It is quite apparent that poverty in India is more concentrated in certain geographical areas and overall progress in fight against poverty and hunger has been uneven."While elucidating the reasons, suggest appropriate policy measures towards achieving Goals 1 and 2 of United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The reasons behind uneven distribution of poverty in India are-

  • Climatic factors- Areas which are hot makes it difficult for people to work and therefore their capacity to work reduces. This is the usual case in rural areas. Besides that, flood, famine, earthquake and cyclone cause heavy damage to agriculture.
  • Rapid growth of population- There is an increased rate of population with no adequate means of livelihood. This aggravates the problem of poverty.
  • Size of family- In rural areas, the size of the family is also an issue. The per capita income is low and the families are huge.
  • Low agricultural productivity- Some areas are not blessed with good productivity maybe due to bad location or climate or soil. This reduces the agricultural productivity and results into poverty.
  • Unequal distribution of land and other assets- Fragmentation of land leads to marginalisation. This results into only a few farmers getting the maximum share of land while others are left with only a meagre land holding. This decreases the potentiality and leads to poverty also.

The goal 1 of SDG states No Poverty and the goal 2 states Zero Hunger. Towards this, the following measures can be put into place in India to achieve these goals-

  • Co-operative Federalism- The states and the centre need to work together to achieve the goals.
  • Better implementation and coverage of schemes like MGNREGA.
  • Career Counselling programs especially for women. In this way, women can also be active bread earners to the family.
  • Better functioning of institutes like ITIs which can provide vocational education and enable students to get jobs.
  • Effective implementation of Skill India programme in order improve the skills and enable employment to all which in turn will end poverty.
  • With respect to Zero Hunger, better implementation of schemes such as MDM in schools, TPDS, better functioning of anganwadis systems, better co-ordination between anganwadis and municipalities for better functioning of Integrated Child Development Scheme and increase in the number of healthcare facilities to arrest the issues of malnutrition especially in rural areas.

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