Essay Writing on " Poverty Alleviation"

Eradication of poverty has long been the overarching objective of Indian economic development. But even after fifty years of planning, more than a fourth of our population is still living below extremely modest poverty line.

Looking back at the Plans, we see that except for the first Five Year Plan, every other Five Year Plans have envisaged more than 5 percent growth in national income per year. But none of these goals have been reached. Till 1980-81, our average rate of growth moved around 3.5 percent per annum. It is this massive failure to achieve rapid growth that is the root cause of our failure to eliminate poverty.

Besides relying on the strategy of rapid growth, we also adopted other poverty alleviation policies like transfers of various kinds that were supposed to augment the earned income of poor households. The two main transfer programmes in India are the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the provision of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS).

There are several income augmenting programmes as well. The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA), Training of Youth and Self-Employment Programmes (now merged into Swarn Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna) and two public works programmes for employment generation, namely Jawahar Rozgar Yojna (JRY) and the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS), Area based programmes include Drought Prone Areas Programme (DPAP) and Watershed Programmes. Some of these programmes overlap with each other.

On these programmes, spending by the Central government account for around 8.5 per cent of the Central plan budgetary expenditure or a modest 1.45 percent of the GDP (1997-2002), which is inadequate as compared to the magnitude of the problem.

STRATEGY TO ALLEVIATE POVERTY

1. Adopt pro-poor growth strategy, which create rapidly expanding job opportunities in the rural areas.

2. Address the inefficiency and inequity in the health and education sector by involving NGOs.

3. Empower panchayats in decision – making.

4. Promote faster agricultural growth by expanding irrigation watershed management and land reforms.

5. Expand employment programme such as EGS, FAS, JRY etc all over the country so that poor get income support.

6. Expand the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) for the reduction of mortality and poverty.

7. Adopt midday meals programme all over the country to reduce poverty and encourage school attendance.

8. Expand group-based micro – credit - scheme to cover the entire country.