Useful starting points for a new approach to poverty lie in anchoring poverty lines to social norms and in the distinction made by the Perspective Planning Division (PPD) of the Planning Commission in 1962 between goods and services to be bought by households from their own resources and those to be supplied by the state, thus providing a meaningful way of distinguishing the responsibilities of households (that is, the private sphere) and those of the state (that is, the public sphere).

Since the poverty of those well-integrated with the income generation processes will move in tandem with sustained rapid economic growth, the state, apart from pursuing policies that promote rapid growth and eliminating any distortions in income generation processes, would focus attention on the poor not in the economic mainstream.

Broadening of social norms of poverty and new approaches for doing so could contribute greatly in addressing poverty. A tempting option is to base social norms on the rights of India’s citizens. If we can define a set of rights to which each citizen is entitled qua being a citizen and the set of rights is broad enough to include those entitlements that would preclude a citizen from ever becoming poor, and ensure that the rights are enforced, then mass poverty would not arise. Moreover if the rationale for many of our poverty alleviation policies, such as, for example, the public distribution scheme (PDS) and employment generation programmes, could be founded on a rights based approach, it would be easier to bring about a consensus on them.

... contd.