The reasons for poverty are dynamic and complex. The poor are characterized by inadequate access to assets, inadequate income influenced by seasonality, poor nourishment resulting poor health condition, exposed to risks associated with their lives and livelihoods. They are constrained severely and severally by lack of access to resources, entitlements meant for them are often beyond their comprehension and their reach. They have been chronically kept away from the mainstream financial services and viewed as poor creditworthy. They are unorganised, socially and economically marginalised, live in the peripheries and do not have say over the matters affecting them. The vicious cycle of poverty, unless intervened, would perpetuate beyond generations.

According to the 2010 GHI report, India is among 29 countries with the highest levels of hunger, stunted children, and poorly fed women. India ranks at 67 among 84 countries, worst than Sri Lanka and Pakistan and way behind China. Forty two percent of the undernourished children are from India. Low nutritional and health level of the future generations should be an alarming call for our country, which is emerging as a superpower.

The overflowing warehouses have not relieved the misery of millions starving. The strongly-worded Supreme Court’s ruling over rotting food grains in these directing the government to distribute to the people below poverty line is an example of growing inequality at the grassroots. The appreciated growth was only able to enhance the consumption of rich, who constitutes only 20 percent of the population living in urban areas.

Millions of farmers have already migrated to cities abandoning agriculture, and it is on the increasing trend. Seventy percent of India’s 1.1 billion people currently live in villages, and by 2030 this figure will have reverse, and seventy percent will live in cities. Youth in rural areas will no longer prefer farming as their profession. The food prices have been increasing over the years on a secular trend. In a recently published report, the Asian Development Bank cautioned that the rising food prices would push millions further into poverty.

The seventh edition of the festival would focus on LIVELIHOODS AND POVERTY.