The Gillins listed three factors as primarily responsible for poverty:

(i) Incapacity of the individual, which may be due to a faulty heredity or to the environment;

(ii) Unfavourable physical conditions, such as poor natural resources, bad climate and weather, and epidemics, and

(iii) Maldistribution of wealth and of income and the imperfect functioning of our economic institutions. Of these three factors the last two factors are principally responsible for poverty in India.