India endorses UN resolution to eradicate rural poverty for sustainable development goals

India at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted in favour of a resolution aimed at eradicating rural poverty to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Speaking at the 76th session of the UNGA on Monday, India's First Secretary at the UNGA, Sneha Dubey, asserted that it is a very important and critical issue for India after the economy has been marred by the two-year-long pandemic. She further talked about India's comprehensive development strategies and said New Delhi has also implemented numerous policies to accelerate economic growth and broader the social safety nets. 

"Eradicating rural poverty to implement the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is a very important and critical tissue for my delegation and my country," ANI reported, quoting India's First Secretary to UN, Sneha Dubey.

Underscoring the social protection response during the COVID-19 pandemic to prevent economic collapse, Dubey stated: "In India, we are implementing a comprehensive development strategy to eradicate poverty through accelerated economic growth and broader social safety nets, lifting millions out of poverty in the last decade." Additionally, she emphasised that India has also undertaken numerous "pro-poor and broad-based" outreach programs to bolster efforts towards the cause. 

She informed that India has chosen to remain disassociated from Operative Paragraph 19 of the resolution due to reservations about the language used in the Operative Para 19. "We had raised them during negotiations and suggested deletion of the same as the phrases mentioned in the paragraph represent a worrying phenomenon of pushing a language germane to a particular member state without any convincing rationale or acceptance by the larger membership.," she said.

Accelerating global actions against poverty 

The UN resolution "Eradicating rural poverty," in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was undertaken in 2018 and is aimed to see an effective turn of events until 2027. As the international community embarks on the Third Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, an estimated 783 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013, compared to 1.86 billion people in 1990, as per UN. While achievement as such has come from economic growth in countries fuelled by job creation and gender equality, the poverty rates in many countries are still high.

"In 2013, of the 783 million people living in extreme poverty, more than half were in sub-Saharan Africa and close to a third lived in Southern Asia. Pockets of poverty also afflict middle- and high-income countries. In 2017, extreme working poverty remained widespread, with more than 300 million workers in emerging and developing countries having a per capita household income or consumption below $1.90 per day," UN said in its statement. As per the estimates of the organisation, to eradicate poverty by 2030, given current rates of population growth, it will be necessary to reduce it by about 110 million people living under $1.90 per day every year. 

(With ANI inputs)
(Image: AP/PTI)