Q.1 Strategies for the alleviation of poverty (CSS 2005)
Solved CSS Essay: Poverty Alleviation
“Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere”. It is a scrooge and one of the worst curses and miseries that a human can face. According to Homer. “This, this is misery! The last, the worst, that man can feel”.
Poverty can be measured either in absolute terms, for example, the number of those who cannot afford more than two pairs of shoes, or in relative terms, for example, the number of the poorest ten percent of house-holds. In either sense it is a concept, which is defined arbitrarily. Poverty exists not only because incomes are low, but also because the needs of certain low income households are high.
Poverty has many dimensions, which include economic, political, social, environmental and human dimensions. In economic terms a county, a region or a household is poor when the per capita income of a country or the income of a household is very low. Similarly the purchasing power of a poor country or household is below a certain minimum standard; there are low medical care and health facilities, productivity is very low and there is illiteracy.