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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Teach People to Fish

Teach People to Fish

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published Published on Sep 22, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 22, 2011

-The Economic Times

 

The Planning Commission's affidavit to the Supreme Court that anyone with a monthly expenditure of more than Rs 965 in urban areas and Rs 781 in rural areas would be deemed 'not poor' has been greeted with howls of indignation. Rightly so! Though both numbers - adjusted for inflation - are an improvement over the Tendulkar Committee's numbers of Rs 447 a month in rural areas and Rs 579 a month in urban areas (at 2004-05 prices), there's not much you can buy with Rs 32 a day in urban areas or Rs 25 a day in rural areas. This does set a shamefully-low bar for determining poverty. It is completely at odds with what we set out to achieve when we won Independence from the British. On the eve of India becoming the world's third-largest economy in purchasing-powerparity terms, there is no reason why so many Indians should be so desperately poor.

This is what we need to focus on. Rather than nitpick over exact numbers and fall into the by-now familiar trap of arguing over the best methodology to get a 'precise' measurement of poverty in India, we need to see how best the fruits of our close-to-9% growth can reach the poor. Yes, the definition is important. We need to get as reasonably accurate a measure of the numbers who are poor since not all programmes have a built-in self-selecting mechanism like the NREGA. In such a scenario, many entitlements, notably food, are linked to the poverty line. This has major implications for government spending budgets. The proposed Food Security Bill, for instance, will remain on paper even after enactment if the government is not able to get some fix on the needed outlay. But given how fractious the debate on defining poverty has been and how far away we are from arriving at a consensus, it is more important to focus on the big picture. We must channelise our energies to address poverty through faster, broad-based growth, supported by well-functioning delivery mechanisms. The effort must be to reduce the number of people in need of handouts. Between giving a man a fish a day and teaching him to fish, there is no disputing which makes more sense - and is more sustainable - long-term.

The Economic Times, 22 September, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/teach-people-to-fish/articleshow/10073619.cms


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