Poverty alleviation is but a small aspect of social justice; a just society provides equal opportunity for all members of society – all religions, all castes, and both sexes. India’s record of ill-treatment starts before birth – we kill the girl child before she is born. After birth, there is at best “benign neglect” and later on, especially among poor families, the girl child is needed to work at home. As she grows up, she becomes an increasing burden, and parents worry about raising a dowry for her marriage. And the cycle continues.

India has been most inventive in designing "in the name of the poor" policies. These policies, announced with much populist fanfare, invariably go, in geometric proportions, to line the pockets of the politicians and their supplicants. And the design of these policies has stayed the populist course. Typically, the procedure is as follows: the government announces that there is a problem of poverty. So there is a scheme for "garibi hatao". The schemes announced to date include a large subsidy for the employee provident fund scheme, a scam scheme that benefits only the top 5 percent of the population. Another scheme is a subsidy on fertilizer use, a scam scheme that benefits mostly the firms that produce fertilizer, and several of these firms are government owned firms. Yet another scam is food at subsidized prices for the poor, but in 1999/00, less than 20 percent of the food consumed by the poor was from public distribution. The less said about power subsidies the better; such power is stolen by politicians and industrialists and the poor and the middle class are asked to pay user fees on behalf of the rich.

But clearly the UPA government is not satisfied with such colossal failures and wants to match Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and our own Mrs. Indira Gandhi, as the most populist government that ever existed. So it has brought forth the Employment Guarantee Program, a scam that means a job to every person who is unemployed at minimum wages, a level that is often 25 to 50 percent higher than what the poor agricultural worker obtains. This same government talks piously about empowerment of the poor - can they explain how the poor will be able to access jobs that pay a hefty premium and that don't require much accountability. If you believe that the poor can access these jobs, then you obviously must also believe that horses can fly. At a cost of Rs. 40,000 crores, I guess some horses can fly.

There is a great need for accountability, simplicity, and efficacy in our poverty alleviation schemes. For too long, and for obvious corruption reasons, the government is not being held accountable for its failures of leakage. Recall that this problem is not new and was articulated as far back as 1986 by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; he candidly announced that no more than 15 % of government expenditures meant for the poor actually reached the poor. With a two-thirds majority, perhaps Mr. Rajiv Gandhi felt he could be honest about government failures. The present Congress party is different because it only has 140 odd seats, and has not been able to increase this tally for a decade, and in elections with and without the Family. It probably feels that it needs to claw back a few more parliamentary seats, so leakage monies can be useful for election campaigns.

But there is a poverty alleviation scheme that is easy to implement, achieves even the targets the Congress left pays only lip service to, that does not cost too much, and that will be enforceable even when the political parties change at the center. This proposed plan achieves multiple targets of policy. Now I have complained about horses that fly, so it is legitimate to be both cynical and skeptical. But read on.

Poverty alleviation is but a small aspect of social justice; a just society provides equal opportunity for all members of society - all religions, all castes, and both sexes. India's record of ill-treatment starts before birth - we kill the girl child before she is born. After birth, there is at best "benign neglect" and later on, especially among poor families, the girl child is needed to work at home. As she grows up, she becomes an increasing burden, and parents worry about raising a dowry for her marriage. And the cycle continues.

Can this centuries old discrimination practice be broken? Yes. Here is how. There are approximately 120 million girl children in the school going age of 5 to 14. About 80 million reside in the rural areas. Each girl child in the rural area is entitled to Rs. 300 a month if she attends school. Total expenditure of the scheme? Less than Rs. 30,000 crores, and less than the just introduced employment guarantee program.

What kind of "leakages" can occur? There will be a market for fake education certificates. True, but we also observe that the poor are spending a fair amount of their hard earned money to send their kids, even girls, to school. For just Rs. 300 a month they are not going to jeopardize the future of their children. But let us assume they do; so let us modify the scheme to be that every girl child, between the ages of 5 and 14, receives Rs. 3600 a year. Period. No ifs, ands and buts. Now where is the leakage? Other than an increase in sex change operations, I do not know of any.

This plan might encourage movement from urban to rural areas. Good. The parents will find that the girl child is "profitable" so more girl children will be born. Good. More girls will be educated, more girls will become productive, and the dowry system will begin a slow death. Good. So why has such a plan not been thought of, let alone implemented? Because it is more profitable for the government to spend about 10 times the money, Rs. 200,000 crores annually, on various "in the name of the poor" schemes than to actually put in policies that will help the rural poor.