Extreme poverty falling, to end by 2031: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said yesterday fast economic growth and rapid urbanisation would slash the number of people in extreme poverty by 2021 and end it completely in the decade after that.

More than 21% of India’s 1.3bn people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2011, when the last census was taken, according to the World Bank.

The economy is a major issue in a staggered general election that began on Thursday and will end on May 19, with the main opposition Congress Party rejecting a rosy picture Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been presenting.

Jaitley, who heads the BJP’s publicity department in the election, said the number of people who live in poverty would drop to below 15% in the next three years and to a negligible level in the 10 years after that.

“Urbanisation will increase, the size of the middle-class will grow and the economy will expand manifolds,” Jaitley said in a Facebook post.

“These will add to the number of jobs, and as the experience of the past three decades have shown in the liberalised economy, every section of citizens will benefit.”

Economic growth in recent years had generated enough revenue for states to work more on poverty alleviation, job creation and improving healthcare and education, he said.

But the Congress has taken issue with such assertions, in particular, pointing to leaked government data that showed unemployment rose to its highest level in 45 years in 2017/18.

Jaitley said economic problems could be addressed as India remained the world’s fastest growing major economy.

But he said restoring peace in the insurgency-hit state of Jammu and Kashmir was the most important issue facing the country. “The issue of Jammu and Kashmir and terror continues to

remain the biggest challenge before India,” he said.

“It relates to our sovereignty, integrity and security.”

Jaitley said it cannot be solved until the “failed obsolete thought” of Article 370 as a “loose constitutional connect” between the state and the rest of the country is rejected.

He said the challenge needs a fresh approach and only a strong government and a leader with clarity alone was capable of resolving the Kashmir issue.

Referring to the past Congress governments, he said the challenge cannot be resolved by those who created the problem and who believe that a “loose constitutional connect” will lead to integration.

He added that it could only be done through a fresh approach “which is uncompromising on terror” and “committed to total integration” and through “reversal of the historical blunders”.

Targeting the Congress, Jaitley said it was identified with the creation of the problem itself by “wishing the issue away” when Pakistan did not reconcile to Kashmir being a part of India.

“Instead of working for total integration, the party wanted a loose and liberal constitutional connect between rest of the nation and the state under an erroneous impression that such an arrangement would further the cause of integration,” he said.

“Article 370 was disastrously thought out as a constitutional connect between rest of the country and the state. Article 35A was surreptitiously introduced in 1954. It catered to a separatist psyche and legitimised discrimination,” he added.

Jaitley said terror supported from across the border “can’t be fought either with velvet gloves or a policy of appeasement”.

“This challenge can obviously be resolved with a fresh approach which is uncompromising on terror, uncompromising in its determination to enforce the rule of law and committed to total integration. A strong government and a leader with clarity alone is capable of resolving the Kashmir issue,” he said.