Poverty Trends and Regional Disparities in India: A Primary Emphasis on Karnataka

Abstract

In the realm of a rapidly developing and continuously prospering world, poverty remains the most elusive social evil to eliminate. In fact, for all underdeveloped and developing countries, poverty is one of the innate threats to derail their economic progress and hard-earned social status. Poverty is marked by multidimensional deprivation and displays considerable regional variation, with certain states facing chronic levels of socio-economic vulnerability. Particularly in rural areas, poverty remains pronounced due to insufficient access to essential services, unstable employment and poor infrastructure and structural challenges such as income inequality and educational disparities persist in the country. Thus, comprehensive and context-specific understanding of poverty dynamics is crucial for formulating effective and evidence-driven policy solutions. Hence, to understand these poverty trends in India and Karnataka as focused consideration the study has been conducted by using secondary data and the data was analysed using statistical analytical tools such as descriptive statistics, Growth rate analysis, Coefficient of Variation (C.V.), Cuddy- Della Valley instability index and to verify the income inequality the Gini Coefficient and Lorenze curve were used. The results emphasize that growth rate of poverty in the Karnataka state (-5.45%) and the country (-3.12%) as a whole, the share of rural poor is significantly higher with 71.53 in the state and 80.37 per cent in country than the urban poor causing wide income disparity between rural and urban poor. The study suggests strengthening the integrated approach through various rural development programmes for enhancing employment and income in the rural areas.