What does rural poverty look like in India ?

"India is by far the country with the largest number of people living under the international USD 1.90-a-day poverty line (224 million), more than 2.5 times as many as the 86 million in Nigeria, which has the second-largest population of the poor worldwide," a World Bank report said.

I have been thinking about what the USD 1.9 per person per day poverty line established by the World Bank actually means in the case of India. On the face of it sounds like a lot comparatively - Rs. 128 per person per day at market exchange rate. But the World Bank uses purchasing power parity in applying the poverty line to each country, which in India's case translates to 17.12 Rs. purchasing power per US dollar. 

So 1.9 USD is equivalent to a poverty line of 33 Rs. which is similar to what the Rangarajan Committee too recommended to the Government to adopt for rural areas. This translates to Rs. 5000 per month expenditure per family of 5 people. Based on my observations in a group of 10 villages in Chattarpur district of Bundelkhand in 2016, backed by media reports which spike during drought, I can say that rural poverty looks like this (people living at or near the poverty line) :

• Some families skip one of the two meals routine in rural areas - brunch and evening. 
• Meals in North India consist of roti (bread baked immediately before eating) and potato vegetable for the most part. Very few households grown their own green vegetables and those few who do, sell them if they can. Poor families have no purchasing power to afford to buy green vegetables and do without. 
• Dals are had once a week in poor households. 
• Even if there is milk available from 1-2 cattle, it is sold for use in nearby towns, and is not retained even to make tea with.
• There is no question of buying fruits and nuts ofcourse.. if your land or your neighbour's has fruit trees, you may get to eat some during the season..  but not everyone has fruit trees.. 
• Children do go to Government schools but are likely to drop off after some years as families are unable to support them with schooling. 
• Poor families have few clothes and are inadequately protected during winter. 
• Polluting kerosene lamps are still the preferred source of light at night when electricity is not available.
• Families still use open areas for toilet. 
• There is no money for acquiring skills or investing in a small business. Labour work that is found is intermittent and the wages are small and delayed. 
• Loans are taken at very high interest from local money lenders in emergencies such as major illness or the repair of one's house.

It is obvious that the poverty line does not allow for even enough nutrition, let alone other needs such as education or health care. In India, children living at $1.90 still have a 60% chance of being malnourished (the very high rates of malnourishment of children in our country, in fact show that poor children are in fact malnourished). An “ethical poverty line” has been suggested by Researchers where in order to achieve normal human life expectancy, people need roughly three times the existing poverty line. If this ethical poverty line was applied across the world, some 60 % of humanity would be below it.