Direct Intervention Programmes for Poverty Alleviation-An Appraisal

This paper provides a critical appraisal of the major poverty alleviation programmes like the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), the National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) and the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP). In order to make these programmes more effective, the author recommends linking them with a programme of land reforms, planning and implementation at the grassroots level and a major role for organisations of the rural poor Introduction IT may be made clear at the outset that the rural development programmes and schemes currently underway do not aim at any basic structural changes in the agrarian society. Within the given social, economic and political parameters of the existing situation, an attempt is being made to enhance income levels and living standards of the poor by self and wage employment programmes and provision of some degree of social services and social consumption through a package of schemes for the satisfaction of their minimum needs. This process might trigger off a chain reaction leading to some basic- changes depending upon the degree of political awareness generated and determined political intervention to galvanise such awareness to achieve any political objective. But that would be, if it ever happened, a totally unintended fall out of this programme.