Measures to Reduce Rural Poverty

During different Five Year Plans, the Government of India has adopted several strategies and devised several schemes to remove poverty in India. The following are some steps.

IRDP: The Integrated Rural Development Programme was initiated in 1976 in 20 selected districts of India. Then, it was extended to all blocks in 1980.The objective of this program was to enable the selected families to cross the poverty line by creating productive assets for the poor people.

NREP: The National Rural Employment Programme was launched in 1980 in order to generate gainful employment in rural areas.

RLEGP: The Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme was launched in August 1983 to generate additional employment opportunities for the landless people in the villages.

TRYSEM: The Training of Rural Youth for Self Employment was launched in 1979 with the aim of generating self employment opportunities for unemployed educated rural youth. It has been laid down that the coverage of youth from SC and ST communities should be at least 50 per cent of the rural youth trained. Out of the total beneficiaries, at least 40 per cent should be women.

DWCAR: The Programme of Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) aims to improve the socio-economic status of the poor women in the rural areas through creation of group of women for income generating activities on a self-sustaining basis.

JRY: Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (JRY) is a wage employment programme with its main objective of generation of employment in the lean agriculture season to the unemployed and underemployed rural people both men and women living below the poverty line. The significant aspect of the scheme is that it is implemented by the Panchayats at the village, block and district levels in the ratio of 70:15:15 respectively.