After the South, states from northern and western regions have agreed to use the poverty line for tracking the progress of welfare schemes rather than for identifying the beneficiaries.
At the second regional consultation meeting of a NITI Aayog’s Task Force, the states agreed with the think tank’s view that poverty line should be used for tracking progress in poverty reduction and not for identification of poor to provide benefits under welfare schemes, NITI Aayog said in statement.
Earlier, southern states had expressed the same view in their meeting with the taskforce held on April 19 at Hyderabad.
The agreement reflected views of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, and UTs of Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli in their meeting with the NITI Aayog’s Task Force on Elimination of Poverty in India held in Jaipur today.
According to statement, Gujarat opined that poverty is a multidimensional concept and shared its life cycle and area based approach to be followed to combat poverty.
Gujarat briefed about some of its best practices which have been successful in addressing the poverty in the state such as Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana, Sagarkhedu Sarvangi Vikas Yojana, Krishi Mahotsava and Garib Kalyan Mela.
One of the innovative model worth consideration for replicating in other states was that of rehabilitation of slum dwellers. This has reduced slum population drastically from 2001 to 2011 in Gujarat.
However the state raised concern that more and more children are going for private schools but they are not covered under Mid-Day Meal Scheme to provide nutritional support to children.
