Indian leaders stand up and speak out against poverty

All the respondents were asked one question “How should you/ India Stand Up to End Poverty?”

Swaminathan Aiyar, India’s foremost economic columnist

Just get an all-weather road, reliable electricity, telecom, and a decent school to every village. That will create jobs and do infinitely more to relieve poverty than anti-poverty schemes, most of which are palliatives and not cures. That is the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

Yamini Aiyar, Director, Accountability Initiative and Senior Fellow with the Centre for Policy Research

Reforming our public services to ensure that public money and basic services - education, health care water and sanitation - are delivered to India's poorest is the greatest challenge that India faces today in its fight to Stand Up Against Poverty. This requires creating a delivery system that is reflective of people's needs and is accountable to them.

Information – regular, reliable, relevant information – is the nerve centre of an accountable public service delivery system. Information empowers citizens to participate in government and demand their rights and entitlements. The Right to Information Act 2005 is a crucial mechanism through which citizens can access regular, reliable and relevant information.

It is crucial therefore that steps are taken to ensure the effective implementation of the Act. In particular, we need to ensure that provisions of section 4 of the Act that mandates governments to proactively disclose information on its operations are complied with.

There are many ways by which this can be done. One way is to incentive departments by giving public awards to well performing departments. At the same time, steps need to be taken to ensure that information disclosed is relevant to people. Government documents can often be complex and confusing. This obfuscates accountability.

Demystifying complex government reports and encouraging reporting on performance indicators are can go a long way towards ensuring that citizens access information and can use this information to hold the Indian government accountable for its promises.

Rajni Bakshi, journalist and author of the acclaimed book on alternative people-friendly economic policies Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom – For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear

Eco-regeneration linked to livelihood creation, both by governments and private sector, can help eliminate and Stand Up Against Poverty.

One key element in eliminating (not just alleviating) poverty could be to revitalise local economies (village to district level) in ways that gives people better bargaining power in relation to national and international economy through livelihood measures, social/ public infrastructure that is designed to also regenerate the environment.

To elaborate:

NREGA and all other safety net programmes are essential as interim but the end game must be universal prosperity.

This requires:

For the government to ensure democratic entitlements – thus no forced evictions or forced sale of lands and natural habitats. For government to ensure full delivery of basic social infrastructure without needs test, i.e. education, health, sanitation/ hygiene.

For private sector to design business models that keep wealth in circulation at the lowest rungs of the economy...rather than siphoning it off the top (or even middle).

For citizens to be assertive about democratic rights and enterprising and inventive to make a place for themselves in the marketplace.

Amitabh Behar, Convener, Wada Na Toro Campaign

To Stand Up Against Poverty we need to do three things. First, invert our gaze and make the policy domain and governance focused on poor. One might argue that it is already the focus of our governments. However, to my mind, the focus is not on the poor but on making the poor the join the 'mainstream developmental path'.

The second, which can not be done without first, would also help in making the first suggestion operational. It would be important to shift our focus and energies from being concentrated on enhancing growth (production) to questions of distribution and justice. Our 11th five year plan talks of inclusive growth, where the emphasis on inclusion is noteworthy and laudable but it would still need to reoriented to distribution and justice.

May be its crucial to mention that both these points suggest a role of state where its proactive in ensuring distributive justice as poverty is created by structural causes and to address them we need strong political will.

The enterprise of ordinary Indian people and other actors, including civil society and market would ensure the growth path but State intervention would be critical for the distributive agenda. Finally, and probably, most crucially, we need to ensure to bridge the governance deficit.

In practical terms it would mean atleast the basics of accountability and enforcement, which probably can happen only with a complete overhaul, restructuring and reforming the governance systems and institutions.

Chetan Bhagat, best-selling author

There is no one quick fix to end poverty, though fixing poverty and Standing Up Against Poverty does fix a lot of the world's problems like healthcare and education. To me, ending poverty comes from whole heartedly embracing a wealth creating economy – one geared towards encouraging business, innovation, talent and modernisation.

