Problems of Village India: A Study of the Poverty and Drug Addiction in

Buraliya Village of Madhya Pradesh

 MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Poverty has been a major issue of concern for our country. For a very long time, India used to be the
country with the highest number of poor people in the world. However, this has changed over the past few
years. In recent years, India has been improving in terms of poverty reduction. 55% of the Indian
population was recognised as MPI poor in 2005-06. The number of poor people in the country at the time
was more than 630 million. In the following 10 years, India has halved its poverty rate. In absolute terms,
the number of poor people in the country has reduced from 630 million in 2005-06 to 360 million in
2015-16.

According to a study by Oxford University, this reduction in poverty has been made possible by the
increased focus towards sanitation, better nutrition and acquisition of more assets by the populace. The
study utilised the MPI method to measure poverty. As compared to the income method, the MPI method
has been found to be a better measure of poverty by a lot of researchers and statisticians across the globe.

“The global MPI was developed by OPHI with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for inclusion in
UNDP’s flagship Human Development Report in 2010. It has been published in the HDR ever since.”
(Ophi.org.uk, 2019) “The global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) is an international measure of
acute poverty covering over 100 developing countries. It complements traditional income-based poverty
measures by capturing the severe deprivations that each person faces at the same time with respect to
education, health and living standards.” (Ophi.org.uk, 2019)

It evaluates poverty at an individual level. If a household is found to be destitute in more of either ten or a
third of the indicators (weighted), they are identified by the index to be ‘MPI poor’, and the degree – or
scale – of their poverty is calculated by the number of deprivations they are expecting.

MPI can be used to create an all-inclusive picture of people living in poverty. It also allows comparisons
across within various different regions by ethnic group, rural/urban location, as well as other key
household and community characteristics. This makes it indispensable as an analytical tool to recognize
the most vulnerable households – the poorest of the poor which could further enable the governments and
policy makers to formulate policies and target the available resources most effectively. We, for our
research, wanted to study and identify how MPI evaluates poverty and whether it is a true picture of
poverty or not.

We also looked into areas of alcohol and drug abuse. While doing our research, we also found that a lot of
studies and research papers tend to show a positive correlation with poverty and an increase in alcohol
and substance abuse. According to these studies, as the level of poverty increases, the number of people
indulged in alcohol and substance abuse also increases. It was also noticed that most of these studies
mentioned small towns and secluded villages as more prone to alcohol and substance abuse. Such
information was seemed unusual as people living in such places would have even lesser disposable
income. This motivated us to include the aspect of drug abuse in our study as well.

Our study aims to measure poverty in a multidimensional space and also study the extent and effect of
drug usage for a village Buraliya located in Mhow tehsil of Indore district of Madhya Pradesh. As per the
Population Census 2011, Buraliya is a medium sized village with a total of 98 families residing in it with
a total population of 536 out of which 280 are males while 256 are females. “Average Sex Ratio of
Buraliya village is 914 which is lower than Madhya Pradesh state average of 931. Child Sex Ratio for the
Buraliya as per census is 1025, higher than Madhya Pradesh average of 918. Buraliya village has lower
literacy rate compared to Madhya Pradesh. In 2011, literacy rate of Buraliya village was 49.01 %
compared to 69.32 % of Madhya Pradesh. In Buraliya Male literacy stands at 60.83 % while female
literacy rate was 35.81 %.” ("Buraliya Village Population - Mhow - Indore, Madhya Pradesh", 2019)

These statistics made Buraliya even more apt for conducting the study as they provided us with reliable
data to compare our findings, evaluate the level of poverty and assess the extent of alcohol and drug abuse
in the village.

LITERATURE REVIEW

“India reduced multidimensional poverty significantly, achieving significant reductions in each of the ten
indicators, with the biggest improvements seen in access to electricity, housing conditions, access to safe
drinking water and improved sanitation facilities.” (Alkire, S., & Seth, S. 2013, p. 4) The paper discusses
how the multidimensional poverty in India decreased faster than the income poverty in the country. It
looks into the various different factors that affect both these types of poverty and examines how and
where this change has taken place.

