antipoverty measures-a truth or an eyewash?
- Removal of poverty has been one of the major objectives of Indian developmental strategy.
- The current anti-poverty strategy of the government is based broadly on two planks
- promotion of economic growth
- targeted anti-poverty programmes.
- Over a period of thirty years lasting up to the early eighties, there were little per capita income growth and not much reduction in poverty
- Since the eighties, India’s economic growth has been one of the fastest in the world.
- The higher growth rates have helped significantly in the reduction of poverty.
- It has now become clear that simply devising and executing antipoverty programmes will do no good unless they are accompanied by robust economic growth.
- Anti poverty measures therefore feasible and true only if the country has a steady economic growth.