Today every developing nation has something to offer to the developed nations – be it cheaper labour or access to market.

In exchange, the developing nation can ask the developed nation to support the poverty removal effort. Well governed, open economies where people are homogenous are best placed to become affluent – as enough examples have shown, but may not be something that every citizen of a country like India agrees with where there are too many divisions.

Changing those mindsets will be the first step to win the battle over poverty.

William Bissell, Managing Director, Fab India

By enabling a market system to value assets such as natural resources and biodiversity the poor will become richer as a value will be attached to assets in their communities. The poor may not be rich in terms of income but they are rich in terms of natural resources. A market system that values these assets will not only alleviate many from poverty but also ensure incentives to look after and manage natural resources and the environment. At present the market and its regulation is resulting in topsy-turvy results where costs are either subsidised or externalised. This needs to change, by valuing the assets properly not only will poverty be improved but also a more efficient market system is created where, appropriate costs are taken on board. This is the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

Madhav Chavan, Founder, Pratham

Democracy first. Democracy by the people. The world of the poor is a world with either no democracy or limited democracy in the name of the people, for the people.

Most institutions work "for the poor". Words such as empowerment and enablement have become meaningless.

Those who talk about empowerment tend to forget that empowerment of the poor should be simultaneously accompanied by and equal disempowerment of the rich and the powerful. This rarely happens in the developing world.

Building democracy has two aspects. One is the Constitutional and the legal side. The second is the socio-political organisational side, which should help the poor to access law, justice, and hence the required opportunities and freedom without middlemen.

Access to information and the ability to comprehend the information and to act upon it have equal important. On the one hand all information should be delivered without hindrance in a user friendly manner and on the other, the deprived and the poor should have the individual or collective capacity to understand this information and to act upon it.  Building the democratic governance processes is not an easy task, but unless these are developed, poverty alleviation will remain only a vague dream. This is only way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

Dilip Cherian, India’s foremost image guru and spin doctor

We must now move from the concept of ‘tourism spots’ and look at ‘experience tourism’. The tourists of tomorrow increasingly will look forward to understanding culture, customs and traditions of local places and experience these by living among local people.

We are uniquely placed to create such “experience zones” in villages in virtually every district of India. This is certain to bring in tourists in large numbers into spots that are not currently on the “Lovely Planet map” and boost income opportunities of the even local poor while ensuring they themselves invest in preserving and promoting their culture and unique identity. It could be win-win for all.

Gurcharan Das, former corporate leader/ business guru/ author

My one big idea to Stand Up Against Poverty is SCHOOL CHOICE: Today the government spends Rs 400 per month per child for education in our failed government primary schools, where 1 out 4 school children are absent and 1 our of 4 teachers who are present are not teaching.

ASER reports show that children in 5th grade do not have the literacy of 2nd grade children. Hence, even the poor are pulling their children out of primary schools and 58% of children in urban India are in private schools and this is growing by 2% points per year.

My solution is for the government to give each child a scholarship worth Rs 400 per month which the child can use for schooling in any school of his or her choice.

As a result of this the supply of good schools will increase as schools will compete for these scholarships. Government schools will improve once teachers realise that their salary will only be paid via these scholarships. Equality of opportunity will result as every child will have a chance to go to a good school.

Lord Meghnad Desai, noted economist, author and Professor Emeritus, Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics

The only way to fight poverty and Stand Up Against Poverty is to equip the poor with good health and cheap and reliable healthcare, to give them and their children good education and to reform the restrictive laws of employment so they can get full time jobs with regular pay.

All these things can be done by the government getting out of direct provision of health or education in which it has failed for 62 years but transfer cash directly to eligible households (after suitably revising the measure of BPL) and let the poor decide what to do with the money. No subsidised rice or wheat no food security nonsense – just give cash directly!

