Socio-Legal Aspects Of Poverty Alleviation In India: A Critical Analysis Of The Schemes And Policies

Socio-Legal Aspects Of Poverty Alleviation In India: A Critical Analysis Of The Schemes And Policies For Poverty Alleviation

Mubarak Khan and Abdul Ashik Mubarak Rawoother

ABSTRACT

“No society can surely be flourishing or happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

It is said that poverty anywhere constitutes danger to prosperity everywhere. Poverty is a state of an individual, a family or a society where people are unable to fulfil even their basic necessities of life. When a substantial segment of a society is deprived of the minimum level of living and continues at a bare subsistence level, that society is said to be plagued with mass poverty. When people are excluded within a society, when they are unemployed, not well educated and when they have a higher incidence of illness, there are negative consequences for society. We all pay the price for poverty. The increased cost on the health system, the justice system and other systems that provide supports to those living in poverty has an impact on our economy. The Government is under obligation to provide the support to the needy, the miserable and the poor by generating the employments and adopting effective measures for poverty alleviation and thereby balancing the economy. The Constitution is the supreme commander of law in India and the makers of Constitution had this concern that each and every citizen has right to be developed and uplifted and hence they had made the provisions for the same under the Constitution. Though poverty as a term has not been mentioned in the Indian Constitution, however, the Preamble, the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy stand affirmation to the welfare state mode. Since independence the government has taken several measures for alleviating the poverty in India by adopting various schemes and policies. The paper seeks to study the concept of poverty, its evil effects and various measures taken by the government to alleviate the poverty in India. The paper also aims at critically analyse the effects and results of these measures.

Keywords: Poverty – Poverty Alleviation – Employment – Schemes – Economy