Poverty is a situation where a section of the society, having no fault of their own, is denied of even basic necessities of life. There is no one single definition of poverty and every definition can be said to be arbitrary. However, the most common measure of poverty is based on income – a person is poor if his income level falls below some minimum level, usually called the “poverty line”. Each country uses lines appropriate to its level of development and societal norms and values. There are three perspectives of poverty – Income perspective, Basic needs perspective and Capability perspective. The definition of poverty is debatable as it is a relative term and the indicators vary according to the context – rural, urban, tribal and coastal. Mostly the poverty definition and indicators arrived at by the policy makers from their
