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Social Structure and Social Change

Notes The Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002) was approved by the Cabinet only in January 1999. It is
described as ambitious and growth-oriented. The plan’s thrust areas are: agriculture, employment,
poverty, and infrastructure. In agriculture, the top priority is to be given to irrigation. The efficiency
and productivity of five infrastructure sectors—irrigation, power, mining, railways and
communication—is also expected to improve. The plan is described as ‘delivery-oriented’.
Assessment of Five Year Plans
If we make an appraisal of all the eight completed plans, we find that in the five decades of
planning, all our plans have been oriented towards something, sometimes self-reliance in
agricultural production, sometimes employment, sometimes industrial growth, and so on. But
poverty and unemployment have always increased.
During this period of 48 years, the average rate of economic growth has been 3 per cent. Though
it is not bad in comparison to the world’s average of 4 per cent, it is definitely poor in comparison
to the average of the developing countries of 7 per cent to 10 per cent. During 1951-1998, our
annual national income had increased by about 3.5 per cent, agricultural production by 2.7 per
cent, industrial production by 6.1 per cent, and the per capita consumption by 1.1 per cent. While
the government claimed that the number of people below the poverty line had come down to 33
per cent by 1998, since the number of unemployed people had increased, we cannot concede that
poverty has been contained. No wonder, more people feel frustrated today and the number of
agitations is increasing every year.
20-Point Programme
Indira Gandhi announced this programme in July, 1975 for reducing poverty and economic
exploitation and for the uplift of the weaker sections of society. The five important goals of this
programme were: (a) controlling inflation, (b) giving impetus to production, (c) welfare of the
rural population, (d) lending help to the urban middle classes, and (e) controlling social crimes.
The programmes included in the 20-point programme were: increase in irrigational facilities,
increase in programmes for rural employment, distribution of surplus land, minimum wages to
landcless labourers, rehabilitation of bonded labour, uplift of the Scheduled Castes and the
Scheduled Tribes, growth of housing facilities, increasing power production, formulating new
programmes of family planning, tree plantation, extension of primary health facilities, programmes
for the welfare of women and children, making primary education measures more effective,
strengthening of public distribution system, simplification of industrial policies, control of black
money, betterment of drinking water facilities, and developing internal resources.
State Poverty Alleviation Programmes
Several poverty alleviation programmes have been launched by the central government for the
rural poor, comprising small and marginal farmers, landless labourers and rural artisans. The
important programmes currently functioning are: IRDP (subsidies/loans for self-employment and
supportive land-based activities like irrigation, animal husbandry, etc.), TRYSEM (Training Rural
Youth in Skills for Self-Employment), Jawahar Rozgar Yojna (generating additional gainful
employment for the rural unemployed and underemployed, and providing employment for 50 to
100 days in a year to at least one member in a poor family, NREP (wage employment in slack
season), RLEGP (80 to 100 days of wage employment to every landless household), DPAP (area
development of drought-prone areas), and DDP (area development of hot and cold deserts).
We will discuss each of these programmes separately.
IRDP
The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) is a major instrument of the government to
alleviate poverty. Its objective is to enable selected families to cross the poverty line by taking up
self-employment ventures in a variety of activities like agriculture, horticulture and animal
husbandry in the primary sector, weaving and handicrafts in the secondary sector, and service
and business activities in the tertiary sector. The aim of the IRDP is to see that a minimum
stipulated number of families is enabled to cross the poverty line within the limits of a given

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