Joy Elamon, Panchayati Raj worker Kerala, UNDP (India)

Standing Up Against Poverty needs to be tackled at its roots. Land relation is the prime issue and land reform definitely is the key to sustainable poverty alleviation. Now, since we are into many a rights-based policies and programmes, let us also launch comprehensive land reforms.

Next in line is providing universal education and then the employment. The recently enacted Right to Education has to be made operational. While NREGA addresses the rural unemployment, there needs to be a different programme to address urban unemployment.

Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Kitply Industries

The responsibility for action has often been limited to the local level, with the inevitable consequence that any large ambition to see the big picture is destroyed into shambles before it sees the light of national relevance.

Addressing the contradictions inherent in current government policies could be the first step toward genuine anti-poverty policy reform and progressive change. Focus on the unacknowledged, unseen and unmentioned areas. The reflection in the mirror should not represent a hollow, presumptuous image of fantasy, but help with achieving what indeed would be the ground reality.

Capt Gopinath, Chairman and Managing Director, Deccan 360

I believe the most important aspect of focus would be to create the right policy framework. To shift from a subsidy led mind set to job creation only complemented by subsidies. The government needs to create infrastructure, roads and ports connecting the innermost parts of the country, creating jobs and enabling foreign direct investment.

Need to ensure that the funds that are allocated for social infrastructure impact the targeted communities. The climate of entrepreneurship needs to be fostered as they alone can create new businesses and jobs which will eradicate poverty, unleashing the power of entrepreneurs with access to funds and ease of set up is critical for Standing Up Against Poverty.

Vineet Jain, Managing Director, Times Group

Standing Up Against Poverty needs 2 key ideas: Skill development: Huge, focused investment in skill development would yield tremendous results.

India today faces a severe shortage of skills. For every qualified engineer, there should be around 20 ancillary technicians such as masons, benders, welders, plumbers, etc in the construction industry. They are just not available. The government has launched a massive skill development programme to bridge the gap between demand and supply. It cannot succeed as a typical official programme. With voluntary organisations, local bodies, industrial associations and multilateral donors associating themselves with the skills programme, there is hope for success. Effective skill development could lead to sustainable release from poverty.

Planned Urbanisation: India’s urban population will rise by at least 200 million over the next 15 years, as a necessary accompaniment to fast economic growth. The only way to prevent Indian cities turning into squalid slums is to create new planned towns. These towns will do two things: house burgeoning industry and services and those who man them; and offer higher-value, even if low-skilled, jobs to the rural poor, in providing services to the new towns and their inhabitants.

Planned urbanisation has immense potential to tackle poverty, reduce social tensions, raise living standards and accelerate overall economic growth.

Ram Jethmalani, prominent lawyer and MP, Rajya Sabha

To Stand Up Against Poverty the first and biggest solution has to be control of the budget. We cannot be a country which continues to have troubled relations with our neighbours and an ever-expanding defence budget.

I propose a multilateral defence pact with key democracies wherein an attack on one would mean an attack on everyone. This will help scale down our defence budget and this kind of cooperation would also allow us to check the estimated 30% corruption losses that the Indian economy faces, some of which comes from defence deals.

I propose that a direct transfer of funds saved from a scaled down defence budget into public health. This would stop our public health services from being many a time slaughterhouses and expand public efficiency.

Finally, we need legislation that would prevent seepage of the money to foreign accounts like the billions of Indian dollars now lying inaccessible in Swiss funds. Targetted investigation and tax reform would enable access to these funds creating a huge benefit for country.

Naveen Jindal, Executive Vice Chairman and Managing Director Jindal Steel and Power and Congress Party MP, Lok Sabha, Kurukshetra

In my personal opinion, I believe that the best way of bringing real relief to the poorest of the poor is by giving them direct transfers of cash and indeed food that they can use. But ration cards do not often help.

