Poverty rate 'reduction' in India: two sides..
Last week, I read two contrasting articles in our newspapers, one applauding the fact the poverty in absolute number terms having reduced by 138 million over 15 years and the other questioning the methods adopted to achieve it. The second piece was illuminating on how the poor was 'uplifted'
The country spent and continues to spend massive sums running into lakhs of crores from taxpayers' money on (1) loan waiver to millions of poor farmers and the bill amounted to over Rs.70,000 crores, (2) employment guarantee scheme which is sometimes also called food for work, whereby one person from each rural family is paid guaranteed 100 days' wages every year – of course there is no audit on the kind of work they do. This is a recurring expenditure, year after year.. and (3) food subsidy – essential foodgrains being distributed to the poor through PDS – public distribution system; the recurring cost include that of the foodgrains plus administrative cost that is the wages and salaries to hundreds of thousands of people. The PDS is already under heavy attack for being creaky as it is not able to handle the volume and for leaking like a sieve, thousands of tonnes are siphoned off – they just vanish into thin, either en route or at the point of distribution. Now under the Food Security Bill being readied in Parliament, further tens of millions of people are going to be covered, the already stressed out PDS would need massive expansion and this can only worsen the functioning of the PDS.
The article said these are populist ploys and votebank politics as subsidies seldom improve the lot of the poor, though they may eat reasonably well and remain relatively solvent.
Real improvement will come about only when real development takes place –(1) better infrastructure e.g. roads, rail connectivity, communication, power generation, education, hospitals, healthcare and sanitation, etc. and (2) millions of new job opportunities are created – and when people really EARN their income, not through either as hard cash or through subsidies. And when you get such doles for doing nothing, why should you sweat your brow?
Which one to believe and which not to, you decide, friends…
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