Locating The Debate - Poverty And Vulnerability In Urban India

How do questions of urban poverty and inequality, fit into these ‘big plans’? What has happened to urban poverty and inequality since economic reforms in 1991 continues to be debated. Officially, head count ratios of people living below the poverty line have declined in both rural and urban areas, yet the depth and nature of this decline as well as the very measures used to determine poverty thresholds are deeply contested.

The critiques are multi-fold but two strands are particularly valuable for our analysis. The first recognises the inadequacy of income or expenditure-based poverty measures to measure what it takes to be able to live a dignified urban life. The rise of human development and multi-dimensional indices as well as an emerging focus on inequality and vulnerability as much as poverty, have each transformed and challenged the ways in which policy apprehends what it means to be poor. The second argues that different patterns of growth and development impact poverty and inequality in different ways and to different extents—are our current trajectories of urban growth and development equipped to deliver ‘inclusive growth’ that the 12th Plan optimistically described as both ‘faster and more equitable’? How does this ‘inclusive growth’ relate to the idea of a dignified urban life and in what time frame? This paper writes alongside these critiques to interrogate India’s urban turn through the lenses of poverty, inequality and vulnerability.