Poverty is a complex phenomenon that goes beyond regional deprivation, necessitating comprehensive strategies that address the multifaceted nature of deprivation. Elaborate.

Complex → Education and Skill Phenomenon beyond material Deprivation → Inequality: Top 1% of population own 40% of population is formally skilled (CMIE)

Poverty only about 46% of population is formally skilled (CMIE) → Inequality: Top 1% of population own 40% of wealth (OXFAM)

Employment Poverty – nearly 8% of population is unemployed (PLFS)

Allied to Health – out of pocket expenditure on health is 47% as per NSO which pushes another 2.50mn people BPL.

Nutrition and Food security – nearly 180mn people go to bed hungry daily in India

Learning Poverty – 40% class students cannot read a simple paragraph (ASER)

Gender Poverty – 80% of all economically active women are in informal sectors (Time Poverty) → 70% of care work is done by women

Comprehensive strategies to address multifaceted nature of Deprivation

A. Enumeration and identification – big NHI Aayog's multi-dimensional poverty index

⊳ Caste survey to identify weakest of the weak

2. Social Security – increasing expenditure on health to 2.5% of GDP (NMP); ⊳ en education to 5% of GDP

3. Financial inclusion – replication of success of JTAI and OPI

4. Gender budgeting and increasing female labor force participation ⊳ can boost GDP by 27% (IMF); ⊳ requisite and routine enumeration of both genders

5. Care economy – nearly 3% of GDP & requisite and routine enumeration of equal duty of both genders

Ideas of saturation of scheme localisation of SDGs, make in India skill capital etc are all strategies to address poverty and must be proactively worked upon.

— Devansh Sarswat · AIR 221