Livelihood crisis: UP announces Rs 1,000 crore package for urban poor

Lucknow / May 17, 2021

The Uttar Pradesh government has announced a Rs 1,000 crore package to provide ex gratia cash support to nearly 10 million urban poor, including daily wagers, whose livelihood has been hit by the Covid-19 curfew imposed to control the second wave of the pandemic.

The ambitious scheme would cover people belonging to the economically weaker sections of society living in the urban areas and eking out a living by working as labourers, daily wagers, hawkers, street vendors, rickshaw pullers, e-rickshaw drivers, boatman, barkers, cobblers etc.

Under the scheme, the state government would provide a sum of Rs 1,000 to each of the estimated 10 million beneficiaries in the state. The cash transfer is likely to be made next month after it is notified and the finance department releases the funds to this end.

The decision was taken at the state cabinet meeting held virtually here on Saturday evening. UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath said the government was committed to providing all possible support to the poor and disadvantaged sections of society in the present crisis.

While the poor in the rural areas are provided livelihood support under the flagship Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), there is no matching scheme to provide such subsistence allowance to the poor in the cities and towns.

Additionally, the government would distribute free food grain to the poor families, including those holding ‘Antyodaya’ ration cards. This is likely to benefit nearly 150 million of the state population across 75 districts.

Interestingly, the UP government had last year too announced a similar cash transfer scheme to provide subsistence support of Rs 1,000 to each of the identified poor households during the lockdown imposed to control the first wave of Covid-19 in the state.

At that time, the number of beneficiaries was projected at 5 million, including the migrant labourers who had returned to UP following abrupt lockdown in leading industrialised states viz. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Delhi, Karnataka, Haryana etc.

According to estimates, more than 4 million migrant labourers and workers had come back to UP within a few weeks since March 2020 in perhaps the most massive interstate mass exodus in Independent India.

Meanwhile, the Yogi government has also increased the partial curfew till the morning of May 24, since these restrictions have helped the state in bending the steep upward curve of the coronavirus case load and casualties over the successive weeks.

The fresh cases have witnessed a declining trend across the state, especially Western UP districts, while the situation pertaining to the supply of oxygen and other Covid-19 drugs is largely stable.

(Virendra Singh Rawat is a Lucknow based journalist, who writes on contemporary issues of industry, economy, agriculture, infrastructure, budget etc)