Poverty is a specter that torments not only many countries across the world but India as well. Recent reports reveal that even today, about 28 percent of India’s 1.47 billion population continues to languish in poverty. Hardly a day passes without hearing about India’s glittering growth story. Former Defence Minister Krishna Menon is often quoted as saying, ‘India is not poor; Indians are poor’. His view was that India is not a poor country, but its people are. Poverty is such a grave social malady that it strips human beings of their natural rights and joys of life, hollowing them out from within. With no apparent escape from that quagmire, it often pushes people toward the belief that suicide is the only refuge.
More than 1,70,000 suicides were recorded in the country last year alone and about 40 percent of them were primarily due to poverty and related causes. Nelson Mandela once said, Poverty is the most violent form of violence it destroys lives. A recent example is the suicide of a Dalit family in Parvathipuram Manyam district, driven by poverty and financial distress. In the same district last month, a heart rending incident occurred when the body of a destitute elderly woman who died in a hospital was transported in a garbage cart. These suicides starkly testify to how hunger and the pressures of survival sap families of vitality and silently consume their very lives.
Antonio Gramsci’s words from a century ago ‘The old world is dying and the new world is struggling to be born; in this interregnum, monsters rule’ remain relevant even today. Although the World Bank and the Union government claim that poverty has significantly declined in the country, the reality appears quite different. The International Inequality Report 2026 states that the present era has become a golden age for India’s mega rich. It also reveals that economic inequalities have grown more severe than even during British colonial rule. According to an investment firm, Bloom Ventures, more than half of the country’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of just 10 percent of the super rich.
True to the saying ‘All that glitters is not gold’, the value of the rupee has fallen to unprecedented lows during the current central government’s tenure. Experts point out that agricultural decline, unemployment and the soaring costs of education and healthcare are the main reasons why the poor are becoming poorer and the middle class is slipping into poverty. India’s ranking of 102nd in the Global Hunger Index 2025 is deeply alarming. These statistics mirror the grim reality of poverty in the country. While the central government grants tax concessions worth lakhs of crores to a handful of corporates, welfare schemes are being curtailed or scrapped. The dilution of the rural employment guarantee scheme which provided work as a right to the rural poor will only intensify hunger and distress.
In developing countries like India, economic inequality, unemployment and social problems are major causes of poverty, all closely intertwined. Although central and state governments have devised numerous poverty alleviation programs over the past few decades, their benefits have failed to reach the poor. Marginalized sections continue to remain trapped in the vortex of poverty, while the incomes of the wealthy keep doubling. According to Forbes India, the combined wealth of the country’s top 25 billionaires is many times greater than that of the poor nationwide. Renowned economist Amartya Sen observes, ‘A society should be judged not by how much wealth it creates, but by how fairly it distributes opportunities arising from that wealth’. Amid such a crisis, it is noteworthy that Kerala stands out as a ‘state free from extreme poverty’. Poet Rayaprolu writes
‘A ladle of gruel for hunger,
A tattered cloth for fading shame,
Seek the way by which
Cool, gentle days may dawn’.
The wealth being created in the country must belong to the poor as well. We must seek the necessary pathways to ensure this. All that is required, in our view, is genuine political will.