Poverty profile of SAARC nations

India has done well in poverty alleviation and in on course to meet most of SAARC Development Goals, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Dec 1, 2006, 21:17:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India has done well in poverty alleviation and in on course to meet most of SAARC Development Goals, while some south Asian countries like Pakistan have been found to be lagging in the Regional Poverty Profile of SAARC Nations released on Friday by Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Aluwalia.

The poverty rate in south Asia in 2001 was 31.3 per cent, second to Sub-Saharan Africa, with the annual improvement rate of 2.49 per cent between 1991-2001. Still, the region will meet the Million Development Goals by 2015, the report said.

Even though poverty is falling, the SAARC secretariat, which produced the report, has expressed concern over increase in the number of unemployed among labour force in most countries in south Asia, thereby putting a question mark over impact of economic development. In India, the unemployment rate is 2.30 per cent, an increase from 1.91 per cent in 1980. Pakistan has highest unemployment rate in the labour force of 7.69 per cent.

The report, however, found that economic boom has not helped agricultural workers much as their shift to more productive non-farm employment has been too slow. Also, increase in share of regular waged and salaried workers had also not been impressive, the report said. Only white-collar workers has shown an impressive increase. “Gains in economic growth terms has not shown in employment,” the report said.

The economic boom has also resulted in growing income inequalities in the region with India and Sri Lanka being better off than others.

Email Chetan Chauhan: chetan @hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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