Understanding the Poor and Their Challenges
Instructions:
Carefully read the provided passage to gain insight into who the poor are and the challenges they face. Reflect on the issues highlighted, ensuring you fully understand their context and implications. Once you have thoroughly read and reflected on the passage, proceed to the next section to continue your learning journey.
Who are the poor?
To live, everyone needs minimum food, clothing, housing, education and health. Poor people have inability to get these and does not have enough money for meeting these basic things that fulfil their need to live properly. A poor person is one who does not have the provisions for financial capabilities to fulfil the minimum essential necessities of life. Several poor people do not get even two meals a day. They are faced with starvation and hunger in their family life. The poor does not tend to possess the fundamental literacy and jobs and therefore have poor economic possibilities. India has one of the largest population of poor people in the world. There are poor people both in urban areas and rural areas.
Challenges of poor people
They face challenges such as:
1. Malnutrition and starvation
They are not able to afford even two meals a day. In the cases of malnutrition, however, the poor person is not getting enough calories, vitamins, and minerals for their body to process properly and to keep up with the body’s energy needs. This typically leads to starvation.
2. Illiteracy
3. Disease
4. Gender inequality
5. Indebtedness
Poor suffer from lack of money for meeting their basic needs. They borrow money from private money lenders who change high rate of interest. Most of their earning is spend on paying this interest and hence they remain indebted for ever.