Anti-Poverty Programs — Prelims Strategy

Prelims Strategy

Prepare a comparison sheet with five columns: objective, eligible unit, delivery instrument, implementing institution and current legal or programme status. This makes it easier to detect a statement that attaches a correct feature to the wrong programme. In rural employment, check household versus individual entitlement and the date to which the statement refers.

Keep poverty measures separate from beneficiary databases. A fall in a multidimensional poverty headcount and an increase in programme enrolment are different observations. Neither alone proves the other caused it. When a statement gives a percentage, identify whether the denominator is applicants, eligible households, recipients or the population.

For elimination, ask which stage the evidence establishes. Sanction is not receipt, receipt is not adequacy, and expenditure is not a measured welfare outcome. A statement that quietly moves between these stages is suspect even if its scheme name is familiar. Revise the June 2011 launch and institutional approach of DAY-NRLM, and the July 2026 rural-employment transition, with their precise mechanisms rather than memorising undated slogans.