The main focus point for this paper is the methodology. It constructs a BPL headcount by identifying poor
people through the income method of the 2002 BPL census data. Using both, the BPL 2002 and NFHS
data, the paper recognises the families that would be a part of the BPL group if NFHS data were used. It
then compares these new group of BPL families to those that would be found by utilizing the same set of
variables by the Alkire Foster multidimensional poverty methodology. (Alkire, Sabina and Seth, Suman,
2008) The paper finds the multidimensional poverty index to be a better measure of poverty as compared
to the BPL and NFHS methods.
Since a single indicator is not capable of capturing all the complexities of development, indices are
usually estimated by evaluating performance with respect to several different indicators. For this, the
identification of variables to be included in the index, the range to be used for scaling and weights to be
allocated to the different variables are required. Any changes to any of these factors may lead to very
varied results. (Mehta, Aasha Kapur, 2003) The paper focuses more on the methodology used by the MPI
method, which method to use to find MPI and how to best implement it. It gives a more comprehensive
view of poverty in the country by using district-level estimates rather than state level. It shows the
disparities between state and district level poverty such as some states identified as not so poor contained
one or more very poor districts, etc.

Our study covers a much smaller populace. Due to certain geographical, time and monetary constraints,
our study is focused only on a single village. We use the MPI method to find out the level of poverty in
that village and try to identify its causes.

METHODOLOGY

For collecting survey data for the experiment, standard questionnaires were used, one about households
and another about drug abuse. The questionnaire included some basic questions that included the age,
gender, height, weight and the educational qualification of all the family members belonging to a family.
Most questions were simple and had choices for the interviewee to choose from in order to avoid
confusion. Questions on the number of children going to school were asked to gain an understanding of
the educational level. Questions on the the availability and nature of water, electricity, bathrooms and fuel
were asked to gain an understanding of their living conditions. There were also some questions in which
the members had to provide their opinion as to what poverty is?

All data collected were primary as the team collected the data by personally interviewing one member
from each family. Eight families were randomly picked from the village for the survey that was required
for the MPI data. The member that was chosen for interview was preferably one trusted senior member
from each household who had the required information. The data provided by these members were
recorded for later interpretation. Five families were chosen to analyse and getting information on drug
addiction and drug abuse in the village.

Any possible bias that could occur while the responses were recorded were avoided. A lot of care was
taken in making the respondent feel comfortable when answering questions, as most of these, especially
the ones related to drug abuse, were sensitive questions that could have been deliberately answered in the
negative. Answers were also compared and verified to similar answers provided by the other members in
order to check for consistency and factual accuracy in the data.

These responses were then translated into numbers and indexes for the computation of the MPI and for
inferences about the quality and frequency of drug abuse in the village.

RESULTS AND FINDINGS

The survey was conducted in 8 households. The households were discrete in terms of the number of
members in the households and living standard. It was astonishing to see a significant difference in a
population of less than 600 according to the 2011 census. The living standard of the people varied largely
on the basis of Electricity, Cooking Fuel, and the condition of their House.

We used MPI i.e. Multidimensional Poverty Index to understand the state of poverty in the Village. MPI
helped us to look at poverty through different prisms besides the income of the Household. Since data was
collected through a survey, it was easier to analyze data through MPI.

As given in the introduction, MPI has different criteria for analyzing poverty i.e health, education and
living standard. Each criterion has a weight of ⅓, which means each section in the criteria is given weight
age accordingly. Health has two sections i.e child mortality and nutrition which implies that each section
has a weight of ⅙. Education has two factors which mean that the score is ⅙ for each section and living
standard has six sections vis-a-vis cooking fuel, toilet, electricity, water, floor, asset, therefore each
section has a weight age of 1/18.

The binary value of 1 was assigned when the household was found deprived in the certain indicator, and 0
was assigned when it wasn’t deprived. The findings that were collected through the verbal survey are
listed below in the form of a table.

Household Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

No. of People 5 7 5 5 4 21 4 13

Child Mortality 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Nutrition 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Education 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Children Enrolled 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Cooking Fuel 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1

Toilet 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

Water 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Electricity 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0

Floor 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 1

Asset 1 1 1 `1 1 0 1 1

Score Ci 0.27 0.22 0.11 0.16 0.16 0.05 0.33 0.22

 Poor?(Ci>=0.33) N N N N N N Y N

Censored Score Ci(k) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.33 0

The household whose deprivation score was more than or equal to 0.33 is considered poor according to
MPI. Through our results, we find that one household is considered poor with a score of 0.33. There were
four members in the household.

We also find that there is a huge variation in the number of people living in each household with Joint
Families having upto 21 members.

We achieved the multidimensional Headcount ratio(H) of 0.0625, which tells us that 6% of the population
is deprived in the village. We also learn that the intensity of poverty is 33%, which implies that the poor
were deprived in 33% of the weighted indicators. We find that the that the MPI (HxA), which is
calculated through the Headcount ratio(H) and Intensity of poverty(A) is 2.06%. It means, that 2.06% is
the proportion of the deprivation that the poor experience in the society of the village compared to the
total deprivation that the society can experience in the following indicators measured above. We observed
that the households were mainly deprived in the sector of water, cooking fuel, and assets. It was observed
that the reason many households were deprived in the assets indicator was that they were not holding any
car or tractor as their holdings. Even though the MPI of the Village is low, the village was considered
poor, due to lack of employment and lack of irrigation services.

