“I chose to work at the mill rather than join my brothers in agricultural labor. The rice mill job is a stepping stone to a brighter future. In the last four months, I have only taken 6 days off and saved a sum of Rs. 3500. I want to open a bank account and deposit my savings. Later I hope to buy land and build a house.”
- Ram Hemru, worker, Maa Ganga Rice Mills, West Bengal and mover out of poverty Over 30,000 people interviewed for the World Bank Moving Out of Poverty Study 
Raghubir has reason to be proud. He is regarded as one of the few in his village in Uttar Pradesh to have moved out of poverty. Wearing an immaculately crisp shirt and a white dhoti, serving tea in earthen cups to villagers at his tea stall, he says “Our hands are our power you know.” Until a few years ago, Raghubir toiled for daily wages on other people’s farms. “I had no interest in cultivation, so I tried each time to do a business.” With some savings and financial help from a generous relative, Raghubir tried his hand at several small businesses – from rearing goats to transporting people on a rented bullock cart to a nearby market. Till the tea stall worked. Raghubir’s recently built pucca house is remarkably clean, filled with an aroma of incense sticks, but otherwise precious little – a few utensils and some clothes. He says his only asset is his family – his aged parents, his wife, his son and his daughter. “I want to save for their education. Every drop counts.”
Raghubir is one among the 30,000 people interviewed for the World Bank’s Moving out of Poverty (MOP) study. The research program covered 300 rural villages across four states in the country – Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.The objective was to set all priors about poor people aside, by asking them how they define poverty and if they have moved out of poverty in the recent past, how they did so. Conducted over a period of two years (2005 to 2006), the study was part of a global research project asking similar questions across 15 countries.
Local people defined poverty for themselves | Stories of the poor, stories by the poor
The MOP study was unique in not imposing any official norm of poverty (e.g. a $1 or $2 a day line). Instead, it let local people define poverty for themselves. It used a discussion tool called the Ladder of Life that helped participants create a figurative ladder of well-being in the community; establish their own poverty line (step in the ladder where they thought people were no longer poor in their village); and sort households in the village based on whether they had moved over the poverty line between 1995 and 2005 (i.e. were movers), had fallen into poverty over the same period, or had remained in poverty (the chronic poor). Study teams then held individual interviews with the movers, fallers, the chronic poor, and those consistently above the poverty line (the never poor) to document their life stories, to understand what worked, what didn’t and what constrained. Separate group discussions were held with men, women and youth to construct major events (positive/negative) in the community over the aforesaid decade, and to understand their aspirations, perceptions of livelihoods, freedom, power and democracy and how all of these linked to or affected mobility. Finally, people were asked to place the official poverty line on their self-constructed ladders.
Framing poverty as a problem of the many, not the few
While there are caveats attached to perception data, the study helps capture people’s stories, which may not be the reality or even their reality, but at least it is their own framing of reality. In doing so, it contains several useful implications for policy, as seen from the lens of poor people themselves. And it also dispels some commonly held ‘notion’ or ‘myths’ about ‘the poor’.
One myth evolves as an almost Dickensian expression of poor people in popular media as those living on the edge, in extreme indignity, filth, generating shock and revulsion, and consequence charity and largesse. The study however does not speak to this view of poverty. Like Raghubir, poor people live in tiny, but sparkling homes and have plans, skills, ideas, and preferences. Three in every four people interviewed – irrespective of whether they are stuck in chronic destitution or have moved out–– believe in a better future for their children. And they–see hard work and initiative as the means to achieve that future.
Poverty Numbers using Community Perceptions:
Averages hide moving and falling | | Study Region | % of initially
poor | % of
movers | % of
fallers | % reduction
in poverty | | Uttar Pradesh | 66.7 | 12.8 | 5.5 | -7.3 | | Andhra Pradesh | 63.8 | 10.6 | 3.2 | -7.4 | | West Bengal | 63.3 | 18.8 | 7.7 | -11.1 | | Assam | 71.5 | 7.0 | 5.5 | -1.5 |
Study data also suggest that poverty is a much broader problem than just ‘rescuing’ the destitute. On average, nearly 60 percent of households sorted for the ladder of life exercise were rated to be poor in 2005 (according to the community’s own definition of poverty). People’s own rankings revealed that in four-fifths of the sampled communities, official poverty lines systematically underestimated poverty. “What can a person do with such a poor income [income at the official poverty line]?” asked one discussion group in Uttar Pradesh. “He would die of starvation.” The point is not to deride official poverty lines, only to suggest that people’s expectations are important and need to be taken into account in policy making. It also confirms what is increasingly being acknowledged about the so-called middle class in rural areas – that they live on consumption levels barely above the poverty line. Policies aimed at alleviating poverty must therefore look beyond the “official poor.”
Preventing falls
Imagine a broad staircase with people going up and down at different speeds. Life in villages in the four states visited seemed a bit like a staircase, with considerable churning of people out of and into poverty. Study data suggest a net decline in poverty varying from 11.1 percent in the sampled villages of West Bengal, to 7.4 percent in Andhra Pradesh, 7.3 percent in Uttar Pradesh, and 1.5 percent in the study sites in Assam. But these net numbers hide the dynamics of moving out and falling into poverty. In Assam for instance, the research finds that while 7 percent of households moved out of poverty between 1995 and 2005, 5.5 percent fell into poverty, resulting in net poverty reduction of only 1.5 percent. This leads to two questions for policy: what can be done to prevent falls and how can safety net programs be designed.
