Action plan on poverty eradication soon

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, FEB. 1. The Andhra Pradesh Government, which has come out with a strategy paper on poverty eradication, plans to put in place a concrete action plan implementable from April 1, 2001.

The strategy paper is to be put for debate at various levels and the action plan formulated on the basis of suggestions and views aired during the discussion. The Chief Minister will convene an all-party meeting shortly to discuss,among other things, guidelines for identification of poor families and backward areas and mandals.

The Chief Minister, Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, who released the strategy paper at a news conference here on Thursday, said that steps would be initiated to identify and classify the poor families in the income slabs of below Rs. 6,000, Rs. 6,000 - 11,000 and Rs. 11,000 - 20,000. On the basis of the information so obtained, poverty alleviation initiatives would be taken beginning the poorest of the poor and moving upward.

The Government will put in concerted efforts to assist the 4 million poor families in the State to come out of poverty in the next 5 years by helping them secure minimum living standards during the period. This will be achieved through convergence of all anti-poverty and area development programmes so that these families can access sustainable levels of livelihood.

Similarly, the backward areas also will be identified and the most backward given top priority in developing and funding. The Government will embark upon a three-pronged strategy of providing basic minimum services, improving infrastructure and creating opportunities for sustainable employment.

Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, who mentioned highlights of the paper, aired confidence that the task could be accomplished. ``We are convinced poverty is no longer inevitable. The State has material and natural resources, the know-how and determined people to make a poverty-free State. It is with this conviction that the Government is channelising all its resources to make Andhra Pradesh a poverty-free State.''

The paper outlines current status, progress over the past two decades in terms of poverty-related parameters like literacy, longevity, infant mortality and human resources development. It claims the proportion of the poor declined from 49 per cent to 30 between 1973 and 1993.

Key elements of poverty eradication strategy listed in the paper include: pursuit of rapid economic growth, promotion of human development, promotion of sustainable livelihood of the poor, focus on backward mandals and the poorest of the poor, redesigning the administrative machinery and enhancing social capital of the poor by fostering organisations of the poor and their capacity-building.

The World Bank is funding Velugu, a poverty eradication programme in the rural areas of 6 districts, to a tune of Rs. 600 crores and is considering the State Government request for Rs. 2000-crore assistance for another project covering 500 backward mandals. The British agency, DFID, is funding an urban poverty reduction programme in 32 municipal towns at Rs. 745 crores. ``We will thus get Rs. 3345 crores additionally in the next 3 years. We wish to spend this money through self-help groups or banding the poor together under the SHG umbrella and improving their capacity-building,'' Mr. Chandrababu Naidu said.

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