Poverty on rise in South Asia: World Bank

With poverty increasing in South Asia, an astounding 400 million poor people in India continued to live below the poverty level, a World Bank report has said. However, South Asia which accounted for 43.5 percent of the world's poor population in 1998, has also improved its gross primary enrollment from 77 percent to more than 100 percent in 1982-96, said the Bank's Annual World Development report. The bank found that scheduled castes and scheduled tribes face a higher risk of poverty compared to other sections of the population in the region. These (SCs and STs) are among the structural poor who not only lack economic resources but whose poverty is strongly linked to social identity, as determined mainly by caste, the report said adding they also have worse social indicators.

Among rural scheduled caste women in India, the literacy rate was 19 percent in 1991 - half that for the country, and among schedule caste men, 46 percent, compared with 64 percent for the country. When several disadvantages are combined--being a woman from a socially excluded group in a backward region, the situation is worse, the report said.

In Uttar Pradesh, one of India's poorest states, only 8 percent of rural scheduled caste women are literate but new research suggests that the literacy rates of rural scheduled caste women are on the rise across India. Although only 31 percent of rural scheduled caste or scheduled tribe girls in the primary age group were enrolled in school in 1986-87, 53 percent were by 1995-96, it said.

Bureau Report