Poverty reduction programs in india Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Poverty reduction programs in india - Essay Example According to the World Bank survey, anyone earning below one dollar per day is usually graded as poor. May of such people resides in Africa, parts of Asia countries, Latin American countries and India. However in the developed nations, the number of poor people is reduced due to higher levels of development and excellence strategies put in place to curb poverty conditions in these areas. The government’s response to issues of eradicating poverty amidst them is of prime importance as she is the key controller of the national funds. This paper will look at the success of various programs in India aimed at alleviating and eliminating poverty among the Indian populations. According to Parikh, (1994) over the one third of the Indian population is illiterate and a larger majority of these is not educated beyond the age of 15 years. In line with this, Jha & Srinivasan, (2001 ) note that; At the beginning of the new millennium, 260 million people in the country did not have incomes to access a consumption basket which defines the poverty line. Of these, 75 per cent were in the rural areas. India is home to 22 per cent of the world’s poor. Such a high incidence of poverty is a matter of concern in view of the fact that poverty eradication has been one of the major objectives of the development planning process (3785). This indicates a larger percentage of the people who are either unemployable or lowly employed. Illiteracy and ignorance according to Hulme & Paul, (1999) is the root cause of poverty in various parts of the world. The first step require in the elimination of poverty is therefore the need to elevate the education sector and increase awareness among the people. The Indian government is doing a lot concerning this with more practical educational systems adopted in order to develop skills rather than promoting mere learning in most of the Indian learning and education sector. As Ramaswami, (2002) notes, even among the educated Indian populations , all do not possess adequate employable skills worth generating independent income. All these problems according to Mehta, (2004) stems from the education sector which is not turned towards changing the economic scenario in the country. The rural areas carry the largest number of Indian population which is mainly agricultural. Even this is greatly affected by the dwindling amount of cultivable lands and lack of adequate rainfall for the development of arable farming systems. Irrigation farming in many of the Indian lands is not possible due large capital requirements. This has led to acute rural- urban migration whereby a large number of people are moving into the urban areas to look for greener pastures. These end up doing various menial jobs in the cities since they lack adequate and specialized education required for good employment in the industries and labor intensive companies in the country. This has brought in a double misfortune in the country as the largest agricultural l ands are evacuated by people moving into the urban centers in search of jobs. The urban centers for this reason have been largely crowded with people with less education and almost no skills for employment. Lack of relevant or adequate skills for employment practices among many urban dwellers have eventually led to the development of informal jobs and settlements in most of the towns contrary to the overall expectations of the development agenda. As a result the development image of many