7. The public distribution system (PDS) is perhaps the oldest of all programmes that were designed to ensure food security in India, particularly of the poor. It is perhaps the world’s largest food distribution network. The basic objective of the PDS is to ensure that essential commodities are made available to the people at reasonable price, so as to provide them a safety net against inflation.
8. The Integrate Rural Development Programmes (IRDP) is the most important programmes that falls in the category of self-employment programmes. It is the single largest anti-poverty programmes currently underway in all the community development blocks in the country.
9. Wage-employment programmes have become important instruments for alleviating poverty and smoothening consumption during critical periods, including drought and flood situations. The Rural Works Programme (RWP) was the first major public programme introduced in 1971 with the main aim of providing employment to the unemployed, particularly in the lean season. A series of wage-employment programmes followed the RWP.
10. The National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme was launched on 2 February 2006 in 200 backward districts with a view to extend it to all the districts within five years. It aims at enhancing the livelihood security of the people in rural areas by guaranteeing 100 days of wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. For the first time in India, it recognizes the right the work as a fundamental legal right.
11. Besides the self-employment and wage-employment schemes, there a few other social welfare programmes including the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP), the Aam Admi Bima Yojana (AABY) and the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). The NSAP programme subsumes (a) the National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS) (b) the National Maternity Benefit Scheme (NMBS) and (c) the National Maternity Benefit Scheme (NMBS).
12. The effectiveness of the poverty alleviation programmes in targeting the poor and alleviating poverty have been a mixed bag of success in some of the states and failure in other states. Variations in effectiveness are largely due to efficiency or otherwise of the implementing machinery, that is, the delivery system, strengths of the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), existence or non-existence of community-based organisations of people, and initiative and innovativeness of the states in evolving approaches and institutional arrangements in harmony with the ground cinditions.