‘In 1988 we sold our land to pay for my sister’s marriage and we became paupers.
– A chronic poor, West Bengal | The single most important factor cited for falls into poverty is bad health and death (35 percent). This is followed by social shocks including family divisions and expenses towards marriages of children (27 percent). Across communities, poor people said they wanted new strategies – health insurance programs, as well as improved access to savings and credit instruments – that could prevent such falls. They were also increasingly tired of emulating the middle class for social expenditures like marriages.
However, no static formula can suggest how programs such as safety nets should be targeted, for there is no group such as ‘the poor’. ‘The poor’ quite literally are fluid, moving up and down on a staircase. Poverty is a condition that people experience, it is not an identity. If this be so, programs need to focus more on long-term asset creation (land and housing). Transfers (grants, loans) too need to be fairly large to stabilize families, reduce vulnerability, and end the cycling in and out of poverty.
Pathways for moving up and what helps
Youth want to move away from agriculture | Jobs (27 percent), initiatives in agriculture (20 percent), non-agriculture (14 percent) and multiple sources of income (12 percent), are cited by families as the key pathways used to move out of poverty. Interestingly, luck/inheritance is mentioned by less than one percent. A large number of youth interviewed, show low preference for agriculture as a future career, opting instead for business and government jobs. In Uttar Pradesh, 41 percent wanted to start a new business, while 37 percent of the youth showed preference for government jobs. In West Bengal and Assam, these two options together accounted for 76 percent and 83 percent respectively. The youth want opportunities in and training for the non-farm sector and they want them now.
Private sector in rural areas is largely limited to self-run small, informal enterprises | Belief in self is the foremost factor cited by poor people as critical for moving up. All is lost if they lose faith in themselves. A discussion group of men in Assam sums up: “Power is nothing but to go ahead in life with courage.” The study finds that movers in all states with the exception of Andhra Pradesh, also happen to self-identify themselves as higher on a 10-step ladder of power and rights in 1995, than those who remain stuck in poverty, suggesting that starting off with more self-belief matters. Such psychological dimensions have been (mostly) ignored in development programs, rarely transcending from the vague rhetoric of “putting people at the center of development.” What can help are institutions like self-help groups. The study data from Andhra Pradesh was full of instances of women speaking how such groups had helped them break through old barriers to recognizing their own worth. When asked about the most important difference in their lives over ten years, they tended to cite rising self confidence and speaking in public, often before economic change.
What institutions help? The most important institution cited 80 percent of the time by people, as help for accumulating assets, is their family. Families not only provide a cushion against shocks; but also pool their resources and work together to move out of poverty. In contrast, the formal private sector and civil society rarely feature in their accounts of accumulation. Civil society organizations mostly offer mitigation armors, not pathways to move out of poverty.
‘Before I was just one person, now I am ten; and so I feel I would dare to go up to any government official.’
– Member of a women’s self-help group in AP | On the other hand, markets are anything but fair. Disadvantaged by their size, poor women and men struggle in their millions of tiny enterprises – carrying their one sack of grain into the market – and watch helplessly as the scales are tilted against them. Finally, local democratic structures such as panchayats are usually seen as emissaries of the powers above, distributing a limited set of spoils – business licenses, jobs, relief measures during emergencies. Who gains and who loses depends on the context. Connections matter. In Uttar Pradesh caste affiliations play a role, while in West Bengal membership in the ruling party is critical. In community after community, corruption is a necessary evil, the oil that greases the wheels.
Despite the grime of politics and the callousness of politicians, the murkiness of the weighing scales and greediness of private traders, poor people continue to believe and continue to defy destinies. They trust markets and are willing to undertake effort. All they long for is equal opportunity. They still cherish the ideals of democracy and think that it would do them good. Women in Andhra Pradesh sum up when they say, “Democracy means to join with people to rule ourselves.”
‘Education of children is the biggest power. If you are educated then you can never starve.’
– A group of women in UP | Going forward, the focus has to be on expansion of opportunities and citizenship at the local level. The study shows that national level policies matter, but are not enough. Efforts to improve connectivity through roads and integrate poor producers in value chains as equal partners (a la Amul) can greatly increase people’s ability to take advantage of local opportunities. Similarly, a combination of fair local elections, improved access to information (especially about local government programs), and collective action can enable people to demand accountability from their local leaders.
Poor people have not given up and do not want charity. “Eat whatever namak [salt] and roti [bread] you get through your own hard labor, but don’t extend your palm towards others begging”, says a poor woman in Uttar Pradesh. What can we do to make their beliefs a reality? The answers lie in the thousands of stories that poor people tell us.
This article is by Soumya Kapoor who is one of the co-authors of Moving out of Poverty: Success from the Bottom Up (with Deepa Narayan and Lant Pritchett). She presently works as a consultant with the Environment and Social Unit of the World Bank in India.
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