Policies and Programmes : Analysing ICDS and NRHM to Understand What Has Worked, What Has Not and Why?

The Government implements a plethora of programmes and schemes to address poverty. Efforts are made to reduce poverty through generating work, provide health care and education, develop backward areas and support vulnerable groups. Yet poverty persists. The first part of this paper analyses a spectrum of programmes to point out that none of them either individually or collectively commit the State to providing adequate time bound support to meet the minimum subsistence needs of either an individual or a household that is in poverty. What is missing is a concentrated attack on poverty. It then analyses two major programmes that try to address different dimensions of poverty - ICDS and NRHM - to draw lessons regarding what works and what does not and why