Rural poverty : issues and option / by J. L. Bajaj and C. Shastri

The nail-biting of the 1970s' stem mainly from the failure to come to grips with out standing contemporary economic problems, perhaps most baffling and cllusive among them remains the juggernaut of the rural poverty. The present book is an attempt to delineate major issues related to the rural poverty and to analyse various policy options, particularly to identify implementation lacu nac. It deals with various available esti mates of poverty including its regional dimen sions in the context with the help of micro as well as macro level data. The sum total of these discussions, as crystallized in various policy options forms the major part of the volume.

The main part of the volume, consisting of self contained chapters giving detailed analysis of the policy options: their concept ualization and implementation. The main objective is to identify the flaws in the policy formulation and impediments in the imple mentation. Two of them, namely land re forms and beneficiary oriented programmes designed to generate employment and pro ductive assets for the rural poor are analysed. The attention is drawn to the problems of departmental coordination, equitable distri bution of the programme benefits, frictional forces operating at the grassroots. The diag nostic part of the discussion is followed by a series of corrective measures.