Poverty is getting worse all over the world - yet there is a strong tendency to brush it under the carpet. The aim of this incisive essay is to convince our generation of the social and ethical necessity to reverse current trends towards immiseration. Rajni Kothari explores the meanings of poverty in all its aspects, social, political and psychological as well as economic, and analyses the role of the state and the market, both nationally and internationally, in deepening poverty. He examines the declining access of the poor to the power structures of society: the phenomenon of disempowerment.