Breaking the bonds of rural poverty

http://m.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/column-by-jos-graziano-da-silva-on-world-food-day-breaking-the-bonds-of-rural-poverty/article7766702.ece

Pith of the pith:

Social protection schemes, even cash transfers, do not generate dependency but help in reducing poverty & chronic hunger and increase in investment by extreme poor towards long term income generating activities such as education and health.

The pith:

The proportion of extreme poor has reduced from 43% in 1990 to 17% today. 72 of 129 countries monitored by FAO have been able to achieve the MDG of halving the undernourished population by 2015.

However, around 800 million people continue to remain extremely poor and around 1 billion are chronically hungry. Also, the achievement of MDGs has been uneven.

Extreme poor are caught in the circle of survival activities which forces them to engage in low risk and low return activities and when any unexpected vagaries come, they reduce their expenses further by withdrawing children from education, cutting back expenses of health and food intake.

Social protection schemes can incentivise them to invest in long term income generating activities. So these schemes need to stay in place and expanded.