How good governance, focus on service delivery helped India pull 400 million people out of poverty

India is undergoing a period of sustained rise in its economic fortunes. The pandemic was a blip, which our country set aside, thanks to the efficacy of locally developed and produced vaccines, and the success of India’s vaccination program, which was the world’s largest free vaccination exercise. Today, India is the fastest growing large economy. The central government predicts 6-6.8% GDP growth for India in the upcoming financial year. Various credit rating agencies and observers reckon the economy will grow 6-7% in 2023-24. India aims at achieving 7% growth this year and expects the growth rate to improve in the next five years. India’s economic growth would stay in the 7-9% range at least for a decade and a half, as per its policymakers. But what is important is that India has been able to democratize economic growth by making the fruits of progress accessible to people at the very end of the queue. As per India’s Economic Survey of 2022-23, more than four hundred million Indians escaped poverty between 2005-06 and 2019-21. This has been made possible by pro-poor governance and a focus on delivering impact on a large scale, in a time-bound manner. Over the past decade, India has launched and implemented with rigour, a clutch of schemes that have helped governance reach people’s doorstep. The focus on implementing these schemes effectively and in a tight timeframe has made a profound difference to the lives of millions of Indians. Schemes like the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) and Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) are broadening access to basic services and aiding widespread economic prosperity through sustainable development. The Swachh Bharat Mission, now in its second, more advanced leg, began in 2014 and sought to, initially, provide sanitation facilities to all Indian households. The Jal Jeevan Mission, which started in 2019, aims to connect all households with safe tap water. At the time of its implementation in 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission sought to provide safe sanitation for all by creating toilets and by promoting their use. Its aim was to make India open defecation free. India became open-defecation free on October 2, 2019, by constructing over one hundred million toilets across its villages. This marked the end of Phase-I of SBM. The Prime Minister announced phase-2 of SBM in February 2020, just before the first Covid-19 wave in India. SBM’s Phase-2 emphasises the sustainability of achievements made under Phase-1 and seeks to provide adequate facilities for Solid and Liquid Waste management, including plastic waste management across rural India. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission – Grameen, Phase 2, villages are progressing towards achieving the Open Defecation Free Plus (ODF Plus) status. This involves the management of all kinds of waste – be it biodegradable waste, plastic waste, grey water, or faecal sludge. India has over six lakh villages. In August 2022, our country reached another milestone with over one lakh villages declared as ODF Plus. This is a big achievement because the process of Solid and Liquid Waste Management involves complex technical aspects. This process is new to rural India and is a second-generation issue. Till now, over 198,000 villages have become ODF Plus, which means they are making arrangements for the management of solid and/or liquid waste. The Jal Jeevan Mission, another national priority, seeks to provide potable tap water connections to all households by 2024. India has recently achieved a new milestone of connecting eleven crore rural households with safe and clean drinking water through tap connections. The aim is to address the issue of access to safe water and achieve 100% tap water connectivity by 2024. In August 2019, only 3.24 crore households had tap water connections. Since then, tap water connections have been provided to 11.17 crore households. There is a palpable sense of urgency in implementing public projects in India. This urgency to deliver is leading to satisfaction among the electorate and contributing to India’s prosperity. These achievements have been made possible by the leadership shown by millions of women across the country. One of the vital components of the implementation of SBM and JJM is the Village Water and Sanitation Committee. These committees of local representatives take responsibility for planning as well as operating and maintaining infrastructure created under both the schemes. The committee is empowered to levy and collect user charges for this infrastructure. Additionally, the 15th Finance Commission of India has earmarked 60% of rural local body grants for water and sanitation. The Government of India has mandated that at least 50% members of Village Water and Sanitation committees must be women. This is in recognition of the pivotal role women play in providing water and sanitation facilities to families across rural India. The village water and sanitation committees, led by women, are taking clean water to every household, and are making the country ODF Plus, one village at a time. They are helped by authorities at the village and district levels. To ensure water quality, India has set up more than 2,000 labs for water-quality testing and more than half of these are accredited by the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories. Indian authorities have been training women in villages in using field-testing kits to ensure there is no arsenic, fluoride, or bacterial contamination of sources of water. For larger multi-village schemes, states are building operations and maintenance into the project so that the agency executing the work knows it is responsible and must ensure quality. According to a study by Nobel laureate American development economist Professor Michael Kremer, nearly 30% of infant deaths can be avoided if safe water is made available to families. In the healthcare space too, growing public-private collaboration is promising improved outputs. Disease elimination is an area where India is making significant progress. This has increased the ease of living of citizens, cut medical costs and improved their productivity, economic wellbeing. India aims to eliminate tuberculosis by 2025, and Malaria and AIDS by 2030. And we are witnessing rapid progress. The number of malaria cases in India has fallen by a staggering 86% since 2015 and there has been a 79% reduction in the number of deaths caused by the disease between 2015 and 2021. The private sector’s participation in effective reporting of malaria, digging out asymptomatic or hidden malaria cases, improved real-time case reporting and technological innovation are areas that require more work. India’s economic growth is increasing the general wellbeing of a truly wide section of its society and this change is happening faster than projected. India’s rise augurs well for the Asian region and the world. It manifests what a democracy with a large and diverse population can achieve with political will and social acceptance for positive change. The author is a Young Professional in NITI Aayog. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.