[India] 5.3 crore families living below Poverty Line: Chandra Sekhar Sahu

from New Kerala

The Minister of State for Labour and Employment Chandra Sekhar Sahu in a written reply in the Lok Sabha on Monday stated that 5.3 crore families were living below Poverty Line.

“As per information available for 1999-2000 around 5.3 crore families were living below Poverty Line, out of which around 3.86 crore were in rural areas and 1.48 crore were in urban areas,” Sahu said.

Most of these people though working were living below poverty line, he added.

However, open unemployment in the country on usual status basis was of the order of 90 lakh.

A target of creation of around 5 crore employment opportunities was fixed for the 10th Plan period.

According to the information, out of these, nearly 3 crore employment opportunities were to come from the normal growth of the economy assuming 8 percent per annum growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and remaining 2 crore from special employment generation programmes.

Besides this, latest initiative taken by the Government in the rural areas is the launch of the ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)’, which aims at providing 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a year to each rural house hold.

The scheme is implemented in 13 districts of Andhra Pradesh in the first phase. Under the NREGS, every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled and manual work have the legal guarantee of one hundred days of wage employment.

The Scheme is presently being implemented in Rangareddy, Mahabubnagar, Warangal, Khammam, Nalgonda, Adilabad, Karimnagar, Medak, Nizamabad, Kadapa, Anantapur, Chittoor and Vizianagaram districts in the state.

Ninety percent of the cost of the scheme is being borne by the Central Government and the rest by the state and in the event of the State Government, not being able to provide employment to those who seek it, have to bear the entire cost of paying 100 days wages at the rate of Rs 80 a day.

These measures will help the unemployed persons living below the poverty line also, he said.