Persistent Levels of Poverty in India: Urgent Action Needed to End Suffering

This policy brief is addressed to the Government of the Republic of India and outlines and addresses causes of poverty. Poverty is highly cyclical and transferable across generations if nothing is done to prevent its spread. The national-and state-level governments have attempted to tackle poverty with many different policies and interventions, with varying levels of success. This brief identifies gross wealth and resource inequality, low literacy levels and food insecurity, and the caste system as the main causes of poverty in India and clarifies ways in which to increase the efficiency of government interventions to better address the current levels of poverty in India.