THE ROLE OF AGRICULTURE IN POVERTY REDUCTION: THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE (Pages 90-95) by Dr. N. Saravanakumar in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

Poverty alleviation has been a pre-eminent goal of India’s development efforts since its Independence. In pursuing this objective, the country’s planning process during the last six decades has been a fertile ground for devising interventions, often successful but sometimes overlapping and ill-conceived too. Public measures directed at poverty alleviation have focused on creating adequate livelihood opportunities for the marginalized segments of the population, provisioning of public services and goods that have a direct bearing on an individual’s living standard and quality of life, strengthening of institutions and delivery mechanisms that empower the poor, and targeted development of backward regions through resource transfers and supportive policy measures. In recent years, the emphasis on having a more desirable composition of GDP growth by targeting an average 4 per cent per annum growth in agriculture GDP has found favour with the policy makers in the country’s Eleventh Five Year Plan. Poverty is a state of deprivation. In absolute terms, it reflects the ability of an individual to satisfy certain basic minimum needs for sustained, healthy and reasonably productive living. There is no unique approach to estimate a poverty line for measuring the incidence of poverty in conformity with the absolute notion of poverty. Keywords: Poverty alleviation, planning process, GDP, poverty line wtc.,