Poverty and social structure


There is close correlation between poverty and the persistence of caste-based hierarchy of occupations in rural India.

Poverty is too much with us and its presence across vast stretches of our country disturbs our conscience.

In the post-second world war years when ‘Development Economics’ was respectable, sociologists, anthropologists and political analysts went into poverty issues in inter-disciplinary ways to suggest remedial policies. Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish Nobel Laureate, was one of the earliest to make such a study in his book Asian Drama — An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations way back in 1968. He pursued an institutional approach in which poverty issues were not to be studied not in isolation but in their mutual relationships such as caste stratification.

Sadly, the ascendancy of the Washington Consensus (WC) put paid to those holistic approaches. The “structural adjustment programmes” of the World Bank enforced in poor countries had nothing to do with larger socio-economic structuring. They were aimed at replacing the pre-existing social structures with marketisation regardless of the adverse consequences. The WC stands discredited............click for more

 

Source: The Hindu

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