Niti Aayog - Three year action agenda (2017-18 to 2019-20)
The objective of eliminating poverty in all its dimensions such that every citizen has access to a minimum standard of food, education, health, clothing, shelter, transportation and energy has been at the heart of India’s development efforts since Independence. The extremely low level of per-capita income and widespread poverty made it impossible for us to achieve this objective without growing the economy. Tax revenues were so meagre and the economy’s needs so vast that no serious dent into poverty could be made through redistribution alone. While we substantially improved economic performance during the first four decades of independence over that during the preceding fifty years, growth remained below 4%, which was woefully inadequate for a meaningful decline in poverty