Poverty, Politics and Development-Western Europe in First Half of 19th Century and South Asia in Second Half of the 20th

Western Europe in First Half of 19th Century and South Asia in Second Half of the 20th K N Raj Poverty is now the dominant theme of much of current economic literature on countries such as India. The politics of these countries also seem to take its cue from poverty, through appeals to the poor and through various policies and programmes for their relief. But the precise ways in which the economics and the politics of poverty interact and condition the processes of change are not clear, In order to understand this interaction between economic and non-economic phenomena, which are nowhere more strikingly evident than in the so-called developing countries, an attempt is made here to look back in history and see how far poverty was a problem in western Europe in the 19th century in the sense it is today in south Asia, what its effects were on the politics of that period, and how the politics and economics of poverty affected the course of development of countries like France and Britain.