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Synopsis In the decades since Independence, India has made progress in terms of improvements in basic social indicators such as health, nutrition and education-life expectancy has nearly doubled, infant mortality has been halved and literacy rates have risen. However, a considerable proportion of the population still lives in conditions of extreme poverty. The majority of the poor in India are landless agricultural workers. The incidence of poverty is also linked to caste--members of socially disadvantaged groups like Dalits and Adivasis constitute a large proportion of people below the poverty line. Apart from lack of access to productive assets, poverty is characterised by lack of access to information and knowledge, to natural resources, to basic rights and services such as education and health, and to the structures and processes of governance. Poverty thus results in exclusion and marginalisation from the development process.