Despite launching various poverty alleviation schemes why government is not able to get rid of poverty?
Answers
Poverty is a state or condition in which a person or community lacks the financial resources and essentials for a minimum standard of living. Poverty means that the income level from employment is so low that basic human needs can't be met.
Why anti-poverty schemes failed?
A large number of programmes and schemes have been implemented to directly attack poverty through generating work, providing healthcare, education, nutrition and support to backward areas and vulnerable groups. Although the poverty rate has declined, a large proportion of our population still lives in poverty. There are several reasons for this. While a large number of poverty alleviation programmes have been initiated, they function in silos. There is no systematic attempt to identify people who are in poverty, determine their needs, address them and enable them to move above the poverty line.
There is no commitment by the government to support an individual or a household for getting minimum level of subsistence through any programme or group of programmes. The resources allocated to anti-poverty programmes are inadequate and there is a tacit understanding that targets will be curtailed according to fund availability. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (mgnrega) does not provide the guaranteed 100 days of work in many states. In another example, the Centre has provisioned Rs 200 per person per month for old age pension, with the understanding that states would add to this amount. But there is a substantial difference in the amount that different states add to the pension. Thus, your old age pension depends on where you live—Rs 200 per month in some states and Rs 1,500 or more in others.
There is no method to ensure that programmes reach everybody they are meant for. While our plans have taken cognisance of the literature on chronic poverty and dynamics of poverty, alleviation programmes and schemes have not used this understanding to address this issue.
To address poverty effectively, people who formulate alleviation programmes need to understand and address chronic poverty and the dynamics of poverty. We know, for instance, that poverty is especially prevalent among certain occupational groups. Casual agricultural labour is the largest group that is stuck in poverty, as per data from the socioeconomic caste census. These are the “working poor”, for whom the State has not been able to secure the right to an adequate means of livelihood. This must be addressed.
Similarly, we know that there is a geographical dimension to poverty—concentration of poverty in certain parts of the country. So there should be renewed focus on the poorest districts: to universalise access in these areas and applying indicators that assess performance-based improvement of the most vulnerable.