Poverty in Tharu community of Rautahat district of Nepal

Abstract

Poverty is a situation where people are unable to fulfil their basic requirement by their given income. Poverty studies in the developing countries, is far less with it's explanation. There is extreme paucity of economic data on the basis of ethnicity caste. This was partly due to lack of caste/ethnic data in population censuses until 1991. Most earlier household surveys did include social parameters but were not analyzed owing to lack of social concern and economists pre occupation with macro-level data. Nepal living standard surveys1995/96, 2010/11 and programme of identification and management of poor household 2069 BS are prime source of Economic status by caste and ethnicity. Majority of indigenous, ethnic groups are considerably weak. These groups are deprived of various types of facilities. The gap in their level of development is still very significant. In such situation, it is felt necessary to have well balanced progress of each community and ethnic group for the country's all round development. The special features of the ethnic groups are in fact, the asset of country. Concept of development of the nation is only possible through promotion of their special features. Most previous studies relating to poverty in Nepal reviewed here are area centred. CBS has used to measure poverty at national level, small area level, district level, illaka level. In the twenty first century to have an anti-poverty strategy implies in all caste equally. Since no attempt has been made so far in the context of poverty in Rautahat district. This justifies the present research work. Many NGO/INGO and government too are doing work for uplifting the status of Tharu of eastern and western Nepal, but there is no such development in Rautahat. The research problems of this study are to study the status, incidence, level and causes of poverty and their remedial measures. This research is micro and ethnicity based poverty mapping in Tharu community of Rautahat district. Poverty is dependent variable and the factors causing poverty are independent variables like land holding, employment, education, fertility, environment, health, vulnerability, livelihood, standards of living exclusion, unsustainability etc. Considering all the four objectives and hypothesis were formulated and tested. The considered hypothesis was; higher the income and resource, lower the poverty and its incidence. The present research work is descriptive as well as analytical and is mainly based on primary information collected from field survey. The collected data from field survey are processed and analyzed with different statistical tools to meet with the objectives of this study. The major finding of the study were as follows; First, the lack of resources and natural disasters are causes of poverty which are untenable. Second, there is no single one way relationship between poverty and population growth. Third, and most important, people have fewer attitudes towards education. Fourth, Inequitable distribution of the available social product and also militates against productive utilization of the surplus generated. From the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) method, Sen's poverty index, wolf point, Gini Co-efficient, variance, range, mean, Lorenz Curve etc were applied and poverty line, incidence, wolf point ,human poverty index, human development index for male/female, head count ratio, dollar a day poverty line, head count index were 43.29, 0.26, 61.83, 44.89, 0 .588 and 0 .519, 44 , 82.57, 46 percent, etc respectively. The incidence of poverty is inversely related with the level of the education. Regarding poverty by occupation, higher incidence of poverty is found in those household heads whose major occupation is agriculture compared to those who are engaged in non-agriculture. Households engaged in agriculture and wage earning occupation are more poverty- ridden those engaged in business and services. The family size and the incidence of poverty are positively co-related. The higher the family size, the higher is the incidence of poverty. Livestock rearing is an integral part of farming in this community and indicates that it provides extra income which contributes to poverty reduction. The large landholders have lower incidence of poverty compared to landless and small holders. This indicates that marginal landholders have higher incidence of poverty compared to landless and big holders. The implication of the study are quite clear, namely that without changes in the attitude toward education, saving, nature of extravagant etc, it is well-nigh impossible to eradicate poverty of the scale and dimensions that engulfs contemporary rural Rautahat. So, strategy and policy implication for reducing poverty must include centrality of growth ,centrality of growth in agriculture, empowering the power by improving their assets ,ruler infrastructure, empowering small producer and access to market, increasing social and food security, reducing more general risk factor of poor, increase wage, use local resource and skill, increase infrastructure and transportation. This study recommends that there should be a pro-active role for the planner in promoting awareness of planning issue among the poor, reduction in economic growth and market-based policies. These findings contribute to broadening the knowledge base on pro-poor planning and development of the nation.