Government set to overhaul public spending

Govt intends to uplift 10 million households, across 50,000 panchayats, out of poverty by 2019

Budget 2017 will see the government overhaul its rural social assistance programmes. The reset will involve a new definition of poverty, a social registry to identify beneficiaries, a new method for allocating resources, and greater financial autonomy for panchayats.

The government intends to uplift 10 million households, across 50,000 panchayats, out of poverty by 2019 through this exercise.

The new definition of poverty will be multidimensional and won’t rely just on consumption levels, said a source familiar with the matter. Instead, the reset will lead to an institutional framework to identify beneficiaries and decide interstate allocations based on data collected from the Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011, which provides the names and numbers of households which require social assistance in each panchayat. Currently, these allocations are based on aggregate poverty levels.

The new plan is based on the recommendations of a high-level expert group headed by former finance secretary Sumit Bose, reported Live Mint.