Unsolved Puzzle of Poverty Part --2

Since independence, many schemes had implemented to alleviate poverty. Among them Swarnjayanti Grameen Swarozgaar Yozna (SGSY) for rural poor and Swarnjayanti Shahari Swarozgaar Yozna for urban poors, Valmiki Ambedkar Awwas Yozna and NAREGS are the flagship programs in recent times. The SGSY and SSSY both are intend to provide credit and easy loans to the BPL people for self-employment or for durable assets that can help them to raise their income and finally to brought them above the poverty line.

The major draw back in execution of all above poverty reduction programs is, the half of the  BPL population do not obtain a BPL card, which is an essential document for getting benefits of those schemes.  The banks play a major role for the selection of beneficiaries and distribution of loans and credits, thus the identification documents becomes very much necessary. In rural areas, where landless peasant and jobless people, used to migrate from one place to another to find work, their identification as BPL and allotment of BPL card has proven a tough task. In urban areas, situation is not different, slums and such other habitats that are not legal, usually remained out of BPL list. Hence, a needy person failed to get loan  or credit because he do not have any identification proof of his residence, income, cast and such other documents, e.g. ration card, voter Id card etc. the problem is not limited towards only BPL cards but not also extant to other documents such as voter ID card, ration card etc.

 Even during the census, those habitats that do not exist on government papers, left behind/excluded from counting and later on, they become unable to prove their status as BPL.

This is the turning point, where room for all kind of corruption and misconduct find place in poverty reduction schemes. Fake BPL cards, fake muster roles, fake payments, fake entries in distribution system are some example that shows how the local authorities who are responsible for the execution of schemes take illegal benefit from the power they have and unawareness of common people.

The local power structure at panchayat level is a key factor in this regard; sarpanch and gram sevak who plays a major role in the identification of BPL families in their area and later on help the people to access the benefits of various welfare schemes should be brought under tight scrutiny. As the monetary allotment is increasing for the panchayats, the level of corruption is also increasing; MNREGS and SSA are the biggest examples of such misconducts. Infect it’s the money factor that has increased the interest of political parties and local people in panchayats.

The another problem is illiteracy, that make people unable to demand for their rights further more they  are not aware about the laws and  regulations which are made for their betterment. Therefore, capacity-building measures for strengthening the voice of people such as effective and hurdle less implication of RTI, a sharp oversight of civil society organizations and administrative authorities etc are required. Beside that the social audit clause of NREGS can be consider to check the execution of all poverty reduction schemes. The outcome budget kind of system can also be helpful to assess the performance and result of those schemes and related ministries, departments, officials etc.

The issue of APLs is another angle of this puzzle that cannot be neglect when we are talking about poverty alleviation. According to a study of AIDWA (all India democratic women association), Many people are recommended as APL because they have a small piece of land or sending their children school, accessing some sort of health facilities. No need to say that, this issue is directly related with the wrong estimation of poverty that demands a broader perspective of policy making. Poverty reduction schemes are mainly BPL oriented, there are hardly any schemes, which is specifically designed for the APLs.

While talking about poverty eradication we cannot neglect hunger and malnutrition that are the expected consequences of poverty. Food is the primary concern of every living creature and poverty makes people unable to access adequate and nutrient food. Where people are eating grass chapattis, where the grass chapatti is also a happy meal, in that country is it worth to say that India is running biggest number of food schemes in world. Poverty leads all kind of social-economic-cultural evils, migration from rural to urban areas, spread of slums in cities, increasing crime rate, child Labor all are the consequences of poverty. Hence, a composite approach is needed to tackle the poverty issue.

Here one more thing I would like to mention, we are tending to talk about a complete alleviation of poverty. But is it possible? Until some kind of economic system exist on this earth, until unless, someone is selling, another is buying, some are more intelligent then others and some are not even average ones, the difference between rich and poor will continue. A total alleviation is a kind of utopia, which cannot be obtain, any welfare government, social or communist state can not claim that it has fully alleviate poverty from its territory. The social security net schemes, poverty and unemployment allowances can only provide some relief and cover against complete starvation or living under inhuman conditions, but those can not be a long term solution neither they are intend to do so nor they could do it. With a limited availability of economic resources, no government can bare the burden of highly subsidized schemes for infinite time.

So what can be done to solve this puzzle? As I mentioned above, capacity building is the key word. Government should aim to make people self depend and not on government allowances. The micro finance, skill training, creating durable assets such as, watershed on farms, land conservation and providing aggro equipments or craft equipments on easy conditions etc. and legal entitles say land rights, wage rights, ration cards, voter ID cards and the recent UID numbers etc. to the poor people. While talking about easy loans and credits we should not forget that spread of banking services in rural areas is a precondition for this purpose. It has seen that many times banks do not have cover the whole district, they try to limit themselves towards the block level or in townships, far and remote village are not covered by any banks. That makes banking services costly for a common villager.

But the main issue is corruption. Everyday we read the news of frauds, malfunctioning in several welfare schemes, from higher-level administration to local authorities, no one is spared from this evil. However, it is not possible to eliminate corruption, because it lies in human nature, but it could be control over to some extant, smart card technology, UId card, effective execution of E-governance, and more active role of civil society organizations. Last week central government announced a biometric smart card base TPDS pilot project in Hariyana and Chandigadh, which will certainly help to minimize the misconducts and malfunctioning in the poverty reduction schemes

Besides, one more thing to be kept in mind that India is a large country, a single policy or scheme cannot be universally implement in whole country. A flexibility and variation according to geographic and economic diversity is necessary.