Measures to Control Poverty

Poverty alleviation is one of the world’s most pressing issues, and it is proposed that the private sector can play an important role in generating the economic growth, employment, and purchasing options required for significant poverty alleviation. Poverty is highly correlated with many negative measurable aspects of living standards, and thus reducing poverty can have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide. There is much to be learned about poverty reduction from looking at examples from Asia, as this is the region of the world with both the most people living in poverty and the most success in reducing poverty.

What is Poverty and, how is it measured?

Poverty is defined as a state in which an individual or household lacks the financial resources to meet the bare necessities of life. Economists and policymakers define “absolute” poverty as the difference between consumption expenditure and a line called the “poverty line.” The official poverty line is the amount of money spent to obtain the items in a “poverty line basket” (PLB). Poverty can be quantified by the number of people living below the poverty line (with the incidence of poverty expressed as the head count ratio). The “depth” of poverty indicates how far below the poverty line the poor are.So far, six official committees have estimated the poverty in India: the 1962 working group, V N Dandekar and N Rath in 1971 etc.,. Because the government did not act on the Rangarajan Committee’s report, poverty is measured using the Tendulkar poverty line. According to this, 21.9 percent of Indians live below the poverty line.

Effective 10 Ways to Reduce Global Poverty

1. Develop and implement policies and programmes for rapid and sustained economic growth in areas such as health, education, nutrition, and sanitation, allowing the poor to participate in and contribute to growth. According to studies, a 10% increase in a country’s average income reduces poverty by 20-30%.

2. Improve water and other natural resource management. The majority of the rural poor rely on agriculture or other natural resources for a living. As a result, they require more equitable access to those resources in order to better manage their resources.

3. Invest in and put in place agricultural programmes. The Agricultural Bank of China will lend more than $400 billion to help develop rural areas, fund education, infrastructure, and crop production as part of its strategy to eradicate poverty by 2020.

4. Trade is essential for economic growth and prosperity. Indonesia, Botswana, and Brazil, among the world’s poorest countries, have traded their way out of poverty.

5. Create and expand access to jobs and income, as well as nurture entrepreneurial talent.

6. Providing equal access to basic social services such as education, health care, adequate food, sanitation, shelter, and clean water to all people.

7. Progressively expanding social protection systems to assist those who are unable to support themselves.

8. Empower poor people by involving them in the development and implementation of poverty-reduction and-eradication plans and programmes. Their participation ensures that programmes reflect what is important to them.

9. Remove any impediments to equal access to resources and services.

10. Access to technology and innovation, such as internet access and affordable energy, should be made available. Only 40% of the rural poor in Bangladesh have access to grid electricity. Those who do have access are subjected to frequent power outages. The Second Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development Project aims to increase rural access to electricity through renewable energy sources.

So, what is India’s current “level” of poverty?

The National Statistical Office’s (NSO) Report on Household Consumer Expenditure for 2017-18 was discarded in 2019, leaving no data to update India’s poverty statistics. Even the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative’s MPI report used data from the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey, for which figures are only available until 2015-16.

According to S Subramanian, a social scientist, the incidence of poverty in India increased from 31.15 percent to 35.1 percent between 2011-12 and 2017-18, based on data from a leaked version of the consumer expenditure data. Over the same time period, the absolute number of poor people increased from 270 million to 322.22 million, a 52 million increase in six years.

Poverty numbers importance

The PLB has sparked a lot of debate. The 1962 group did not take into account age and gender differences in calorie requirements. Expenditure on health and education was not considered until the Tendulkar Committee, which was chastised for setting the poverty line in urban India at just Rs 32 per capita per day (and at Rs 27 in rural India). The Rangarajan Commission was also chastised for arbitrarily choosing food as a source of nutrition, ignoring the importance of sanitation, healthcare, access to clean water, and the prevalence of pollutants.

Conclusion

Poverty is highly correlated with many negative measurable aspects of living standards, and thus reducing poverty can have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide. Poverty alleviation is one of the world’s most pressing issues, and it is proposed that the private sector can play an important role in generating the economic growth, employment, and purchasing options required for significant poverty alleviation. Few ways to reduce poverty are, to develop and implement policies and programmes for rapid and sustained economic growth in areas such as health, education, nutrition, and sanitation, allowing the poor to participate in and contribute to growth. Empower poor people by involving them in the development and implementation of poverty-reduction and-eradication plans and programmes.