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Popular and conventional discourses conceptualize poverty as an economic condition merely characterized by inadequacy of income to individuals or households. This is in fact a subsistence view of poverty. Recent thought and policy processes have gradually transcended such a mundane and dominantly growth oriented � poverty line - meaning of poverty. Nowadays poverty is a human condition that is more than mere material inadequacy. It is considered to be inadequacy of �capability� and a condition of �disadvantage�. As an inadequacy of capability it is a condition of deprivation that results in making people incapable to fend and obtain their material as well as social entitlements needed for both subsistence and progress. Secondly the approach to poverty as a condition of �disadvantage�, identifies five types of disadvantages namely: �lack of assets� covering material possessions (including resources), �physical weakness� resulting from malnutrition and inadequate health care, �isolation� resulting from information asymmetry � inability to access knowledge, �vulnerability� due to social de facto absence of rights orchestrated structurally by centers of wealth and power and ultimately, �powerlessness�. In sum these modern approaches to the concept of poverty surely appear comprehensive consisting of �entitlements, empowerment, minority rights, protection of plural cultures and human development.� The commonality of both the perspectives is that poverty is not merely economic (material) but also social and political, that is poverty includes material and non-material deprivation. It implies the transition of the poverty concept from a growth perspective to a development perspective. Hence anti poverty policy prescriptions must visualize the condition of poverty and the poor in all the three dimensions and the process chosen and eventually implemented must accommodate all the three sets of challenges.