Sunday, January 25, 2009

NE Vision 2020 to banish Poverty

Dimapur : In line with the 11th Five Year Plan’s target to reduce poverty by 10% and generate 70 million new employment opportunities and ensure electricity connection to all villages in the country, the North Eastern Council (NEC) has drawn up an ambitious plan to “banish poverty” from the North-East region by the year 2020.

According to a sector report on poverty eradication contained in Action Plan Reports, NER Vision 2020, the strategies for poverty eradication include land reforms, the need to change the basis of poverty assessment, bridging the gap between expectations and performance by mobilizing social energies, communitization of basis amenities for sustainability as introduced in Nagaland and creating conditions for emergence of responsive and effective delivery system.



Emphasis is also on empowerment of farmers with advanced techno-managerial skill to make them switch over from subsistence mindset to commercialization, organic agriculture to tap the opportunities in external market and revitalizing the allied activities of agriculture to make them more economically lucrative. The investment requirement for poverty eradication listed in the 30-odd page report is Rs. 1004.90 crore including Rs. 528.92 crore, Rs. 448.18 crore and Rs. 27.80 crore in the 11th, 12th and 13th 5 Year Plans respectively.

The report classified poverty in the northeast into four categories – economic, nutritional, human and basic amenities poverty. The focus areas and activities in the vision for alleviation and eradication of poverty in NER include a five-fold development perspectives, namely economic development, institutional, participatory, human resource and infrastructure development perspectives.

Another focus area is measurement of poverty level. Economic development perspective envisages optimal use of resources through participatory growth process at the grassroots level.
Human development perspective concerns with the issues of health and nutrition security, augmentation of human capital and enabling all poor to live decent lives with human dignity.

Institutional development perspective focuses on creating and strengthening of institutions for enlarging the social capital and making the formal delivery and support systems accountable to the community and to be effective. Infrastructure development perspective lays emphasis on development on necessary socio-economic infrastructure for providing backward and forward linkages for production, value addition/ processing and marketing of rural products thereby integrating the rural community with the rest of the society.

As of 2004-05, the below poverty line (BPL) population in North Eastern Region (NER), which is home to an estimated 40 million people, is 19.1% as against 27.5% in the country as a whole. Among the other northeastern states, Sikkim has the highest poverty ratio with 20.1% while Mizoram has the lowest (12.6%). The poverty ratios in other states are Assam (19.7%), Nagaland (19%), Tripura (18.9%), Meghalaya (18.5%), Arunachal Pradesh (17.6%) and Manipur (17.3%). Northeastern region has a workforce of 41.6% cultivators and 13% agricultural laborers who depend on the land for their subsistence, the report stated.

Source: MORUNG EXPRESS

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