The causes of poverty lie in the institutional and social factors that mark the life of the poor. The poor are deprived of quality education and unable to acquire skills which fetch better incomes. Also access to health care is denied to the poor. The main victims of caste, religious and other discriminatory practices are poor. These can be caused as a result of (i) social, economic and political inequality (ii) social exclusion (iii) unemployment (iv) indebtedness (v) unequal distribution of wealth. Aggregate poverty is just the sum of individual poverty. Poverty is also explained by general, economy-wide problems, such as low capital formation,  lack of infrastructure, lack of demand, pressure of population (v) lack of social/ welfare nets.

There are two statements marked as Assertion (A) and Reason (R). Mark your answer as per the options given below.

Assertion: The existing mechanism for determining the Poverty Line in India now takes into consideration social factors that trigger and perpetuate poverty such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, discrimination or lack of civil and political freedoms.
Reasoning: Development is about removing the obstacles to the things that a person can do in life, such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, or lack of civil and political freedoms.

Assertion (A) is not true but Reasoning (R) is correct.

The correct answer is option 4: Assertion (A) is not true but Reasoning (R) is correct.

Assertion: The existing mechanism for determining the Poverty Line in India now takes into consideration social factors that trigger and perpetuate poverty such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, discrimination or lack of civil and political freedoms. This is false. The existing mechanism for determining the Poverty Line also does not take into consideration social factors that trigger and perpetuate poverty such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, discrimination or lack of civil and political freedoms.

Reasoning: Development is about removing the obstacles to the things that a person can do in life, such as illiteracy, ill health, lack of access to resources, or lack of civil and political freedoms. This is true.