JOIN USThe latest United Nations report on Millennium Development Goals, which says that one-third of the world’s extremely poor people live in India, is an indictment of the country’s poverty alleviation programmes.
It does not show just a failure of the programmes which were formulated to fight poverty but of the policies on which they were made. Removal of poverty has been the main aim of the economic and social policies of all governments since independence.
It may be true that a good number of people have been lifted out of poverty. But the fact remains that India still remains home to the largest segment of the poor in the world. The argument that India has the second largest population in the world and therefore it takes time for the policies to show results is poor defence.
That is because it also has large resources which can be used to fight and reduce poverty. China, which is the most populous country, reduced the proportion of people living in absolute poverty from 60 per cent in 1990 to 12 per cent in 2010.
India also has a poor record of performance on social indicators like child mortality, maternal mortality, the level of sanitation and literacy. The report has noted that about 1.4 million children in the country die before they reach five years of age.
It has expressed disappointment over the country’s failure to make enough progress in these areas. The Millennium Development Goals, which mainly relate to performance in the social sector, will remain unachieved by 2015, which is the target year set by the UN.
Poverty and social backwardness always go together. Though poverty is basically measured by income, it cannot be dissociated from the level of achievement in the social sector. All countries which successfully reduced poverty and achieved economic progress in the recent past, like China and the south-east Asian countries, had first made good progress in education, public health and other areas of social infrastructure.
There is still debate in the country over the definition of poverty, as seen in the controversy over the poverty line. The discussion over the kind of growth that should ensure equity is also continuing.
The truth is that growth has not been good enough and its fruits have not been adequately transferred to the bottom segment of the population. The UN report is a reminder of that.