Goats and More: An anti-poverty guide for Narendra Modi -Prachi Salve

-IndiaSpend.org

 

A chicken, goat or a similar “productive asset” or goods (such as betel leaves or vegetables) for a small shop. Training on using such assets. Money to reduce incentive to sell assets in an emergency. Frequent personal mentoring or coaching. Health education. Savings services for between 18 and 24 months.

These interventions led to a 15% increase in assets, 26% growth in consumption and 96% rise in savings among the ultra-poor (people with no assets) in India, according to a new six-country study that followed the lives of 21,000 of the world’s poorest people.

These interventions follow what is called the “graduation model“, a programme that endeavours to graduate the poorest people upwards and out of poverty, and could have seminal implications for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as it attempts to move from costlier, broad subsidies to clearly-targeted interventions.

Apart from India, the graduation model was tested in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Pakistan and Peru by researchers from the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, USA.

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