Why India must take its antipoverty programmes seriously

Despite long-standing theoretical and ‘reformist’ criticism, India’s antipoverty programmes – often discounted or dismissed – may, in fact, be real pathways to development and social progress. Though frequently accused of being contemptible and unproductive economic doles, these programmes deeply touch the lives of the poor in profound ways. They can serve as effective instruments for the irreversible reduction of poverty and for enhancing production and productivity at the grassroots, as well as facilitating manpower growth and dispersal. But this requires political and official seriousness, persistence and sustained support.
Sporadic pulpit pronouncements from the top must give way to constant attention. Each antipoverty programme demands deliberate policy action to strengthen backward and forward linkages and ensure last-mile delivery. Yet because such policy action attracts little publicity, political leaders often lose interest and persistent seriousness after the initial photo-op euphoria; they remain congenitally unprepared for unostentatious work that benefits the public and the poor.

Take the case of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), in operation since 2005-2006 under an Act of Parliament. This antipoverty programme focuses on providing rural employment—including for women—and on bolstering the much-needed productivity-enhancing public works that meet local needs. It also offers a threshold or benchmark income for the poor in their native places and helps prevent distress migration to cities. But prolonged non-payment of wages—a collective governmental lapse —and technical hurdles such as e-KYC have eroded participation. Registration numbers have fallen over the years, and rural incomes have not increased, stabilised or become universal in tandem. Nor have potential workers declined on balance; rather, official discouragement —often couched in the derisory phrase ‘hole-digging scheme’—is evident.

Budgetary allocations have steadily declined in both real and nominal terms: funds released were Rs 110,000 crore, Rs 98,468 crore, Rs 90,811 crore, Rs 89,268 crore, and Rs 85,839 crore in the years 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, respectively. This signals a lackadaisical, step-motherly attitude towards a crucial rural development and poverty-alleviation scheme—a measure intended as a direct attack on poverty.

There is no escaping the development of the poorest in villages if India seeks overall progress and rapid reduction of poverty and inequality. This means that the livelihood opportunities for the rural poor must be significantly expanded and diversified, including in the areas of skill development as a process of gradual increase in enablement and non-traditional employment in the hinterland. As agriculture and allied activities remain the village mainstay, land productivity must be improved at the outset.

This requires better irrigation, led by large-scale upgrading of water bodies and rainwater inlet paths, repair of bunds, and augmentation of water-holding capacity. It also calls for interlinking water bodies from the point of view of micro-watersheds and topography. Such activities need direct and consistent technical and engineering assistance, which must be made readily available—and this is what seriousness and constancy of attention look like.

The public works and irrigation department must be activated duly and remain accessible for planning and supervision of MGNREGS works. Coordination with related departments is essential to strengthen this village-oriented development and antipoverty programmes. 

Decentralised water-body conservation, swamps and bioswales, and enhanced potable water availability align naturally with sanitation, rural water supply, recycling, and measures to economise irrigation use and ensure wider, fairer distribution. This would make more land productive and suitable for multi-cropping, including nutritious crops such as pulses, oil seeds, vegetables, fruits, improved fodder, and region-specific cereals. Such systemic transformation would generate more regular and better-paying employment and diversify rural output.

The spillover effects—towards sustainable development goals (SDG), manpower upgrading and alignment with emerging industrial needs, wider skills dissemination, and greater local employment for women—would be substantial. Rising rural incomes would stabilise rural demand, benefiting even urban manufacturing and the service industry. This is the forward linkage that can strengthen MGNREGS; the backward linkage lies in adequate investment and the provision of trained personnel and departmental support.

Highway and industrial-corridor development, too, can be considered genuine antipoverty interventions. Systematically connecting rural areas to national and district-level highways will spur transport, trade, marketing, housing, and construction in villages. This, in turn, will encourage local skill training and its practical use, reinforced by the spread of schooling across all locations. Such direct and indirect linkages, along with development efforts, apply across all types of antipoverty policy action. What they require, above all, is method and policy institutional seriousness. 

(The writer is a retired professor at the University of Mysore)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.