Elimination of Hunger and poverty

8. Hunger and poverty are the biggest challenges for good governance in India still today. Evaluate how far successive governments have progressed in dealing with these humongous problems. Suggest measures for improvement. (150 words)  10 M

Ans. Hunger and poverty reduction has been the goal of Indian governments since Independence. It all started with the First Five Year Plan in which community development programme was launched.

After this, many schemes have been launched to eliminate the menace of hunger and poverty as they are interrelated to each other and form a vicious circle. In 1960s and 70s, many programmes were launched like Green Evolution, 20 Point Programme, ICDS, Food for Work Plan, Subsidy in Agriculture under the Gareebi Hatao Slogan etc. After these plans for self employment were launched like SJSRY (Swarna Jayanti Shahri Rojzar Yojna).

Out of these programmes, Green Revolution was a successful one which helped people to achieve food security and improve their income standards.

However the performance of other plans were not according to the expectations due to poor identification of beneficiaries, leakage of funds,

top-down approach, corruption etc. But the things started to change after 1991 economic reforms.

After these reforms, the number of poor and hungry started to reduce. In the following years, government launched Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Indra Gandhi National Old Age Pension (IGNOAPS), Antyodaya Anna Yojana etc. These have played an important role in reducing poverty and hunger.

The master stroke came in 2005 with the name of NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) for unskilled labour. This Act provided a kind of right to work for 100 days to the people of rural areas for unskilled labour. This Act has greatly benefited in reducing people living below poverty from 39% in

1991 to 21% in 2011.

However still we have a long way to go in reducing poverty so, to do that we have to eliminate the loopholes with some innovative solutions like

(i) NFSA (National Food Security Act) to be implemented in an efficient manner.

(ii) Use of JAM (Jan Dhan Aadhaar Mobile) and SECC (Socio-Economic Caste Census) data to choose and link beneficiaries, this will also reduce the leakages.

(iii) UBI (Universal Basic Income) can also be provided to really provide socio-economic justice to the citizens.