In fact, in the recent past, we have seen people in Bihar burn ration cards because they really could not get anything through the ration cards. I believe a much better way is to give food coupons or food stamps not just for food but also for vital things like kerosene. A food stamp or voucher would allow the poorest to access the kind of resources in food and rations that they need and want. This would be a far more effective way of disseminating benefits because it would empower the poor to make the choice that they want and get the quality of goods and services that they deserve. This is the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

Amitabh Kant, thought leader behind Incredible India campaign and currently the CEO of the Delhi – Mumbai Industrial Corridor Corporation

My idea is that we should identify 500 villages across the country which have a very strong core competence of culture, heritage and art forms. These villages should be developed as local hubs of tourism excellence, as centres of experiential tourism and market them vigorously.

The villagers should be completely integrated to this process and all guides in each village have to be people from the village so that the local communities manage local assets. This was we will create value bottom up rather than top down and enable people to own their assets and Stand Up Against Poverty.

C.V. Madhukar, Director, PRS Legislative Research

The biggest challenge in the fight against poverty in India is knowing how much money the Government spends and how much actually reaches the beneficiaries in each programme. Government keeps coming up with many schemes and taxpayers money is spent on these schemes with the intention of fighting poverty.

To Stand Up Against Poverty requires government to put out funds flow data for each programme at every level – panchayat, block, district, state and national.

This is the kind of detail that should be available as each ministry/ department releases money. If a systematic effort is initiated in making this data public and citizens start accessing it, then the implementation of the schemes can be closely monitored for effectiveness.

Yamini Mishra, Executive Director, Centre for Budget Governance and Accountability

Poverty in India is structural. I am afraid there are no quick, easy-to-take steps. The government has to make serious, sincere and concerted efforts. Most schemes have promoted low cost and short term government interventions of an ad hoc nature instead of putting in place adequately financed and long term government interventions of a sustained nature.

There are problems in design and implementation of most schemes. This problem becomes evident, among other things, from the low magnitude of budget allocations made for such programmes which result from ridiculously and unrealistically low unit costs for most schemes, including the flagship programmes. We need to invest in building a sound system that delivers at the very least the basic needs of the poor and Stand Up Against Poverty.

Anit Mukherjee, Fellow, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

To Stand Up Against Poverty, each gram sabha is asked to list one thing that needs to be done within the first year in each of the following areas: food, education, health and water. To do this, each panchayat currently being headed by women is given one lakh rupees. A social audit is carried out by the women in each village. In the second year, each gram sabha is asked to list two things in to be done in the next two years, for which each panchayat is given two lakh rupees. At the end of three years, each panchayat is given Rs five lakh to spend as it likes only if an all women social audit team certifies that they are satisfied with the work.

The same process will apply to all panchayats that will have women sarpanches in the future.

Might be crazy, but I guess we need to come out of concepts like BPL/APL which will never be satisfactorily resolved.

Partho Mukhopadhyay, Senior Fellow, Infrastructure, Centre for Policy Research

The causes of poverty are varied and vary by location, individual and even year and a one paragraph idea would be unable to address this complexity.

What is however true is that the India's economic structure is changing. Over 1999-2000 to 2007-08, the share of agriculture in GDP dropped by 6.4% (from 22.9% to 16.3%), while that of Telecom and IT rose by almost an equal amount, 6.3% (from 2.6% to 8.9%).

I am not saying that everyone will work in the IT sector, but that there is a modernisation process under way and the big question is which life do we prepare for. Beneficiary schemes like PDS and NREGA are short term palliatives but can we deliver good health and good education to our poor children and youth that will enable them to participate more effectively, if not equally in this transition?

The greater the number of us who can participate in this ongoing transition, the more we all benefit. One way of delivering these basic services better is to decentralise them, by transferring serious money (e.g., last year, our fertiliser subsidy alone touched Rs. 100,000 crore) down to the local governments directly.

