Industry & Economy
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Economic Survey
Call to rework anti-poverty strategies
Our Bureau
New Delhi
,
July 7
THE Economic Survey has called for reformulation of anti-poverty strategies that are fiscally sustainable and more finely targeted even as it pointed out that there has been a significant decline in the number of people living below the poverty line over the past two decades.
Incidentally, the Government's National Common Minimum Programme (CMP) has called to enact a National Employment Guarantee Act to start a food-work programme.
The poverty alleviation programmes are "ineffective" and suffer from "ill-defined and multiple objectives." They are neither accountable nor monitored, the survey has said. Even the Public Distribution System has been unable to do much good to the poor, with only 25 per cent of foodgrains reaching the poorest 40 per cent of the population, while administrative costs accounted for 85 per cent of the total expenditure, far outweighing the income gains to the poor. Against this backdrop, the new anti-poverty strategy must target those who cannot benefit from the opportunities offered by growth. For rural development, employment and poverty alleviation, the Government had provisioned Rs 14,070 crore.
On the other hand, the survey has recognised that while 26.1 per cent of the population was living below the poverty line in 1999-2000 compared to 51.3 per cent in 1977-78. There has been a significant decline in the incidence of poverty in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Punjab and West Bengal; twenty states and union territories had poverty ratios below the national average, with Bihar and Orissa being the poorest States.
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