It was observed that no household was deprived of the indicator of health and education due to the
increasing population of children that have started going to school in the Village. According to our
observation, the child mortality rate and malnourishment in the Village were negligible.

Through the survey, we also asked the villagers regarding the major cause of poverty. We found that
according to Villagers the major cause of poverty was seasonal employment and lack of drinking water
services.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

The Results through MPI seem to imply that the village is pretty well-off as only 6% of the village is
considered to be acutely poor. The MPI relies on the different weights of different resources such as
Electricity, Water, Schooling. But in most cases these facilities are interrelated in contributing to people’s
lives. If one asks any of the families whether they have problems due to poverty, every household can
write a list.
But MPI has managed to bring out some key features in this village. Almost every household sends its
children to school, either to the local school within the village, or a boarding school in a neighbouring
town. The reason could be that the village of Buraliya, does not have many opportunities and is probably
not very sustainable for the future generations. This is because the only job available to the residents is
farming, and that is seasonal. So people work through a season and try to survive off harvested crop
during the other doing nothing as there is no other available source of work, not even Manual Labour. It is
also not very profitable, as the lack of proper water supply affects soil fertility and harvest. Hence it is
possible that these conditions could have encouraged families to send their children to school in hopes of
better lives.
Most Households have their own Toilets and every household that does attributes this facility to the
Government. Some of the Households stated that due to cleanliness and sewage issues they did not use
the toilet much, also the lack of running and sufficient water affects sanitation.
Almost all the Households relied on Firewood for their daily cooking needs, some households mentioned
that the government did provide gas cylinders to some households, but after those got over they switched
back to firewood. Most Houses were also “kutcha” as its inhabitants could not afford proper materials, but
some households were slowly making their houses “pucca.” Some families also lived in houses provided
by the Government.
Electricity is one amenity almost every house had, and along with electricity, TV was a common feature
despite lack of other facilities. It goes to show how even a remote village is connected through Television.
In terms of assets as mentioned a television, radio, phone was owned by almost every household this can
be attributed to the almost constant Electricity Supply to the village. What the village lacked in assets was
mainly in the Car/Tractor sector.
So the MPI mainly finds issues in the living standards of the people, and almost all the issues can be
attributed to the lack of water supply. No water means farming cannot be carried out properly, toilets can’t
be utilised properly, school going children will have to sacrifice some of their time to walk hours to get
water for their household. Another important amenity which the villagers lack is connectivity and
transportation to other villages and towns. Through the survey it was found that the only way villagers to
travel to a main town was through a bus they called the “Magic.” But this bus was highly irregular and
could not be depended on. There are also no proper Hospitals in close vicinity according to the locals.
They either have to visit a local hospital in a neighbouring village or a hospital in Mhow. This lack of
transportation and proper medical facilities caused the death of the brother of a member of Household 1,
who could not take his brother to the Hospital in time, as he didn’t even have a bike. The brother wasn’t a
child and hence this death is not recorded in the Child Mortality section of the survey. But it shows how
lack of basic facilities like Healthcare and Transportation can have dire consequences.
According to our data the Households seem to not lack nutrition and are healthy, but we must keep in
mind that the figures for height and weight are mostly approximations gleaned by visual assessment and
hence prone to many inaccuracies. This is because many villagers didn’t even know their proper age, let
alone their Heights and Weights. Therefore we cannot read much into the nutrition and food habits of the
village.

CONCLUSION

In Conclusion, the Multidimensional Poverty Index is a very useful form of studying Poverty and
comparing results with different regions and even countries. But as we can see in Buraliya it does not
always portray the real picture. Despite having access to Electricity, Toilets and sending their children to
school; the lack of water weighs down heavily on the villagers. It affects their livelihood and their
economic status. Most people have accepted this harsh reality of their life, when asked they speak of
Politicians who’ve made big promises but have disappeared the moment results have been declared, they
speak of a failed pumps which now run completely dry. Lack of Water and Unemployment are the major
causes why the village is stuck in this vicious cycle of Poverty. And the older generation has now grown
accustomed to this way of life, sometimes turning to cigarettes, bidis to dull the monotony and
hardships(As is discussed in the next section). But it is still heartening to see that despite all these
hardships, families still make efforts to ensure that their children get educated. Families which have
motorbikes, travel for almost an hour daily to drop and pick their children from school. So there is hope
that the new educated generation can find sustainable solutions and give back to their hometown.
 DRUG ABUSE

Out of the five families interviewed for obtaining the data, four families had adult male members who
admitted being addicted to smoking. Beedis are very common in the village while there are people who
use cigarettes at times too. The males of three families admitted to indulging alcohol frequently whereas
the adult males of the other families admitted to having alcohol once in a while.

