Community Natural Resource Management and Poverty in India-Evidence from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh

In the year 2000, the United Nations, after surveying all the economic, social, health and environmental problems of our planet, announced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). They agreed on eight goals, the first of which was declared to be the eradication of poverty. This was of immediate significance to all those concerned about poverty in India, which, going by the World Bank poverty standard of a per capita income of less than US$ 1.25 per day, implied that India contained one-third of the world's poor (2010 figures). The poor thus formed 42 per cent of the Indian population and lived mostly in rural areas. Despite recent overall increases in India's growth rates and an official downward revision of poverty estimates, the absolute number of rural Indians living below the poverty line is estimated at about 400 millions (2010 figures).