Question : Poverty and Malnutrition

(a)whether the World Bank has expressed the apprehension that Make in India and Skill India schemes are getting bogged down by poverty and malnutrition prevalent in the country;

(b)if so, the reaction of the Government thereto;

(c)the steps taken by the Government to address the problems of poverty and malnutrition and the extent of the success achieved by the Government as a result thereof;

(d)whether the Government has made efforts to collect poverty line of family based data for the identification of BPL families; and

(e)if so, the details thereof and the action taken by the Government to identify the poor and uplift them from the poverty line?

MINISTER OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE) FOR MINISTRY OF PLANNING AND
MINISTER OF STATE FOR MINISTRY OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND
MINISTRY OF HOUSING & URBAN POVERTY ALLEVIATION

(RAO INDERJEET SINGH)


(a) & (b) The World Bank has not expressed any apprehensions over the Make in India and Skill India schemes.

(c) Government of India is implementing various schemes to alleviate the problems of poverty viz. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Rural Livelihood Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana –Gramin, National Social Assistance Programme, National Rural Drinking Water Programme and Swachh Bharat Mission –Gramin in rural areas and Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana - Urban and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana - National Urban Livelihoods Mission in urban areas. These programmes are being implemented all over the country and aimed at overall development of rural areas as well as urban areas through creation of employment opportunities, infrastructure and provision of social security. As per the latest estimates of poverty, 29.1 percentage of persons were living below the Poverty Line in 2011-12. The comparative poverty ratio in the country for 1993-94 and 2004-05 was 45.3 per cent and 37.2 per cent respectively

The recently enunciated National Health Policy, 2017, includes ‘Interventions to address malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies’ as one of the policy thrust area. The present initiatives to address the problem of malnutrition are multifarious and start targeting the women during pregnancy and children at infant stage. The initiatives are inter alia Promotion of appropriate infant and young child feeding practices, Treatment of sick children with severe acute malnutrition at 965 special units called the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) set up at public health facilities, Vitamin A supplementation for children aged 6 months to 5 years, Village Health and Nutrition Days and Mother and Child Protection Card, National Iron Plus Initiative, Promotion for intake of iodised of salt under National Iodine Deficiency Disorders Control Programme, Systematic efforts to detect nutrition deficiency among children and adolescents respectively under the Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram (RBSK) and Rashtriya Kishore Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK).
As per the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 3 & 4 Reports, the childhood stunting prevalence reduced to 38.4% in 2015-16 from 48% in 2005-06 and childhood anemia prevalence reduced to 58.4% in 2015-16 from 69.5% in 2005-06.

(d) & (e): Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), 2011 has been carried out by all the States/ Union Territories of India. Under SECC, rural households are classified using three step methods-automatic exclusion on the basis of fourteen parameters, automatic inclusion on the basis of five parameters and grading of household deprivation on the basis of seven criteria. Ministry of Rural Development is using SECC data for the selection of the beneficiaries in its various programmes based on deprivations. SECC data is also being used for programmes implemented by other Ministries viz. Pradhan Mantri Ujjawala Yojana, National Food Security Act.

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