The characteristics and reasons for urban poverty are manifold and seem to repeat across class structures: migration, culture shock, real estate costs and unrealistic expectations of city life, a lack of financial education, corporate cultures that perpetuate stereotypical workforces, a glamourised entrepreneurial culture that focuses on icons of spending instead of struggle and economically and politically, the rise of the cashless credit economy and the demise of the thrift economy and its conservative icons.

The book will use the case studies of young Indians, typically in their first or second jobs, migrants to major Indian metros, living in these conditions. The reasons for the poverty they experience are varied and influenced by the industries they work for, their family backgrounds, other financial obligations, social stratas and peer groups. There are so far, no studies available for this in India and is a rising phenomenon in the USwhere it has been called Șpoverty with no name. Gayatris short piece on the Urban Poor crossed 1.1 million views on Buzzfeed - the highest number for any Indian feature article to date.

About the Author

Gayatri Jayaraman is a Mumbai-based single mom, senior journalist and editor. She began her career with Femina magazine as its Hyderabad bureau chief and went on to DNA, and Mint Lounge. While a senior editor with India Today magazine in Mumbai, she was their resident art writer, book reviewer, apart from covering politics, crime, culture and society. She was also instrumental in conceptualising DailyO, the India Today groups award winning digital opinion website, as well as the inaugural edition of the India Today Art Awards. As a prolific writer who specialises in spotting social trends that typically stand at the cusp of socio-cultural, economic, and political forces, her best known articles have been firsts, cover stories for the most respected publications in the country, and have ranged from revealing the hypocrisy of the industry around Silk Smitha, the lives of sailors kidnapped by pirates, to the crumbling of Kamathipura, the caste politics of millet crops, to the secret sexism in Indian science, how declining food diversity impacts malnutrition as well as the seminal study of the life of a surrogate in India. She is known for getting inside social situations in terms of research and insight and her features frequently go viral.