There will no doubt be many instances of corruption and exploitation by local elites, but these will be visible to the people and will set off a political contestation process at the local level where the poor can use the one right that they have been able to leverage relatively successfully - their vote.

Out of this possibly chaotic contestation, will hopefully emerge that variegated interventions that are necessary to Stand Up Against Poverty – in some places sooner, in others later.

Harshvardhan Neotia, Chairman, Ambuja Realty

Here are the three key ideas to Stand Up Against Poverty: Empowering and educating the girl child: Whilst education is no doubt the key to grappling with many basic issues, it is a must that we realise that we cannot correct the larger picture by leaving out 50% of our population uneducated or even illiterate. It is therefore imperative to encourage, nurture and inspire education for the girl child across urban and rural India. It is their empowerment that would go a long way in changing several societal dynamics and propel an overall well being.

Whilst I am an optimist and I do have a lot of hope for our country’s future, I cannot help being a realist as well and I am often alarmed by our ever increasing population. No matter how robust our systems, resources and our ability to create jobs we will continue to fall short on infrastructure, lose out on implementation of policies and forever be treating the effect (poor) and not the cause (poverty) until we find ways to restrict our ever growing population.

It is also important for us to understand as a civilisation, that environmental and ecological degradation will take both the poor and rich down together, leaving all irreversibly poorer. It is therefore critical that we learn to respect limited resources and put an end to abusing natural resources that are our lifeline. This of course is inextricably linked to the points stated earlier.

Nandan Nilekani, Unique Identity Card Scheme

An early and seemingly obvious step to tackling poverty would be acknowledging the poor. However, this has long been a weakness across governments and countries – the poor are well-represented as groups and statistics, but are largely invisible as individuals as far as poverty policy is concerned.

Acknowledging the individual identity of the poor – and accordingly, accepting that the poor have varying needs and requirements – has broad implications for poverty policies.

For example, the poor often lack documents and find it difficult to prove their identity, which increases their difficulty in accessing benefits and services.  Recognising the individual identity of the poor through social security or identity numbers enables them to easily access services.

Additionally, this means that governments, rather than offering one-size-fits-all policies in welfare and social security, can tailor them for poor individuals. Poor mothers for example, can be offered directed benefits in the form of cash and insurance, for their own health and the health of their children. The unemployed can be offered vouchers for re-skilling and education programmes.

The elderly poor can be provided with unique forms of financial and health support. In the long term, such an approach enables a stronger, more transparent relationship between the poor individual and the government, where the state will not only be able to provide tailored and direct benefits, but also verify that the poor actually received them.

Sachin Pilot, Union Minister (State) Telecommunications, Information and Technology

I believe that the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty is to use information technology to bring financial services to the poorest people who fall off the radar of financial services. From banking services, credit, education, goods and services, communications, all this can be brought at the lowest possible cost to the people who need it the most through information technology, through smart cards and cheap technology. Financial inclusion is the key to empower and uplift the poorest popel and this can be done through IT.

Ashish Raheja, Managing Director, K Raheja Universal

The government has several programs for rural employment and poverty alleviation, so I would like to focus on the urban poor. This is a long term problem and needs a sustainable solution. Clichéd as it is poverty can be reduced at the grassroots level by upgrading the earning capacity of the poor.

All companies and firms hire blue collar workers directly and even poorer employees like construction labourers are hired directly. Therefore, each company or firm above a certain size directly or indirectly hiring people below a fixed monthly salary on a mandatory basis set aside a percentage of the wages paid, as contribution of the company (tax deductible), in a proposed ‘CUCUP’ – a Comprehensive Urban Child Upliftment Policy.

It can be voluntary for the first three years of employment and then legally enforceable. The money will go towards running CUCUP centres run by designated NGOs in different cities. The centres will provide education, nutrition and health for children up to the age of 12.

