Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to eradicate poverty in India by 2022, or in the next five years, is more of a political slogan than an informed prime ministerial promise. It is for sure now that close to 111 million Indians, or a bit more than 41 per cent of current poor population of India, would remain poor forever. The future has more shocks: studies show that poverty is getting transmitted to the next generation. This means a vicious cycle of poverty for close to 10 per cent of India’s population.
On September 25, during the national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Modi made the promise that India would be poverty-free by 2022. This is one of the main objectives of the much talked about ‘New India’ vision. This ultimately appeared in the resolution of the national executive as well.
But going by seminal research works of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), an international association of researchers and academicians, poverty is becoming chronic and hereditary in India, at least for a sizeable population. Chronic poverty is defined as “people, households, and social groups who are poor for sustained and significant or
— source downtoearth.org.in | Richard Mahapatra | 25 Oct 2017