Poverty Alleviation through Self-Help Groups in Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh

Text Sample:
Chapter-II Poverty Alleviation Programmes: An overview:
Economic growth is necessary but it does not benefit automatically and in equal proportion to all regions and sections of the population. For various reasons such as historical factors, resource endowments, social and political conjunctures and, of course, government policy, growth happens to be very uneven across regions. This fact is beyond dispute. It also happens that regions which are poorly developed to begin with have also grown at a slower rate than average. Hence, there is the need for government intervention in the form of various programmes and policies for ensuring equity and justice. However, the evolution of policies and programmes meant to tackle this problem may be haphazard and in some respects even incoherent. Nevertheless one can see a clear pattern in the way they seek to recognize and address differing needs of backward areas with special problems, and of different segments of the poor and underprivileged.
When a substantial segment of a society is deprived of the minimum level of living and continues at bare subsistence level that society is said to be plagued with the mass poverty. It is also believed that poverty everywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. Eradication of poverty and hunger through employment in the community has been one of the main goals of planning in India. Since the planning era, various target oriented as well as area oriented programmes and schemes have been implemented for generation of income with the purpose to eradicate poverty, inequality and backwardness from rural areas. Alleviation of poverty has consistently been of the major objectives of our economy.
At the beginning of the millennium, 260 million people in the country did not have incomes to access a consumption basket, which defines the poverty line. Of these, 75 per cent were in the rural areas. India is home to 22 per cent of the worlds poor. Such a high incidence of poverty is

Dr. R. Neelaiah is assistant professor and head of the Department of Commerce at Govt. College for Men in Kadapa, Andra Pradesh, India, and has been teaching bachelor and master courses since 2003. His areas of specialization and research are Accounting, Financial Management, Micro-finance, Human Resource Management and Taxation. So far, he has published one edited book and 50 research articles in national and international journals of repute, as well as presented 100 research papers in seminars and conferences.