The factors affecting the BoP citizens in urban slums of India

Abstract

The study of Poor Economics has taken into view poverty across the world, both rural and urban. Many of the findings and cues have been reinforced in our study. For instance, the fact that greater money does not mean more food or better quality food. The poor do save but they get tempted to spend it on some luxuries like a TV or radio. They don't send their kids to government schools. Not because the government policies governing these schools don't exist, but because they realise that not much significant upliftment can be achieved by doing so. At maximum, their child would get a government job. He wouldn't be able to become a doctor or engineer keeping in mind the genuine lack of resources. Poor economics also states that ignorance and inertia are two major reasons why policies to tackle poverty fail miserably. However, our study poses a contradictory opinion. Of the people we surveyed, all were aware of the government policies, be it ration cards, voter IDs or mid-day meals in government schools or free distribution of medicines in government hospitals. The poor are aware of most of the policies but have given up the hope that they would be able to benefit out of those. The reasons for the same are manifold. One being they mistrust the system due to the inherent flaws like corruption and do not expect miracles to arise from the same. Other being that a large number of poor are illiterate. They fear being duped or cheated as far as policies which require some kind of paperwork is concerned. Anirudh Krishna had conducted the study in the rural context. For this he had selected the families which had been living in that context for long. However the context of our study is completely different than what was used by the team working on “Pathways out of and into poverty.” We targeted the poor from urban slums and most of them were migrants from different villages. Also the focus of our study was to find out the main reasons of poverty around the poor that they can influence or control. The literature of Anirudh Krishna doesn’t impose any such restriction and covers all the aspects.