After confusing the whole country on “who is more hungry”, the government seems to have taken another fluctuating and contradictory stand on its own poverty alleviation programmes. The policy shift from “a job-led income generation programme” (MGNREGA) to an approach of “encouraging poor not to work” through its proposed cash transfer scheme, may push millions of poor into further chronic poverty. The absence of a sensitive and engaged government machinery, lack of infrastructure to push forward banking systems in the rural areas,uncontrolled and unpredictable buying behaviour of the target groups, possibility of spending on atrocious causes such as dowry etc. are some of the grave areas where government didn’t have a convincing answer. There are many fundamental questions before the government as well: Will these payments to the poor ever be stopped or continue for generations? In a situation where there is a huge gap in accessing health and education facilities in most parts of the country, what will be the ultimate achievable goals for the government? Most importantly, the question of dependency syndrome to be encouraged by this scheme needs to be examined with all seriousness to assess the actual long-term benefit.
It is also important for the government to understand the existing ownership pattern in the Indian family system before implementing this scheme. In any circumstance, when food material comes to a family, its ownership usually goes to all the members. However, so far as the usage of the money in the family is concerned, there is every possibility that the concerned family head will work as the sole owner and controller of this amount, resulting into serious consequence in the food consumption pattern within the family. Many a times, the food choices in the family are not based on calories or nutrition but on taste and style. This kind of situation may lead to malnourishment and other health problems in the family, defeating the primary objective of this scheme.
There is another dimension to this new approach, which requires more clarity from the government side in terms of covering the poor families in this scheme. Although there is no consensus on the actual number of poor families in the country, there is some form of agreement that at least 15-20 crore families, who are already in the subsidy net, need support to come out of the poverty trap. But, the present attempt to de-link subsidy from the poverty scheme, and in the process reducing the number of beneficiaries to almost half from the present figure, does not make any sense. This is because the government is planning to include only 8-10 crore families in this cash transfer scheme, which will have serious macro-impact on the cost of living of the left-out population. With this changing situation and being excluded from the subsidy net, and paying high market price for daily consumer food items, this excluded group, which was earlier part of the subsidised system, will have more chances of being shifted to serious poverty trap after a certain period. So, the scheme instead of helping country to reduce poverty will keep adding a new set of poor to the already existing list due to a non-subsidised inflationary market system.
With a large number of youth looking for employment, the government, instead of going for this cash transfer scheme, should come up with a plan to boost entrepreneurship culture. In the process, it should help youth from these 20 crore families, presently coming under the subsidy net, to grow in their self-employment business. Options should be rest upon these youth to voluntarily come out from the subsidy programme rather than the government forcibly taking them out.
. sachisatpathy@yahoo.com