India has implemented various economic policies in the last seven decades. Providing minimum basic needs to the people and reduction of poverty have been the major aims of independent India. The pattern of development that the successive five year plans envisaged laid emphasis on the upliftment of the poorest of the poor, integrating the poor into the mainstream and achieving a minimum standard of living for all. Poverty is not only a challenge for India, as more than one fifth of the world’s poor live in India alone; but also for the world, where about 300 million people are not able to meet their basic needs. Poverty has many faces, which have been changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation that people want to escape. So, poverty is a call to action — for the poor and the wealthy alike — a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.

Economists identify the poor on the basis of ___________.

occupation and ownership of assets

The correct answer is Option 3: occupation and ownership of assets

"Economists identify the poor on the basis of their occupation and ownership of assets. They state that the rural poor work mainly as landless agricultural labourers, cultivators with very small landholdings, or landless labourers, who are engaged in a variety of non-agricultural jobs and tenant cultivators with small land holdings. The urban poor are largely the overflow of the rural poor who had migrated to urban areas in search of alternative employment and livelihood, labourers who do a variety of casual jobs and the self-emloyed who sell a variety of things on roadsides and are engaged in various activities."