Analysis of Rural Poverty: A Case Study of a Magar Community of Phoksingkot VDC Palpa, Lumbini, Nepal

Abstract

Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon which is a major obstacle for the human civilizations and overall development of the society, nation, and the whole world. It is the major factor responsible for the conflict, war, murder and human right abolition. Poverty is found everywhere still in the developed countries and massive in the developing countries. As Nepal is a developing and one of the poorest countries in the world, it is also largely affected by the poverty. Among the poor Indigenous people, Dalit, Women and rural people are included in excessive amount. Magars are one of the largest ethnic groups of Nepal comprising 7.14% of the total population but are socially and culturally lagged behind because of different factors, which are definitely rather dynamic in nature and the condition of these people is also changing, though all the changes do not take the positive trend.

The general objective of the study was to understand poverty situation of the Magar people in the Phoksingkot VDC of Palpa districts. The specific objectives were a) to measure the extent of poverty in Magar people b) to determine the relationship between poverty and other factors viz. employment, income, education, land holding, health facilities, access to facilities, livestock rearing, house structure etc c) to find the causes and effect of poverty in study area.

As such, the present study attempted to discover the interplay of different variables for analyzing the poverty of Magar of the study area, Phoksingkot VDC, Palpa. It also tried to illustrate some peculiarities of Magars and helped seekers to understand the extent and cause of the poverty in the daily life activities. For the study, survey was done at four wards, 1, 2, 4 and 6 and households were 15, 10, 15 and 10 in a random sampling respectively. For the data collection different peoples were interviewed for the purpose of cross validation and for the literature secondary sources have been taken. Coded and analyzed the data taken, interpretation was done through different sophisticated statistical tools.

The study showed that 50 households include 312 family members with HHs size of 6.24. 52.6 % of the population were economically active with the dependency ratio of 0.9. The absolute poverty line was drawn to be NRs 27.2 per capita per day income. On this basis 32% of households and 30.13% of populations were found to be absolute poor. The total poverty line was found to be NRs 43.85 per capita per day. On this basis, 46% of households or 45.84% of population are under total poverty line. It is found that 54% of household or 54.16% of population are non - poor. Education status of the study area is low as 36% people are illiterate. From the study it is known that illiteracy is one of the major factors of poverty. Most of the economically active population of study area engaged in agriculture 40.06% but there is disguised unemployment.

From the field observation of the study area, it is found that, most of the poor have small cottage sized house with poor condition and are socially and economically backward. Most of people are living in very low level of living standard, such as ill-fed (lack of nutrition), poor clothing, very low standard of shelter. Geographically, the studied are is hilly and needed to walk 2-3 hrs from road. So it is one of the major factors for the VDC people to be far from access to facilities and services, market for their production, health facilities etc. They need to walk 1.30hrs for the education which is another cause for dropping out and more illiterate and unemployed people. The major problem the VDC people are suffering is the drinking water and irrigation. In order to improve the poverty status and break up the vicious circle of poverty in the Phoksingkot VDC of Palpa districts agricultural productivity must be increased in order to alleviate poverty, mixed and rotational cropping system should be adopted and then provide required facilities for agriculture such as irrigation, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, improved varieties of seeds etc. The government should encourage private investment in the study area to generate employment opportunities and market centres. Spending on alcohol, smoking, gambling and other unuseful and unproductive work should be discouraged by conducting some public awareness programs.