WordPress.com



Main causes of PovertyPoverty is one of the biggest social issues in India. It is a curse which affects a significant part of the Indian population. Broadly, can be defined as deprivation of resources. ?India has made considerable progress in bringing down poverty from about 70% of the population at the time of independence to about 22% in 2011-12 (Tendulkar Committee estimates) but it still has ~270 Mn people living in extreme poverty It can be because of multiple factors as detailed below: Rapidly Rising Population:?The population during the last 45 years has increased at the rate of 2.2% per annum. On average 17 million people are added every year to its population which raises the demand for consumption goods considerably.Agrarian distress: ~50% of Indian population depend on Agriculture but it contributes to only ~15% in GDP. Multiple reasons further exacerbate the issues: No land or small size of landholding: Driven by ineffective redistribution of land post- independence and multiple division of landholding over generationsHigh dependence on monsoon: Indian irrigation system is not ripe enough to hedge farmers against the bad spells of monsoons. Rain fed agriculture supports nearly 40% of India’s population (Government of India 2012). Their survival depends on subsistence crops.Disguised unemployment: the underutilization of resources has resulted in low production in the agricultural sector. This brought a downfall in their standard of living.Limited trickle-down effect: The rate of economic development in India has been below the required level. (Inapplicability of Kuznets theory) Therefore, there persists a gap between the level of availability and requirements of goods and services. The net result is poverty.Urban distress: Urban poor in India are largely the overflow of the rural poor. Though the GDP has grown at ~7% annually the employment has grown at less than 2% annually. The migrated poor either do not get a job or work as a casual labor due to skill deficit. Casual laborers are among the most vulnerable in society as they have no job security, no assets, limited skills, sparse opportunities and no surplus to sustain them.Shortage of Capital and Able Entrepreneurship:?Capital and able entrepreneurship have an important role in accelerating the growth. But these are in short supply making it difficult to increase production significantly.Social Factors: The social set up is still backward and is not conducive to faster development. Laws of inheritance, caste system, traditions and customs are putting hindrances in the way of faster development and have aggravated” the problem of poverty. 47% of the rural tribal population lives below the national poverty line, compared to the national average for rural areas of 28%?Self- serving vicious cycle: Widening rich-poor gap: India’s top 1% own more than 50% of the country’s wealth. The unequal distribution of income and assets) has also led to the persistence of poverty in India. All this has created two distinct groups in society: those who possess the means of production and earn good incomes and those who have only their labor to trade for survival. (Thomas Picketty’s theory)Indebtedness: Unemployment or under employment and the casual and intermittent nature of work in both rural and urban areas that compels indebtedness, in turn, reinforces poverty. Farmers committing suicide due to their inability to pay back the loans that they have taken for cultivation and other domestic needs as their crops have failed due to drought or other natural calamities.Price rise: The inflation/stagflation further intensifies the miseryGovernment policies to eradicate povertyThe Indian Constitution and five year plans state social justice as the primary purpose of the developmental strategies of the government. One can find, in all policy documents, emphasis being laid on poverty alleviation and that various strategies need to be adopted by the government for the same1st FYP: “the urge to bring economic and social change under present conditions comes from the fact of poverty and inequalities in income, wealth and opportunity”. 2nd FYP “the benefits of economic development must accrue more and more to the relatively less privileged classes of society”. .The government’s approach to poverty reduction was of three dimensions: Growth oriented Specific poverty alleviation programsProvide minimum basic amenities Growth oriented approach: It was base of policy making in 1950s and 1960s with expectation that rapid GDP and hence per capita increase will have trickle-down effect on all sections of society. Multiple steps were taken for rapid industrial development and transformation of agriculture through green revolution in select underdeveloped regions. The results were not as expected: Population growth has resulted in a very low growth in per capita incomes.The gap between poor and rich has actually widened. The Green Revolution exacerbated the disparities regionally and between large and small farmers. Specific poverty alleviation programs: This second approach has been initiated from the Third Five Year Plan (1961-66) and progressively enlarged since then with each FYP. Few noted Self-employment and wage employment programs areFood for Work in 1970s Rural Employment Generation Program: The Khadi and Village Industries Commission is the nodal body and aims at creating self-employment opportunities in rural areas.Prime Minister’s Rozgar Yojana: educated unemployed from low income families in rural and urban areas can get financial help to set up any kind of enterprisePrime Minister's Employment Generation Program (PMEGP): The above two schemes were merged to form PMEGPSwarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana1997: Creating employment opportunities—both self-employment and wage employment—in urban areas. Apart from financial aid, sincles 1990s SHGs is being promoted. Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) is one rural counterpart of the above scheme. This has now been restructured as National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM). The government has also launched National Urban Livelihood mission (NULM)Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act: In August 2005, the Parliament passed the bill to provide guaranteed wage employment to every household whose adult volunteer is to do unskilled manual work for a minimum of 100 days in a year. In 2011- 12, nearly 4 crore households have been provided employment. In the present context, NRLM, NULM, NREGA are most important livelihood schemeProvide minimum basic amenities: India was among the pioneers in the world to envisage that through public expenditure on social consumption needs. One can trace this approach 5th FYP “even with expanded employment opportunities, the poor will not be able to buy for themselves all the essential goods and services. They have to be supplemented up to at least certain minimum standards by social consumption and investment in the form of essential food grains, education, health, nutrition, drinking water, housing, communications and electricity.”3 major food and nutritional status of the poor are Public Distribution SystemIntegrated Child Development SchemeMidday Meal Scheme3 major infra development schemes are: Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak YojanaPradhan Mantri Gramodaya YojanaValmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana Other social security programs to help a few specific groups: National Social Assistance Program: Pension to old, widows and disabled Critical Assessment?Though the policy towards poverty alleviation has evolved in a progressive manner, over the last five and a half decades, it has not undergone any radical transformation. You can find change in nomenclature, integration or mutations of programDue to unequal distribution of land and other assets, the benefits from direct poverty alleviation program have been appropriated by the non-poorCompared to the magnitude of poverty, the amount of resources allocated for these programmes is not sufficientSince such officials are ill motivated, inadequately trained, corruption prone and vulnerable to pressure from a variety of local elites, the resources are inefficiently used and wastedGovernment policies have also failed to address the vast majority of vulnerable people who are living on or just above the poverty line.Way forward First of all, involvement of the local communities is key to the success of poverty alleviation program. In the absence of community involvement, the programmes are plagued with bureaucratic muddle and corruption at every level. The government has taken a major step in this direction in the form of 73rd and 74th amendment to the constitution to give more powers to PRI.While PRIs exist in all states but PRIs don’t have autonomy and financial powers. Also, the PRI does not have the capacity to handle resources and technical capacity to implement programs. If the PRIs are stronger, then the decentralization of the poverty alleviation programme can take place. For example, in the current PDS, the food grains are supplied every fortnight making it difficult for the poor to buy high quantity of grains at a time. This should be left to the local communities to decide the frequency of selling grains to the BPL.Further, targeting the BPL is a major issue, where targeting error is high resulting in seepage of benefits to non-poor. Geographical targeting in very backward districts of the country may be an easy way of targeting the poor. In another setting like a slum, it may be the female-headed households that can be targeted. Similarly, all the pavement dwellers can be targeted for the TPDS in large cities.On the positive side, micro-enterprise under the self-employment programme was successful because of the role of SHGs and the same should be promotedAt the macro-level, there is a need to co-ordinate a myriad of poverty alleviation programmes of the central government and the State governments. The transfer of central funds to the States for different programmes should be efficient ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download