Management of India's anti-poverty program : a review

Poverty alleviation or “Garivi Hotao” has been consistently used by all political parties in India as a policy item in development agenda during campaign time before election of representatives to form a new government. After the election is over, this item is thrown into back burner until political necessity requires political party leaders to bring it back into limelight. Unfortunately however, there has neither been any attempt to define clearly the wider concept of poverty nor any attempt to correctly estimate the number of poor who according to the proper definition of poverty can be considered as poor. The measures undertaken by the government of India have aimed to alleviate economic poverty of poor families living ‘Below the Poverty Line’ (BPL) income by such measures of targeted income distribution as providing BPL income families with essential food and fuel at subsidized prices as well as creating income earning employment opportunities for BPL households for a specified duration of time during a year. Such a policy is similar to “Dole for Work “ policy or “Dry Dole “ schemes which were implemented by the British Raj in India and continued by the Indian Government up to the 1960s. Indian Planning Commission designed programs under MGNREGA, to directly attack poverty to provide self-employment among the poor, provide wage employment during the lean agricultural season, and address minimum needs such as nutrition, health, housing, education sanitation and mortality rates. This chapter is structured as follows. The first part gives an overview of poverty in India. Second part discusses the Five year plans and various anti-poverty programs implemented by the Indian Government. Part three focuses on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) under the acts. Part four, discusses the general overall benefits of (MGNREGA) with reference to states and finally some critical discussion and conclusions are provided.