Poverty in West Bengal: A Review of Recent Performance and Programmes

Abstract

The position of West Bengal in terms of incidence of poverty has improved relative to other states since the 1970s. It also exhibits very little urban bias in regard to incidence of poverty as the gap between urban and rural poverty is low compared to many other states. A worrying fact, however, is that the pace of poverty alleviation in the post-liberalisation period has slackened compared to that in the pre-liberalization period. If we look at the incidence of poverty across districts of West Bengal, we see that these exhibit varying poverty incidence: The districts in the southeastern zone exhibit low to moderate rural as well as urban poverty; those in the southwestern zone exhibit moderate to high poverty, while the poverty in the northern districts shows large variations from low to moderate to high. In regard to performance of poverty alleviation programmes, we focus on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA)—West Bengal does very well in terms of percentage of rural households provided employment and ranks among the top 5–7 major states in this regard. However, the relative performance of districts leaves a lot to be desired: It is observed that the high-poverty districts often exhibit lower impact of the programme (in terms of percentage of rural population registered and works completed per 1000 persons), when these districts should exhibit higher impact.

The author is grateful for funding and research assistance to the Centre for West Bengal Economy, Department of Economics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, under the University Grant Commission’s UPE-II (Universities with Potential for Excellence) scheme.