HPAS/Allied Mains 2022 Answer Writing Challenge Day 176 : Model Answer

QUESTION: “India has failed to address the issues of poverty and hunger due to ineffective implementation of government policies by successive governments’’. Discuss. (8 marks/ 120 words)

Answer:

Poverty is a condition characterized by lack of basic needs such as water, health care, foods, sufficient access to social and economic services, and few opportunities for formal income generation. Poverty is often described in terms of the income level below which people are unable to access sufficient food for a healthy working life. The main outcome of poverty is hunger.

According to the 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI) India was ranked 101st among the 116 countries assessed. Although various initiatives have been taken by the government like National Nutrition Mission, National Food Security Mission etc, still India has failed to address the issues of hunger.

A large number of programmes and schemes have been implemented to directly attack poverty through generating work, providing healthcare, education, nutrition and support to backward areas and vulnerable groups. Although the poverty rate has declined, a large proportion of our population still lives in poverty.

There are several reasons for this: –

1. While a large number of poverty alleviation programmes have been initiated, they function in silos.
2. There is no systematic attempt to identify people who are in poverty, determine their needs, address them and enable them to move above the poverty line.
3. There is no commitment by the government to support an individual or a household for getting minimum level of subsistence through any programme or group of programmes.
4. The resources allocated to anti-poverty programmes are inadequate and there is a tacit understanding that targets will be curtailed according to fund availability.
5. There is no method to ensure that programmes reach everybody they are meant for. While our plans have taken cognisance of the literature on chronic poverty and dynamics of poverty, alleviation programmes and schemes have not used this understanding to address this issue.

   Way forward:

To address poverty effectively, people who formulate alleviation programmes need to understand and address chronic poverty and the dynamics of poverty.
Similarly, we know that there is a geographical dimension to poverty—concentration of poverty in certain parts of the country. So, there should be renewed focus on the poorest districts: to universalise access in these areas and applying indicators that assess performance-based improvement of the most vulnerable.