Poverty in India

Definition of poverty

Country	Poverty line	Year	Reference
India Poverty prevalence and estimates During the 19th and early 20th century, when the country was under British colonial rule, parts of India saw a widespread increase in poverty. Beginning from the 18th century onwards, British officials in India implemented a series of policies which resulted in the de-industrialisation of India by reducing garments and other finished products manufactured by artisans in India. Instead, they imported these products from Britain's expanding industry due to the many industrial innovations of the 19th century. Additionally, the colonial authorities simultaneously encouraged the conversion of more land into farms and more agricultural exports from India. Eastern regions of India along the Ganges river plains, such as those now known as eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, were dedicated to producing poppy and opium. These items were then exported to southeast and east Asia, particularly China. The East India Company initially held an exclusive monopoly over these exports, and the colonial British institutions later did so as well. The economic importance of this shift from industry to agriculture in India was large; by 1850, it created nearly 1,000 square kilometres of poppy farms India's fertile Ganges plains. This consequently led to two opium wars in Asia, with the Second Opium War fought between 1856 and 1860. After China agreed to be a part of the opium trade, the colonial government dedicated more land exclusively to poppy. The opium agriculture in India rose from 1850 through 1900, when over 500,000 acres of the most fertile Ganges basin farms were devoted to poppy cultivation. Additionally, opium processing factories owned by colonial officials were expanded in Benares and Patna, and shipping expanded from Bengal to the ports of East Asia such as Hong Kong, all under exclusive monopoly of the British. By the early 20th century, 3 out of 4 Indians were employed in agriculture, famines were common, and food consumption per capita declined in every decade. The issue of Company rule in India and its effects on Indian poverty was raised by Anglo-Irish Whig politician Edmund Burke in the House of Commons of Great Britain; in 1778, Burke began an impeachment trial against East India Company official Warren Hastings on charges including mismanagement of the Indian economy; Hastings was ultimately cleared of the charges in 1785. Indian historian Rajat Kanta Ray argued the economy established by the East India Company in 18th-century Bengal was a form of plunder and a catastrophe for the traditional economy of India, depleting food and money stocks and imposing high taxes that helped cause the famine of 1770, which killed a third of Bengali population. In London, the late 19th century British parliament debated the repeated incidence of famines in India, and the impoverishment of Indians due to this diversion of agriculture land from growing food staples to growing poppy for opium export under orders of the colonial British empire. These colonial policies moved unemployed artisans into farming, and transformed India into a region increasingly abundant in land, unskilled labour, and low productivity. This consequently made India scarce in skilled labour, capital and knowledge. On an inflation adjusted 1973 rupee basis, the average income of an Indian agrarian labourer was Rs. 7.20 per year in 1885, against an inflation adjusted poverty line of Rs. 23.90 per year. Thus, not only was the average income below the poverty line, but the intensity of poverty was also severe. The intensity of poverty increased from 1885 to 1921, before being reversed. However, the absolute poverty rates continued to be very high through the 1930s. The colonial policies on taxation and its recognition of land ownership claims of zamindars and mansabdars, or Mughal era nobility, made a minority of families wealthy. Additionally, these policies weakened the ability of poorer peasants to command land and credit. The resulting rising landlessness and stagnant real wages intensified poverty. The National Planning Committee of 1936 noted the appalling poverty of undivided India. The National Planning Committee, notes Suryanarayana, then defined goals in 1936 to alleviate poverty by setting targets in terms of nutrition, clothing and housing. This method of linking poverty as a function of nutrition, clothing and housing continued in India after it became independent from British colonial empire. These poverty alleviation goals were theoretical, with administrative powers resident in the British Empire. Poverty ravaged India. In 1943, for example, despite rising agricultural output in undivided South Asia, the Bengal famine killed millions of Indians from starvation, disease and destitution. Destitution was so intense in Bengal, Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa, that entire families and villages were "wiped out" of existence. Village artisans, along with sustenance farming families, died from lack of food, malnutrition and a wave of diseases. The 1943 famine was not an isolated tragedy. Devastating famines impoverished India every 5 to 8 years in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Between 6.1 and 10.3 million people starved to death in British India during the 1876–1879 famine, while another 6.1 to 8.4 million people died during the 1896–1898 famine. The Lancet reported that 19 million people died from starvation and the consequences of extreme poverty in British India between 1896 and 1900. Sir MacDonnell observed the suffering and poverty in 1900, and noted, "people died like flies" in Bombay.