the middle man who took the actual amount of money that
government sends for poor people. In this regards the ‘PradhanMantri Jan Dhan Yogna’ was
launched which aimed at opening large numbers of accounts of the poor people. Due to this
government was able to provide direct cash benefits to the people in the form of subsidy on
items that are necessary for life or the insurances or wages. (Gooptu & Parry, 2017).
MGNREGA was another important plan that government had made to provide work to the
poor people on the daily basis and the wages are sent to the people’s account directly.
Governments are trying hard to ensure that they are able to reduce the challenges related to
the skill development. For this they have developed the skill development initiatives that aim
at improving the technical skills of the people so that people may not face challenges in
getting jobs in the age of technology (Mohanty, Mohapatra, Kastor, Singh & Mahapa 2016).
There are other kinds of benefits that are being given by the government to ensure that the
basic life amenities are provided to the people such as home, food and other items. Food
products at lower rates are given to the people who are living under the below poverty line.
This is done by the government to ensure that no body in the country dies of hunger