Each centre would be run by professionals or paid volunteers. Over a decade, and if used prolifically, such a system of CUCUP would enable us to raise the health and education levels of the urban poor substantially in a definitive Stand Up Against Poverty.

Aruna Roy, Shanker Singh and Nikhil Dey and members of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), Rajasthan, India

We believe that society has a collective responsibility to equally share the resources of the world, and governments at the very least have a duty to provide the basic human needs of food, education, health, and employment to all. In fact, the objective of the Millennium Development Goals is to extend this responsibility to a global level.

To give real shape to the oft repeated terms 'transparency and accountability" we turn to two powerful slogans coined by ordinary people in the right to information movement in India: "Our money, our accounts" succinctly sums up  the idea of 'accounts and accountability' of all public funds, and "The right to know, the right to live", powerfully connects transparency and governance with the survival and livelihood needs of the poorest and most marginalised people.

Democratic controls must lie in the hands of the people. Otherwise development will always remain a hollow promise for the poor and marginalised. One of the first non negotiable economic and social rights of all human beings must be their right to know, and make informed choices.

An effective people’s right to information, complimented by a duty to inform on the side of agencies of development and governance and the market, will allow people to take the steps towards being the initiators, planners, policy makers, implementers, monitors, and evaluators of their own development. This is best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

John Samuel, Asia Director, Actionaid

There can not be a one liner or one para magic bullet for poverty eradication. Ending poverty, Standing Up Against Poverty in India requires an enabled and empowered people – with an ability to claim their human rights – irrespective of caste, creed, religion and region.

Such a process of empowerment requires five basic conditions: universal education, primary healthcare, sustainable development of agriculture and creation of rural employment, inclusive economic growth and democratic and accountable government.

Poverty is a result of cumulative marginalisation, exclusion and injustice. Poverty is not only about income, it is also about social and economic inequality and injustice. So without all these, it is difficult to have a long-term inclusive economic growth.

Without basic capacity of people and sustainability of the nature, economic growth will create more inequality and injustice. Creating rural infrastructure and vibrant rural economy (through agro-industries and small scale enterprises) will be a pre-requisite to create long-term rural employment.

And rural employment and sustainable agriculture will help to reduce the rural-urban migration and poverty. Targeted approach to poverty eradication can only be useful as a short-term social protection and not a long term solution for poverty eradication.

Sanjeev Sanyal, economist, environmentalist, writer; founder, Sustainable Planet Institute

The first step towards Standing Up Against Poverty would be to improve basic governance. This is necessary not only to protect India's poor from arbitrary harassment and violence, but also to allow the poor to leverage their limited assets/skills to climb out of poverty. Unfortunately, the steady decline of governance has meant that in large parts of the country it is simply not possible for the average citizen to improve their lives through honest hard work and enterprise.

In my view, the single most important intervention would be to radically reform the legal system. This requires a review of rules and laws as well as an overhaul of the judicial and policing process. The rich and powerful will always find a way to protect their own interests, but the poor need the institutions of governance to help enforce contracts and protect their property rights.

Mani Shankar, Former Minister for Panchayati Raj

For development to effectively reach the poor, government funds have to be directly transferred to the treasury accounts of elected representatives at the grassroots.

Constitutionally, India has more than 250,000 institutions of local self government which have 32 lakh representatives with 12 lakh women and 80,000 chairpersons.

India has more elected women in office than anywhere else in the world. Development funds need to be taken out of the hands of an invisible and alien bureaucracy and given to local self government representatives.

This is the best way of development reaching those who need it the most. This would be the greatest and the most efficient Stand Up Against Poverty.

Davinder Sharma, trade and agriculture analyst

The biggest challenge in fighting poverty in India is by redrawing the map of agriculture. In a country which has roughly 70% of the population directly or indirectly dependent upon farming, designing agriculture in a pro-farmer, and pro-environment format by ensuring long-term sustainability and economic viability, will not only address the shameful scourge of poverty and hunger but also provide an everlasting solution to the emerging crisis of water scarcity and climate change.

