In a seminal contribution, Professor Partha Dasgupta (An Inquiry into Well-Being and Destitution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) characterised destitution as “first and foremost a personal calamity; and, although not self-evident, it is usually seen also as a grave weakness of any society that harbours it. However, ... there has been no real attempt to — face the phenomenon as it occurs in the world we have come to know.” While this indictment is somewhat exaggerated, the perspective is undeniably rich, insightful and persuasive. In a response, the International Food Policy Research Institute study (The World’s Most Deprived, Washington DC, released on November 6, 2007) addresses an important concern, that is, are development programmes reaching those in need, or are they primarily benefiting those who are easier to reach, leaving the very poorest behind? The population of the developing world is divided into three categories: subjacent poor, those living on between $0.75 and $1 a day; medial poor, those living on between $0.50 and $0.75 a day; and ultra poor, those living on less than $0.50 a day.

Of the world’s 969 million extremely poor (that is, those living on $1 a day) in 2004, 162 million were ultra poor (or lived on less than $0.50 a day-by no means a small number. About three quarters of the latter were concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa while the majority of the subjacent and medial poor were located in South Asia.

The progress against poverty has been uneven — ironically, it has been slowest in regions where poverty is most severe. The reduction in global poverty during 1990-2004 was largely a reflection of the impressive strides by East Asia and the Pacific, followed by South Asia. In East Asia and the Pacific the dollar-a-day poverty incidence plummeted from 29.8 per cent to 9.1 per cent. By contrast, poverty rates fell slightly in Sub-Saharan Africa (from 46.8 per cent to 41.1 per cent) and in Latin America and the Caribbean (from 10.2 per cent to 8.6 per cent). A related and more worrying finding is that developing countries in general recorded larger reductions in subjacent and medial poverty than in ultra poverty. In South Asia, for example, the ultra poor benefited the least while those in medial poverty benefited the most. A case in point is India where the medial poor benefited the most. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the ultra poor have been excluded from whatever progress has been made in combating poverty.

... contd.