The reasons that were reported by the users included them using it for recreation or out of habit. One
member even admitted to using these drugs for the sake of reducing his pain caused because of his
paralysis. Those who were not using drugs replied that the others who were taking these drugs took it
because they were addicted to it. Other reasons that they provided included the fact that no one was there
to advise them on the harmful effects of drinking and smoking; when they feel they have nothing else to
do and while drinking or smoking for recreational purposes.

For the simple yes or no type questions, these people also claimed that no one else advised them against
drinking or smoking. None of them felt guilty after consuming alcohol. They drank alcohol completely
for recreational purposes and had nothing to regret after indulging in them. One member also stated that
he could not start his day without alcohol. Neither did they see any reason to stop using these drugs nor
did they try attempting to stop using these drugs.

Additionally, they provided some responses including the fact that most of the drug users of the village
were over 60 years old. Since they had nothing better to do, they indulged in drugs. Some even claimed
that after the new government, the facilities around the village had improved. This meant that it led to a
decrease in the consumption of such drugs in the village according to them.

Some of the unexpected results included how women claimed not to know anything about the drug use in
the village. They claimed to have no idea on this matter. Some even claimed that there were no drugs in
the entire village and that no one was addicted to it. The men were relied upon to give honest opinions on
their own usage.

From our findings on the issue of drug abuse in the village, we saw that while smoking is prevalent
amongst some of the elderly people, particularly males, other drugs and narcotics have remained
untouched by the village community. There is only an equivalent level of alcohol consumption among the
elderly males. Children and women are completely kept away from substance abuse, as they are believed
to be contributing to the society at large, women by running household errands and children by pursuing
education through school.

Quantitatively, as per our inferences, rarely 4-5 men above the age group of 70-80 have been addicted to
smoking, though none has been addicted to alcohol. Among the smokers, many have admitted that they
got addicted to it during work hours in such occupations as driving and manual labour, and slowly
developed an everyday habit. Some of them even tried to quit, but could not. However, alcohol was found
to have been consumed only by a few males, that too in the case of an occasional get-together or any
similar sort of event, but there was no serious level of addiction to alcohol.
Smokers were revealed to have mostly inculcated this habit through their friends in distant professions.
For example, one of the smokers, who was surviving with his left side completely paralysed, mentioned
that as a driver, he was introduced to smoking by his accomplices in the driving business, and an attempt
to leave the habit instead caused him paralysis on the left side of his body. As a result, he had to continue
smoking in order to sustain himself.

Talking about alcohol addiction, one of the five males mentioned that alcohol was not very commonplace
in the village and that consumption would mostly be restricted to a few get-togethers between friends
from the same village or from distant or nearby villages. There was no serious level of alcoholism as
those found drinking did not take too much of it so as to suffer from alcohol-related problems and the
adverse side-effects on their health.

However, apart from smoking and alcohol, there are no other narcotics which were found to have
influenced villagers in Buraliya. Both soft and hard drugs were unavailable, and children were distanced
from even smoking and drinking, as the villagers seemed to have enough knowledge that it would rather
destroy their childhood and prevent their education.

Overall, we can say that there is not much of significant drug abuse among villagers in Buraliya, though a
handful of senior citizens in the age group of 70-80 years do indulge in smoking and drinking, though the
overall consumption of alcohol is quite “controlled” here, as there is not much of habitual or daily
drinking, and the frequency is relatively low. Smokers, however, do suffer from a few tobacco-related
problems, and the kind of addiction that they suffer from is at a relatively high level, implying that is very
difficult, and even next to impossible, to overcome this problem.

From the three families that had adult males who indulged in frequent consumption of alcohol, it was
found that there was no one to educate them about the severe issues that it causes, though the
consumption was enough controlled to ensure that it did not occur during daytime, which is when all the
villagers are supposed to carry out their everyday duties. Similarly lay the case with smokers, who were
unaware of the harmful effects of nicotine addiction as they could not be educated on the issue.

The survey also revealed that women in families were largely ignorant of the drug problems around them,
and of the very few who had a good knowledge about it, and admitted that their husbands would smoke
and drink regularly or occasionally, it never really helped.

Thus in conclusion, in spite of the levels of poverty in the village, drug addiction is a huge cause of
concern. People spend their already meagre income on alcohol and cigarettes which means no
improvement in their living standards. This behaviour needs to be changed in order to bring about a
positive change in similar rural villages.
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