Poverty alleviation
Topic: Poverty and Inequality: Measurement and Policy · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 5 "Rural Development"; Class 11, Ch 6 "Employment: Growth, Informalisation and Other Issues"
Meaning
Poverty alleviation means reducing poverty with deliberate policy. In India, this has meant three things. The first is faster economic growth. The second is special programmes for weaker sections of society. The third is employment generation (creating jobs and work). NCERT treats it as part of rural development. That includes building human resources such as literacy, health and sanitation. It also includes land reforms, rural infrastructure such as credit, markets, roads and irrigation, and targeted anti-poverty schemes.
Example
India's strategy has three prongs. The first is growth: faster growth after 1991 came with faster poverty decline, and the Tendulkar head-count ratio fell from 37.2% in 2004-05 to 21.9% in 2011-12. The second is targeted programmes. These include wage employment through MGNREGA (2005) and self-employment through IRDP (1980) and later NRLM (2011). The third is meeting basic needs such as housing under PMAY, food under the National Food Security Act (2013) and pensions under NSAP (1995).
Don't confuse with
- Poverty eradication: this means ending poverty completely, as in SDG 1.1, which aims to end extreme poverty by 2030. Alleviation only means reducing it.