Poverty Alleviation Programmes - Progress, Problems & Prospects (A Micro Level Study of Nawada District of Bihar)

I was born and brought up in village and then educated and employed in urban areas. I have got an opportunity to observe the penury at close quarter that plagues the life of the villagers and the numerous expanding opportunities which make life livable in towns and cities. Being a student of economics my attention has been drawn towards growing gap between the rural and urban areas. While a number of progammes have been formulated and implemented for alleviating poverty in rural areas, the fruits of these programmes, contrary to the expectation of the policy makers, have not percolated to the target groups up to desired level. Then there is the academic professional compulsion of going beyond teaching into the areas of research on such topic. All these forces impelled me to undertake this piece of research work.

The main focus of the book is on the study of progress and implementation of some of the important poverty alleviation programs such as IRDP, NREP, RLEGP, JRY, TRYSEM, DWACRA etc. in Nawada district (Bihar) and to the extent to which it had enabled the beneficiaries to cross the poverty line. While assessing the incremental income, data was collected about the support received by the beneficiaries from the various government agencies, providing backward and forward linkages and how for this had contributed to the income generation. Besides, the assets and liabilities patterns in the pre-and post-IRDP assistance periods were also carefully analyzed to examine how far incremental income was utilized for acquiring additional business and non-business assets or for repaying old loans. Consumption patterns in the pre-and post-assistance periods have also been examined to assess how far assistance had resulted in the improvement in living standards of the beneficiaries.

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