Falling Poverty,Rising Privations: Trends over a Quarter Century in a Slum and a Village near Delhi

Abstract

The need to track multi-dimensional poverty in place of just subsistence is being widely recognised by policy makers. However, the challenge of quantifying deficits in housing and sanitation as well as ‘freedoms’ is immense and a number of dearths that bring maximum suffering to people (like risks spawned by contaminated water and food supplies) remain uncharted in common counts of ‘poverties’ and deprivations.

In this context, long-term, multi-disciplinary accounts of urban and rural poverty in a range of communities can be of help. As a contribution, this article offers an analysis of changing indices of material poverty as well as ‘privations’ like the worsening health environment, in the microcosm of a village and a slum from Delhi’s periphery, observed over a quarter century through observations, surveys, group discussions and semi-structured interviews.

The study shows that ‘absolute poverty’ has declined, in both the sites, since late 1980s but ‘privations’ have risen on many fronts.