Political Economy of Policies of Rural Poverty in India

A policy for development of rural areas is nevertheless political move by both the union and the state governments in India. Government of India has initiated large number of developmental policies for rural areas to improve their living standards. But, the fruits of policies have, by and large, failed to improve the standards of lives of poor. The present paper not only highlights issues with relation to developmental policies of rural areas but also focus on whether they really reached the rural poor and what are the ground realities which involved in derailing the focus of developmental policies. In this context, present paper has a modest and limited aim to analyses policies of rural areas with view to its achievements, issues and challenges in implementation in alleviation of rural poverty, and thus the paper provides critical analysis in the spheres of social science research in general and public policy in specific. In this paper, I argue that developmental policies have been, in some extent, derailing from its targeted objectives due to power politics, absence of commitment and committed developmental authority with ‘bottom-up approach ’. Instead of ‘bottom-up approach ’, most of the welfare programs as public policy are prepared based on ‘top-down approach ’which begins at the highest conceptual level contextualizing merely macro-economic trends based on macro level social, economic and political scenario of a particular national system or a state.