Striking at the Root Causes of Poverty : The Economic Times

New Delhi



CLEAR ROAD MAP Govt will use socio-economic census data to identify the causes in one lakh villages at household levels

The government is preparing a blueprint for attacking the root causes of poverty in over 1 lakh villages instead of running piecemeal schemes that do not address the specific challenge of poverty-ridden households.

It will use the upcoming socio-economic caste census (SECC) data to identify the exact causes of poverty in each household.

Subsequently, ongoing schemes such as National Housing Mission, National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Indira Awaas Yojna will be used to address key poverty issues.

“We are looking at poverty as much more than income related,“ said a senior government official aware of the plan.

“We will address its multi-dimensionality with the help of gram panchayats, which will have measurable goals to bring the families out of the clutches of poverty.“

The programme will be worked out with the help of gram panchayats. Self-help groups will be asked to use the funds provided for generating economic activity instead of loaning it for consumption purposes.“Government is recognising the limitation of leaving the decisions to households itself,“ said Amitabh Kundu, senior fellow with independent think-tank Delhi Policy Group.

“It is interesting that they are now exercising social judgment, so that expenditure can be used for intended benefits like sanitation, education etc.“

Kundu, however, warned that steps have to be taken to make sure that gram panchayats do not act as contractors as has often been the complaint of states.

The government will mobilise over 250,000 youths trained last year for Intensive Participatory Planning in activities like social, resource and poverty mapping to identify suitable livelihoods for each households this year.

Untied grant of the 14th Finance Commission is also being proposed to be linked with the gram panchayats along with other programmes to build synergies between various sectoral interventions. Meanwhile, the SECC data will provide information to the government to assess the reasons for poverty in any household ranging from income, literacy, disease, social or gender inequality to indebtedness, exploitation or landlessness.

The data will be released next week by finance minister Arun Jaitley. The self-help groups will undertake a house to house survey to verify this data and find if any household has been left out.

Accordingly, they will make a plan for an intervention to address the factor causing poverty. For instance, instead of extending monetary help to a homeless family, the government will provide them with a house under one of its schemes and use the funds to enable the household in sustaining a living through skill development, MNREGS etc.

The rural development ministry has also written to the state governments to develop a framework for implementation of this scheme and a build team in each village to execute its plan.

The progress will be monitored through Aadhaar numbers, electoral card data or the temporary identification number. Socio Economic and Caste Census is a comprehensive exercise carried out door to door in both rural and urban India to generate information on a large number of social and economic indicators relating to households. The data will be used to map household-wise progress and social support needs over the years. According to a panel chaired by former RBI governor C Rangarajan, 29.5% of the Indian population lives below the poverty line, as against 21.9% estimated by the Suresh Tendulkar panel in 2011-12.