29.8% of India's 1.21 billion people are below poverty line that's a lot less than 37.2% in 2004-2005. Though you have to think about the population increase in all those years mean that almost the same number of people are living in poverty. That's 360 million people. To give you a figure that's more than all of U.S.A.

So where is the poverty line?!

That's any person living on 28.65 rupees (56 cents/35p) a day in cities and 22.42 rupees (44 cents/33p) a day in villages.
These numbers are alarmingly high even though some might say its just 29.8%. What need to be kept in check is that its 30 million people.

What is wrong?!

• We can blame the government for some of it. Having unchecked corruption is one of the main issues faced by the government. Just google "corrupt indian political leaders" and you'll find about 6,99,00,000 results on this subject.
  Solving corruption has been one of the main motives of the new government and seems to be solving some of the issue but not to any new extent although we are seeing improvements.

• Misplaced priorities is another aspect, not being able to provide proper health care and hygiene with low or no education just helps to heighten the problems.

Getting educated is the most important things that can get anyone out of poverty.

By not getting any basic education one is doomed to suffer in poverty for a life time. People not having the urge to pursue education from the beginning is the start of poverty.

The general theme I've seen with most of the people living in poverty, with no education was one of these reasons -

• No one in their family ever studied so they never wanted to get any education.
• General lack of interest toward education combined with having uneducated social circle.
• Girls should be educated because they are going to get married and sent of to other home, Women aren't allowed to work so investing in their education is worthless. (This one really pisses me off, I've seen girls wanting to get educated but are never sent to schools by their families).

This might sound pessimistic coming from me but, even if someone decides to get educated and joins a public school the quality of education provided to them is not going to be worth much in real world scenario. Coupled with low paying jobs this becomes a bigger problem than most think.
Even though this might sound bad but getting basic education should just help keep anyone their head above water in real life situations.

The other problem not many would blame.

Over population is one reason that is already causing more problems than we can think for Indians living under poverty.
Most of the people below poverty line can't get any jobs even if they can manage to get some education because of too much competition in low paying jobs. Having low skills that are easily replaceable is the reason to many struggling to get any decent paying job.

As India develops and changes from being an agricultural to a more industrialized country, We'll see more and more jobs popping up. To fulfill those jobs we will need more people with higher skills but as of now the root cause is low or no education coupled with not enough employment opportunities.
By not having enough education most of the people living in poverty also struggle to understand family planning. This leads to them having more children than they can handle.

Trust me when I say this I've seen many families who have more than 6 children and have no stable income. To a normal person family planing should come first but when there is no education this can't be explained easily these people.
The problem becomes a massive issue when most of the communities who are living in poverty decide to to not plan their families and keep on having kids to whom they can't provide properly.

I would like to conclude by saying the India seriously needs to take action to get their act together when it comes to poverty by doing all these things -

• Making continuous efforts to give better education.
• Getting People in poverty to be more aware about family planning.
• Focusing on creating more jobs.
• Getting rid of corruption and getting proper money flowing towards welfare schemes.

Demanding so much from a government is not a good thing. But if we need to get 360 million people out of poverty we should be taking massive action.

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If you guys have any suggestions or advice you want to say please let me know in the comments below.

These were just my opinions as a citizen, if your opinions differ from mine let me know I would love to get a better view and learn more from you.

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