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i. A study carried out by the International Food Policy Research Institute (Research Report No. 110, IFPRI, Washington D.C., 1999) on linkages between government expenditure and poverty in rural India revealed that an investment of Rs.1 crore in roads lifts as many as 1,650 poor people above the poverty line.
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| ii. However, the allocations for the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), have gone up by only 6 per cent in 2010-11 compared with the last year where as the allocation for the construction of national highways has been increasing over the past three years – from Rs.12,999 crore in 2009-10 to Rs.15,938 crore in 2010-11 , that is, an almost 23 per cent increase compared with the previous year. |
iii. The Union government's total expenditure on the rural economy (which includes expenditure on agriculture and allied activities, rural development, special area programmes, irrigation and flood control and village and small industries) registers a decline from 3.34 per cent of the GDP in 2008-09 to 2.59 per cent of the GDP in 2010-11 .
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iv. The share of rural infrastructure in the total public investment recommended for infrastructure in the Eleventh Plan period (Rs.14,40,600 crore) was a meagre 30.5 per cent. This indicates a continued neglect of the infrastructure needs of rural India as compared with that of urban India.
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v. There was underutilisation of 45 per cent to 75 per cent of financial assistance from the Centre to the States for the water supply scheme between 2002 and 2007. Union government's expenditure on rural water supply and sanitation, as a proportion of total expenditure from the Union Budget, is only 0.85 per cent, which is lower than in the earlier periods.
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vi.Allocation for rural water supply is around 78 per cent and for rural sanitation it is around 68 per cent in comparison with what was proposed in the Plan.
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*The United Nations has adopted a resolution which recognises access to clean water and sanitation as a human right. The resolution, states that “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.” 290710
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| vii. Agricultural research, education, and infrastructure development have large growth impact and a large poverty reduction impact. |
viii. To sustain long-term growth in agricultural production, and therefore provide a long-term solution to poverty reduction, the government should increase investments in agricultural research and development, rural infrastructure, and education. Source: Frontline V27-12/ 050610 Praveen Jha/ Miles to go
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| Access to drinking water and Sanitation as Human Right-UN |
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*The United Nations has adopted a resolution, which recognises access to clean water and sanitation as a human right.The resolution, states that “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.” 290710
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Rural Sanitation
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| If water is life, sanitation is surely a ‘way of life’ and access to such facilities has an impact on the quality of human life and health. |
| Lack of adequate sanitation is a pressing challenge in rural India. Every day, an estimated 1,000 children under five die in the country because of diarrhoea alone. Prevalence of child under-nutrition in India (47 per cent according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III, 2005-06) is among the highest in the world. Child under-nutrition is aggravated by the prevalence of diarrhoeal disease, and is responsible for 22 per cent of the country’s burden of disease (World Bank 2005). Sanitation-related diseases take a heavy toll of lives, especially children’s lives, and are a drain on productivity and incomes. Lack of adequate sanitation also forces households into the continued indignity of open defecation, which is an acute problem especially for women and young girls. Improving access to sanitation is therefore appropriately included in the Millennium Development Goals. Another major problem that the country faces today is the practise of scavenging, which mostly engages women. There are 7,70,338 human scavengers and their dependents in India. |
| Investment in rural infra essential for poverty eradication: IFPRI |
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| Major findings: First, initial subsidies in credit, fertilizer, and irrigation have been crucial for small farmers to adopt new technologies. Small farms are often losers in the initial adoption stage of a new technology since prices of the agricultural products are typically being pushed down by greater supply of products from large farms, which adopted the new technology. But as more and more farmers have adopted HYV, continued subsidies have led to inefficiency of the overall economy. |
| Second, agricultural research, education, and rural roads are the three most effective public spending items in promoting agricultural growth and poverty reduction during all periods. |
| Finally, the trade-off between agricultural growth and poverty reduction is generally small among different types of investments. As for agricultural research, education, and infrastructure development, they have large growth impact and a large poverty reduction impact. |
| Policy lessons: Agricultural input and output subsidies have proved to be unproductive, financially unsustainable, environmentally unfriendly in recent years, and contributed to increased inequality among rural Indian states. |
| viii.To sustain long-term growth in agricultural production, and therefore provide a long-term solution to poverty reduction, the government should increase investments in agricultural research and development, rural infrastructure, and education. |
| Promoting nonfarm opportunities is also important. Reforming institutions can have an equal, if not larger, impact on future agricultural and rural growth and rural poverty reduction." Investment, subsidies, and pro-poor growth in rural India2007 Fan, Shenggen Gulati, Ashok Thorat, Sukhadeo |
| krsr/and/020810 |
