Impact and Intensity of Multidimensional Poverty in J&K

Abstract

Poverty is multidimensional phenomenon. It extends beyond the limited horizons of the income poverty which ignores the absence of the non marketed goods and services. The dimensions of the poverty are wide ranging which cannot be encompassed by the money metric approaches to the poverty measurement. Income or expenditure based poverty measures cannot capture such indicators as health, education and standard of living. It leads to underestimation of poverty and hence inadequate policy action towards eliminating the multidimensional approach to the poverty measurement. Multidimensional approach to the poverty measurement centers on the work of Amartiya Sen’s capability approach. According to Sen economic and social arrangements of individuals should be viewed according the capabilities that live in them. Thus a shift was made from the uni-dimenshional approach to the poverty measurement to the multidimensional approach. The multidimensional approach to the poverty have certain difficulties with regard to the dimensions to be chosen, indicators to be chosen and relative weights to be assigned to various dimensions and indicators but all these measures have been increasing used in both developing and development world. United Nations has been one of the Prime agencies challenging primacy of income based/ GDP measures of poverty and has introduced HDI as the measurement for capturing both social and economic indicators. Similarly countries releasing the importance of the multidimensional poverty have set MDGS. These goals are eight in number. The eight goals are 1 eradication of extreme poverty and hunger 2. Active universal primary education 3. Promote gender equality and empowerment 4 reduce child mortality 5 improve maternal health 6 combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases 7 to ensure environmental sustainably 8 to develop global partnership for the development. Thus these goals point the multidimensional nature to the measurement of the poverty and calls upon the governments to take effective actions. But such an action can be taken only if the existing measurements to poverty are redefined and refined in line with multidimensional measures.