Population is a great human resource which paves way for technological, socio-economic and cultural development in a society. But its excess is great curse which produces a wide variety of impediments to development and creates a number of problems. The genesis of the population lies in the excessive growth and over population. If the growth of population exceeds the optimum size of the population nourished by the economic and technological.
It is interesting to note that the percentage of rural scheduled caste population to the total rural population is generally related inversely with (a) the percentage of the rural Muslims, Sikhs and Christians, and (b) the percentage of rural tribal population to the total rural population. Similarly about one-third of the scheduled caste agricultural workforce is composed of agricultural labourers. This requires special strategy to better the lot of these people.
Development of the region it creates over population which is a universal problem in all developing countries of the world. Over population puts heavy pressure on the existing factor endowments, especially natural resources of the community.
This leads to resource depletion and resource crisis leading to economic retardation and deprivation. This also causes poor quality of life, low standard of living, mass poverty, disease and hunger. Similarly shortage of food, inadequate housing, lack of health care, mother care and family welfare facilities, illiteracy, unemployment, insanitation price rise, adulteration, hoarding, black marketing, theft, loot, dacoit, prostitution and social crimes, indiscipline, strikes, lockouts, environmental population, political upheaval etc are all related to explosive and uncontrolled population growth. Under these circumstances all social and cultural orders are led to shambles and nature has its own way to control the population through famine, starvation, disease, infighting and war. 27.12.01. Poverty.
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Poverty is the greatest problem faced by developing countries like India. Roughly 260 million of our people, or l in 4, lives below the poverty line. Although there is percentage decline of people below the poverty line both in rural and urban areas (Table 27.XVIII) still India has the highest poverty rate amongst major countries of the world.
Table 27.XIX presents state wise incidence of total, rural and urban poverty in 1999-2000. The distribution shows variation in poverty in different parts of the country. The lowest poverty of 3.48 per cent is recorded in Jammu and Kashmir while Orissa is characterised by the highest percentage of poverty (47.15). In Orissa and Bihar more than 40 per cent of the people live below poverty line. Ten states (Sikkim, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tripura, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Nagaland) have poverty between 30 to 40 per cent. On the other hand southern states have lower poverty (20-30 per cent). Lowest poverty is seen in the western and northern states of the country.
Presents a mixed pattern. In 16 states and union territories of the country the percentage of urban poverty is higher than the rural one. These states are mainly located in the southern, central and western parts of the country. These constitute a continuous belt running from Tamil Nadu to Haryana and Delhi.
This is due to greater influx of rural poor to urban areas and lack of poverty alleviation programmes in urban areas. At state-level lowest percentage of rural poverty (1.35) is found in Goa, Daman and Diu while Orissa (48.01) and Bihar (44.3) record highest rural poverty. In 10 states of the country, mostly located in the north-east, more than 40 per cent of the rural inhabitants live below poverty line. A number of welfare programmes have been launched by the government to control rural poverty.