17. 'Poverty Alleviation Programmes in India remain mere show pieces
until and unless they are backed by political will'. Discuss with reference to the performance of the major poverty alleviation programmes in India. (250 words)
(i)
In 1952, after the launch of First Five Year Plan, government
launched community development programme. It
was started to holistically develop
the rural areas based on cooperative
movement, however this programme failed miserably as land reforms had not done in an efficient manner. Failure of the land reforms was the result of lack of strong
political will of developing extra land to the landless.
(ii)
Then came IRDP (Integrated Rural Development Programme) with Green and White Revolutions. These plans
helped in increasing the agriculture output in India and in decreasing the
farm distress/rural distress. However, it
suffered from regional
imbalances and did not improve the situation of the whole country.
(iii) In the years 1970-1990, government came up with many
programmes like 20 Point Programme, Food for Work Programme, Self Employment Plans etc. However, these schemes proved
to be less effective in
reducing the poverty in the country as
government did not give emphasis to the correct
identification of beneficiaries, talking leakager etc.
(iv) The major scheme which proved to be the master stroke
in the objective of poverty alleviation was MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) in 2005. After
this scheme, poverty in India has reduced with a very fast pace.
This scheme is also praised by many
international agencies like World Bank. It is said that after the phase of
liberalisation in 1991, India has reduced its
poverty close to half as in 1991
the people living Below Poverty Line in India were 40% of the total population,
buy. in 2011 according to the Tendulker Committee report, number of people
living Below Poverty Line (BPL) were reduced to 21%.
It is certain that the political
will is very important for the success of any scheme and
specially the poverty alleviation schemes. A strong political will provides an atmosphere for the success
of the scheme as the government innovates different mechanisms to ensure the
success of the scheme. It has happened with
MGNREGA in which the government first time used the
provisions like linking job cards with bank accounts, mechanism of social audits,
uploading of the pictures of the work etc.