Chronic Poverty and Economic Inequality in Uttar Pradesh A Case Study of Three Districts

Abstract

The present study mainly focuses on poverty, chronic poverty, inequality, misidentification and newlinevillagers perception of their own poverty condition and related issues. The objective of the study newlineis to estimate the magnitude of poverty, chronic poverty, economic inequality, misidentification, newlinemismanagement of the government policy and programme, and to analyze the perception of the newlinevillagers. The study is based on primary as well as secondary data. Descriptive statistics, cross newlinetabulation, regression analysis, Gini coefficient, Lorenz cure, graphs, charts etc. are used as tools newlineof analysis. The study reveals that overall incidence of poverty has declined among all the social newlinegroups as well as among all religious groups in U.P. over the period from 2004-05 and 2011-12. newlineIt is a matter of concern that inequality has increased for almost each category over the study newlineperiod. The primary data shows that incidence of poverty is much higher than that suggested by newlinethe government estimates. We find higher income inequality in the Other category than in SC, newlineST, and OBC category. Income inequality in ST group is much higher than in SC and OBC group. newlineIt may be noted that a section of ST group, namely ST Nayak, are those who were from Pandey newlinecaste but fraudulently changed to ST Nayak and they are economically much more prosperous newlinecompared to other ST people. We also find that that top 20% of the population has 60% of the total newlineincome. Most of the ST households are landless, while no ST Nayak household is found landless. newlineWe estimated that around 40% of the actual BPL household are misidentified as APL, and around newline47% of the actual APL household are misidentified as BPL. For availing the government schemes, newlinearound 81% of the beneficiaries pay bribes. Primary survey results also show that the highest newlineconsumption inequality is in the Other caste group and the lowest in the SC group in 2017. The newlineresults for the SC group in primary survey reveal that share of food consumption in overall newlineinequality is 52.5 percent in 2017, whereas