Topic Of The Day:-“Based on indicators”
The rural census, or SECC, mapped deprivation using seven indicators: ‘households with a kuchha house; without an adult member in working age; headed by a woman and without an adult male in working age; with a disabled member and without able-bodied adult; of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST); without literate adults over 25 years; and the landless engaged in manual labour. The more the number of parameters on which a household is deprived, the worse its extent of poverty. Nearly 30% have two deprivations, 13% have three. Only 0.01% suffer from all seven handicaps’. While 48.5% of all rural households suffer from at least one deprivation indicator, “landless households engaged in manual labour” are more vulnerable. Nearly 54 million households are in the landless-labourer category; assuming that each such household has five members, that makes 250 million of the nearly 850-900 million rural population. This number is almost certainly an underestimate, since 84% of all those who even hold agricultural land are small and marginal farmers. The intersection of any of the six other handicaps with “landless labour” makes it more acute. The SECC also said that ‘59% of households with kuchha houses are landless labourers; similarly, 55% of those with no literate adult above 25 years and 54% each of SC/ST households and female-headed households without adult male members are also landless households. At the same time, 47% households without an adult member of working age are landless labourers as are 45% of those with disabled members and no able-bodied adult members’.
MEANINGS AND WORDS
1) Distress
Meaning: Extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain.
Example: “to his distress he saw that she was trembling”
Synonyms: Anguish, Suffering
Antonyms: Happiness, Comfort
2) Impoverishment
Meaning: The process of becoming poor; loss of wealth.
Example: “fifteen years of political instability resulted in widespread impoverishment and famine”
3) Deprivation
Meaning: The damaging lack of material benefits considered to be basic necessities in a society.
Example: “low wages mean that 3.75 million people suffer serious deprivation”
Synonyms: Poverty, Privation
Antonyms: Wealth
4) Vulnerable
Meaning: Exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.
Example: “we were in a vulnerable position”
Synonyms: Endangered, Unsafe
Antonyms: Resilient, Above
5) Underestimate
Meaning: Estimate (something) to be smaller or less important than it really is.
Example: “the government has grossly underestimated the extent of the problem”
Synonyms: Underrate, Miscalculate
Antonyms: Overestimate, Exaggerate