The model of agriculture that I am talking about will also turn the country free of Naxalites, and lay the foundation of a Gross Happiness Index.

The first and foremost requirement to Stand Up Against Poverty is to provide approximately the 10-crore farming families with direct income support. The average monthly income of a farming family in India does not exceed Rs 2,400. A chaprasi in government service under the 6th Pay Commission gets a minimum of Rs 15,000.

Let us bring the annadata of the country at par with a chaprasi at least. Farmers produce food for the country, which is economic wealth, but they have not been given the right commensuration for the wealth they continue to generate for the country. Remove this glaring anomaly, and provide money in the hands of farmers. Much of the existing poverty and hunger will be automatically taken care of.

Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resources and Development

The main, critical way we can Stand Up Against Poverty is by a concentrated push to boost India’s gross enrolment ratio in primary education from the current around 11 to around 30 in the next two decades. The Right to Education Bill in the first key step to make that happen.

Jaswant Singh, Former External Affairs and Finance Minister of India

I have always believed that policy first must be geared towards the people. That’s the only way one can Stand Up Against Poverty. GDP is not a god. I believe in Gross National Contentment.

The biggest challenge is to provide real money and employment. I believe what works much better than the current National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which is like digging holes and filling them, is a widespread, national infrastructure project that brings millions of jobs and builds much-need infrastructure. A sustained focus on infrastructure building is the only way to bring real wealth.

N.K. Singh, MP, Rajya Sabha

We need a new mind set on poverty to Stand Up Against Poverty which goes beyond a statistical number and looks at the human dimensions to address three crucial concerns.

First devise a uniformly acceptable methodology on poverty computation since the data varies so widely depending on the sources of the study.

Second, any poverty definition must include a broader human dimension.  In addition to any consumption based estimate it must be defined in terms of income threshold which includes not merely physical survival but minimum access to education, health and meeting inescapable needs consistent with human dignity. The Right to Life must be a Dignified Right to Life.

Third, on amelioration strategy reliance on Government has been disappointing. We need to merge the cost of all anti poverty measures and make a direct cash transfer to a Bank account opened in the name of the beneficiary.

To believe that government is better placed to make the optimum choice than poor himself is a colonial hangover.

In short the new poverty approach entails a mindset change. We need to view poverty in the broader context; an enabling infrastructural and improved social services creates virtuous circles to leap frog from the Poverty Quagmire. An innovative and “Out of the Box” approach for estimation, definition and eradication strategy is needed.

Yashwant Sinha, Former Finance Minister and BJP MP, Lok Sabha, Hazaribagh

To Stand Up Against Poverty the biggest challenge in India is knowing how many poor people this country has! Unless we accurately know who are the people who need the most help, how can we help?

There is rampant misuse of the BPL (Below Poverty Line) lists and my suggestion is that we have to make the creation of these lists as important and quality checks as stringent as in an election.

The first step has to be that BPL enumerators cannot be from the same state. There has to be a process in which enumerators from different states work to gather data in states other than their home state. So a West Bengal enumerator will not work to gather data in West Bengal but maybe in Jharkhand, etc.

This will immediately cut a huge layer of ulterior motive and vested interests in the creation of the BPL cards.

Gopal Subramanium, Solicitor General, India

The biggest battle in the process of Standing Up To Poverty has to be in bringing back, returning faith to the common man that he can bank on the judiciary. Unless we can return that faith that the law is for every man and the law will work to create a level playing field for every man, we cannot effectively combat poverty and bring hope to our impoverished millions. For what does poverty really do? It disempowers, disables justice.

And our battle must start is rekindling the great power of justice to bring faith, humanity and vigorous empathy in the lives of the poor, those who are disadvantaged.

The fight against poverty must begin with providing the advantage of law to those who feel they are disadvantaged.

