Causes for rural poverty:

The causes for rural poverty can be divided into two parts.

1. Natural causes:.

• India has been an agricultural country from beginning. Even today majority of the population lives in villages and is dependent on agriculture.
• In India, agriculture is mainly dependent on natural factors like rain, weather conditions, etc. Frequent droughts, uncertainty of monsoon and floods result -in low production and less and uncertain income for people involved in agriculture. Hence, nature has become a cause for poverty.

2. Demographic factors:

After independence and during the planning period India’s economy grew rapidly. With this India also made rapid increase in the health services.

• Owing to all these factors, India’s death -rate declined but birth-rate did not reduce. This led to population explosion.
• Due to high population the per capita income did not increase much. Low per capita income and big size of families resulted in poor quality of life.
• There were insufficient employment opportunities for the fast growing population. As a result, people were forced to work in low wages and this made them poorer.