Critical Evaluation of the Strategy for Poverty Alleviation

Critical Evaluation of the Strategy for Poverty Alleviation

The planners have claimed that under the Eighth Plan, the strategy for poverty alleviation was modified keeping in view the past experiences. Hence the new strategy did not suffer from the weaknesses of the earlier approach. Most economists, however, do not subscribe to this view. They argue that the basic weaknesses in the approach remain unrecognised at the governmental level. Making critical evaluation of the planners’ approach to poverty alleviation goal, some economists have pointed out the following limitations:

1. First, the income generation orientation of poverty alleviation programmes does not recognise the importance of the increased flow of social inputs through family welfare, nutrition, social security and minimum needs programmes in alleviating conditions of poverty on a long-term basis.
2. Secondly, the programmes have done little for disabled, sick and socially handicapped individuals who cannot participate in normal economic activities. The strategy for poverty alleviation has also failed to do justice to women in intra-family distributions.
3. Thirdly, income and employment-oriented poverty alleviation programmes put additional income in the hands of the poor which they can use for buying food. But these programmes do not ensure that the poor can really manage to get adequate food all year round for the family with the increased income, because this depends on the price, supply ease and time distribution of income.
4. Fourthly, the household approach focussed around self-employment enterprises or wage employment guarantees is not correct in the context of continuing demographic pressures and increasing smallness of the size of farm holding. G. Parthasarthy, therefore, stresses the need for reorienting poverty alleviation programmes to build up what he calls ‘group power’ (a) for developing land and water resources, (b) for preventing the perpetuation of exploitative practices, and (c) for channelising purchasing power (especially that of State) in favour of low-income households.
5. Fifthly, the present approach is nearly blind to the existence of secondary poverty which B. Seebohm Rowntre defines as a condition in which earning would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by other expenditure, either useful or wasteful. such as drinking, gambling, inefficient housekeeping. In India, a number of studies have shown that alcoholic addiction leads to malnutrition in a large number of cases.
6. Sixthly, the poverty line crossing criterion for evaluating the success, of the poverty alleviation programmes is insensitive to the income changes occurring below the poverty line. For overcoming this problem A.K. Sen has suggested attaching weights to various income slabs below the poverty line.
7. Seventhly, many rural poor depend on natural resources for their livelihood. However, the practices of using these resources are no longer viable and, as a result they are fast deteriorating. The government should have taken into consideration the implications of this environmental decay which unfortunately in the past it has not done.
8. Eighthly, the government has failed to make necessary changes in anti-poor laws and policies. These laws and policies harm particularly the tribals who depend on non-timber forest products for their subsistence and cash income.
9. Finally, the poverty alleviation programmes Often ignore the consequences of the earning activities of the poor in terms of occupational health hazards and adverse ecological consequences.