Today we have to create a system that brings the power of law and the idea of uncompromising justice and create a system that promotes uncompromising justice. My idea is that we have to revamp our first layer of justice – the local magisterial level.

The local magisterial level is the first place where the common man seeks justice and we need very competent, experienced judges at that level. We need a system to effectively train competent judges and bring better, new talent at the basic magistrate level judge.

If we can bring the solace and succor of justice to the common man, the poorest of poor convincing him that he has equal rights and equal refuge in the eyes of the law, that is a great battle won against poverty.

M.S. Swaminathan, Agriculture Scientist and Father of Indian Green Revolution, MP, Rajya Sabha

The poor are poor because they have no assets – physical, financial or educational. Asset building is thus the pathway for poverty eradication and the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

The Biovillage paradigm of poverty eradication and human resource development is an effective method for eliminating poverty. The biovillage paradigm consists of the following three components:

Enhancement of small farm productivity and profitability on an ecologically sustainable basis; creation of opportunities for non-farm employment through value addition to primary products; and generating more opportunities in the services sector.

Ultimately we can eradicate poverty only if the current trend in overvaluing land and material resources and undervaluing the human resource is ended.

J.J. Valaya, Fashion Designer

I think, in purely focusing on our respective areas of expertise, and then finding solutions within would yield very productive solutions to this issue. Therefore, if I am to speak from the point of my industry alone, i.e., fashion, I would suggest and support a radical change first in the perceived mindset towards fashion from elitist to essential to help eradicate poverty.

How? You may ask. I believe that once an industry is more accepted, it expands faster, wider and deeper in its new found freedom, which in turn stimulates growth, the natural resultant of which is increased employment and, thus, a definitive step forward in the fight against poverty.

The only answer to eradicating poverty, the only way to Stand Up Against Poverty is creating more employment and any industry, whether basic or glamorous, that offers this opportunity needs to be looked at very seriously and positively.

Arvind Virmani, Chief Economic Advisor

I made a calculation that if all the money allocated to the various anti-poverty programmes was directly made available to the poorest people, it would wipe out poverty.

So my solution is based on the card system, give the poorest a card that empowers them and has money allocated to it which enables them to get access to services. Give them the right to goods and services but don’t hand out goods and services, which take out all the administrative costs and put the money to real use for the people. This is the best way to Stand Up Against Poverty.

Vinod Vyasulu, Economist and Budget Analyst

It has been generally recognised that in India we are poor at implementation. When it comes to execution, things go wrong. Cost and time over-runs are routine.

We also seem incapable of understanding the necessary conditions for a solution to this problem! The 73rd and 74th amendments have created space for local governments, by enabling a redistribution of powers and functions between states and local government units.

While the state must retain responsibility for priority setting, planning, mobilisation of resources etc, programme and project implementation is best left to democratically elected local governments.

We had created these local governments, but there is a long way to go. Think of a gram panchayat sarpanch monitoring a school – the state can never do that. Reorganising the state governments is, I argue, a necessary condition for the elimination of poverty and inequity.

Sitaram Yechury, MP, Rajya Sabha and Communist Party of India Politburo Member

The first step towards Standing Up Against Poverty is the food security. That is the main, critical first step – food for the hungry. My proposal would be that 35 kilograms of rice or wheat is available to those below poverty line every month by law. There needs to be legislation insuring this. And the number of people below poverty line has to be measured according to the Arjun Sengupta report.

About Whypoll

Whypoll is one of the first citizen efforts at developing renewed focus on development issues and political accountability in India. It works on the idea that of the widest possible social audit generated by the people.

The online platform of Whypoll was built to ask the basic question – why bother polling? Why bother to cast a vote when you have little information and indeed access to the kind of government you have? Why bother to cast a vote when you often don't even know who your local MP and MLA is and indeed what they do?

Whypoll believes that without information there can be no real governance, no inclusion, no growth and development.