Besides the welfare schemes, India needs deft management of inflation and unemployment to serve the poor and the underprivileged sections of the society. Discuss.

India being a welfare state as envisioned in DPSP, enters through welfare schemes to check the poor conditions of unprivileged sections. But the rising inflation and its impact on food and commodities and rising unemployment rate (6%) reverses the gain made in reducing poverty and its spill over impact.

Welfare schemes:

1. MGNREGA Focuses on Rights based approach. 
2. NRLM focuses on self-employment opportunities. 
3. MUDRA Loan to start new business. 
4. Stand up India and Start Up India.

Why focus on Inflation and Unemployment is important:

• The prices of essential food items have increased by 50% in seven years (2015 to 2022), whereas the real wage rate has risen by 22 per cent. These figures show that inflation has dented the real income of the poor, making their lives miserable as the food basket constitutes a substantial proportion of the total expenditure on the poor. 
• India’s 50-crore poor comprising socially and economically weaker sections in rural areas and urban slums are pushed to acute poverty under the effect of inflation. 
• The declining wage rates, Covid-19, high rural unemployment, income inequality and high food inflation have far-reaching implications for India’s trajectory towards alleviating poverty.

The high food and fuel inflation rates are mainly responsible for pushing the cost of input and output prices which resulted in an increase in wholesale inflation.

Therefore, proactive government intervention is needed to check food and fuel inflation, increase employment in rural areas, reduce income inequality, strengthen the public distribution of essential commodities among the poor and enhance the average daily wage rate in rural India.