To alleviate poverty the first step can be diversification of the economy. This may be done on two fronts. First, because ours is an agro-based economy, it is imperative to diversify our agricultural output. At the same time we have to change our food habits. Rice is our staple food, but side by side with rice we have to develop the habit of eating potatoes and wheat to take the excessive pressure off rice. People in most of the developed countries of the world eat either wheat or potato as staple food. In fact, both wheat and potato are more nourishing than the high yielding variety of rice that we are being forced to produce to meet the demand. Changing over from rice to wheat or potato will save the country from spending the huge amount of foreign exchange for importing rice every year. Secondly, we have to go for non-agricultural diversification. Because of the acute shortage of any industrial resource base, setting up heavy industries is difficult. We can move into labor intensive industries, since labor is so cheap in our country. There is also a shortage of high technology and technical know-how in our country. So we can move into areas of secondary technology which do not involve high technology but are labor-intensive. We find a booming garments industry in our country. Manufacturing basic electrical parts could be another such industry. Population control is a must and different positive incentives may be offered for small planned families. Another major step would be to combat or rather face up to the natural calamities. Since we cannot stop excessive rainfall, drought or cyclones, we have to tar measures to stop their destructive effects.
In order to remove poverty we have to diversify our agricultural products and change our food habit. Less dependence on rice will save a huge amount of foreign currency which we spend on importing it. Since labor is cheap in our country, we should set up labor based industry like garments industry, basic electric parts industry. Another important measure to alleviate poverty is to control the rapid growth of population. We also have to get ourselves equipped with facing the natural calamities and taking necessary measures to stop their destructive effects.
