Why there is so much poverty in India?

I have always wondered why there is so much poverty in India while the country as a whole is marching very quickly to become a top-3 economy in the world. When you try to look deeper, most of the reasons have to do with our development model. If we talk in medical terms, the policy makers mostly focus addressing on the symptoms while the root cause is not addressed.

Firstly, the governance model that we have adopted, which is the British model requires the state to guarantee the basic necessities like education & health-care to everyone. But these are not taken care of even in the urban areas. The rural areas fare much worse because their so-called representatives bother only about their own welfare and not the welfare of the people who elected them. In the urban areas, though the people are more aware, the government's delivery mechanisms for the basic necessities do not reach the intended recipient due to large scale corruption.

Secondly, the role of non-governmental organizations in filling the delivery gaps also leaves much to be desired. The primary reason for this is that most of the non-governmental organizations are set up mostly to swindle money from donors. With very few organizations really working for the cause, the donors are also very reluctant to part with their money for such causes. This makes it much more difficult for the people below the poverty line to be able to work towards crossing the line.

So it is the corruption in the system which seems to be the real bottleneck. To make things worse, the corruption is so well entrenched in India, we experience it at all levels. In spite of all these hurdles, some people & organizations have managed to help people in need. But very few of these beneficiaries even think about giving back to the society which helped them prosper. Some of them don't even acknowledge the help. Hence, I am forced to conclude that the real reason is that the concept of giving back does not really exist in India and this is the root cause for continued poverty in India.

What can we do to see the change we want? We see a lot of people donating to the religious institutions very generously. Some of these institutions are really doing some good work, but most of them end up as tools in the hands of political class. The best work-around that I can think of is to encourage more professions to join these non-governmental organizations. In some of the more developed countries, people make a career working for these organizations. Once professionalism comes in, we will see a lot of innovative delivery mechanisms which are fool-proof.

We have also seen a lot of corporates creating trusts which will engage in improving the basic living conditions of people including education, health-care, poverty-alleviation etc. Some of these efforts involve professionals, but mostly after-retirement ones. This needs to change. The corporates need to attract younger crowd with better compensation so that more people are attracted towards these career options. We are seeing some action on this front, but a lot more needs to be done.

To conclude, there is continued poverty in India because the system is not making a concerted effort to provide for the basic necessities of the under-privileged. Some efforts in that direction lack professional touch and this is what is making these efforts un-successful on a large scale. If these efforts are run like any other corporate project with professionals managing it, we can expect to see some real difference on the ground. Till then India will continue to have the maximum number of people below poverty anywhere in the world.