Poverty Reduction and Eradication: Challenges and Strategies

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Poverty is rampant and wide spread, making low general standard of living even after six decades of development efforts in India. It is a low income developing economy, facing the twin formidable problems of unemployment and poverty. It suffers from over population which shows no signs of containment. Population explosion has thrown to winds the gains of development plans and the policy-makers are baffled by the prospects of further increase in population. Apart from low level of per capita income, factors affecting physical quality of life index are also reflective of poverty in India.
Poverty reduction and eradication remains crucial goal of economic policy in India by estimation of poverty since long. In the pre-independence period Dadabhai Naoroji sought to measure poverty with varied data to describe the consequences of colonial rule in India. His book "Poverty and un-British Rule in India" drew attention to the enormous drain on wealth caused by colonial policy and was the formulation to many intellectual arguments for independence. Subsequently during the freedom struggle, the Congress party, the Planning Commission and many eminent scholars have worked on the issue.
This book explains and examines the challenges and strategies of poverty reduction and eradication in India. Various papers were submitted for discussion in the Annual Conference of IEA, containing policy and programmes, which have been included in this book.

Dr. Pushpa Kumari, Post-graduated from Bihar University, Muzaffarpur. She has been awarded a degree of Doctorate on the topic "Population Growth and Economic Development". Her research work on "Prospects of Diversification of Agriculture in Jharkhand" has been widely appreciated and being referred by various organizations. She has been associated with Indian Economic Association, Bihar Economic Association and other various associations. Her research works have been published in various journals and books, which have been proved to be trend setters.
Her performance in various International and National Seminars and Workshops at various places have been noteworthy. The book authored by her on "Population Growth" and edition of "Interlinking of Rivers in India" are very popular. She has been working as Head of the Department of Economics in P.K. Roy Memorial College, a constituent wing of Vinoba Bhave University, Hazaribagh, Jharkhand. She has supervised research works undertaken by the various scholars for award of Ph.D. Degree and other studies.
For the outstanding contribution of the author in the field of economics, she has been awarded "Kautilya Arthashastra Award- 2016" by Economic Association of Bihar.

Poverty reduction and eradication remains crucial goal of economic policy in India by estimation of poverty since long, In the pre-Independence period Dadabhai Naoroji sought to measure poverty with varied data to describe the consequences of colonial rule in India. His book "Poverty and un-British Rule in India" drew attention to the enormous drain on wealth caused by colonial policy and was the formulation to many intellectual arguments for independence. Subsequently during the freedom struggle, the Congress party, the planning commission and many eminent scholars have worked on the issue. Sri Nivasan (2007) has a detailed review of this background. In fact, it would not be an understatement that this discourse has one of the India's major contribution to the field of development studies. The World Bank has stated that fighting poverty is at the core of its work. The United Nations when it outlined The Millennium Development Goals stated that the first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Poverty is at the heart of almost all discourses on development policy.
In this context when we seek to measure poverty there are distinct types of objectives to build awareness on poverty and to keep in the agenda of discourse, to design policies programs and institutions to eradicate poverty and to monitor and evaluate these policies, programs and institutions that are associated with it. All these objectives have been commonly realized by the Planning Commission of India which has tried to design the programs for poverty reduction through ordering the poverty profile. Alternatively, various programs were launched from time-to-time through locating beneficiaries.

Poverty is rampant and wide spread, making low general standard of living even after six decades of development efforts in India. It is a low income developing economy, facing the twin formidable problems of unemployment and poverty. It suffers from over population which shows no signs of containment. Population explosion has thrown to winds the gains of development plans and the policy-makers are baffled by the prospects of further increase in population. Apart from low level of percapita income, factors affecting physical quality of life index are also of poverty in India.
The post-independence economic development of India has focused on removal and eradication of poverty. Various programmes/schemes were launched from time-to-time by the Central and State Governments as a strategy to ameliorate the sufferings of the people. To combat the vicious circle of poverty, the approaches were followed by community development, area approach, target group approach, production-oriented approach, spectral approach, project approach, cluster approach and minimum needs approach, etc.
But the high incidence of poverty in rural India is directly related to prevalence of unemployment and under-employment on a large scale. Majority of the rural population is landless and sustains entirely on wage employment. While the self- employment programmes were intended to remove poverty in the form of IRDP, HSG, PMRY, SGSY, etc. to remove poverty on sustainable basis, the rural workforce continued to suffer due to excessive seasonality of employment, lack of wage employment opportunities and very low wage rates.