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10 Soc. Change 3 (1980)

handle is hein.journals/sclcnge10 and id is 1 raw text is: Social Change : March-June 1980 Some Cognitive and Motivational Concomitants of Poverty Durganand Sinha* Abstract Researches in India and abroad have demonstrated that the eco-cultural disadvantage and poverty adversely influence the development of cognitive abilities and motivation. The disadvantaged becomes increasingly poorer in his psychologic11 adequacy to cope with the problems of his life and turms fatalistic and develops self-pity. **Largely based on the Theme Paper presented to the All-India Conference on FPoverty, Ecology, Cognitive and Motivational Factors in Adolescents, Zakir Husain College, University of Delhi, March 30 and 31, 1979. *Professor and Head, Department of Psychology, Allahabad University ALLAHABAD-211 002 In April 1974 an interdisciplinary seminar in Hyderabad was held to discuss who are the poor. Most of the social scientists who had come as participants had travelled by air and were staying in reasonable comfort in the University Guest House. In the preparation of the seminar good deal of money had been spent. Many journalists, scholars and student leaders questioned the very wisdom of holding such a conference when the amount spent could have been more gainfully utilised in ameliorating the lot of some who were poor. It was with considerable justification contended that the phenomenon of poverty was so widespread that one did not require a theory or need to discuss the methodology for its study. This reminds one of the reaction of Karl Marx to the publication of Proudhon's two-volume treatise on economic inequality entitled Philosophy ofPoverty. Marx was so enraged that he wrote a rejoinder and called it Poverty of Philosophy. More recently in 1967 when Allen was editing the papers presented during a conference held in Madison on Psychological Factors in Poverty, Pearl was so provoked that he wrote a paper called Poverty of Psychology: an indictment which Allen (1970) included in his book. There is considerable justification in decrying purely academic exercise on poverty. It is such a widespread as well as a national problem, its psychological cost is so great and its concomitants and consequences so harmful that merely an academic analysis of the phenomenon would be a futile exercise representing a deplorable ivory-tower attitude. It necessitates an attitude which is avowedly problem-oriented with the explicit objective of doing something about the phenomenon and evolving some intervention strategies for its solution. Pearl (1970) is right in lamenting that as a group psychologists have been guilty of refusing to accept the challenge that poverty has presented to the society, not simply in countries with unparalled affluence but even in those that are underdevloped. Moscovici's (1972) contention that most psychological researches contain no reference at all to the real society in which people live is very true of most psychological studies conducted in India. With about 40% of rural and 50% of urban population living below the poverty line (Dandekar and Rath, 1971) what could be a more socially relevant, topic for research? There is, however, a healthy trend visible as reflected in distinct effort to plan and conduct studies with the specific purpose of utilizing the results for dealing with some aspects of the problem of poverty by developing intervention programmes for moderating and compensating its negative consequences. Poverty is a phenomenon of multiple determination. It is true that economic system and social structure mainly underlie its existence. But it has inevitable pschological concomitants which have detrimental influence on the general functioning of the individual rendering him less capable of overcoming poverty by his personal effort. It would be wrong to suggest that one is poor because of his psychological limitations and thereby providing a psychological justification of his poverty. The pooxr is certainly the victim of the socio-economic system. But it is also true that a life of poverty in its turn produces many psychological ill-df;cts rendering the individual incompetent to cope with his problems. A kind of vicious circle is created; economic and social factors generate poverty which in turn makes the individual incapable of coping with poverty. What is emphasized is that rather than being its cause, psychological consequences accentuate the condition of poverty. It is contented that a unidisciplinary approach to the problem is tnot adequate to combat the phenomenon because it gives only a lop-sided view of a very complex social problem. As it has rightly been observed, any diagnosis and programme of eliminating it Lave a significantly.greater likelihood of success if relevant systems at all levels of 3

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