Poverty alleviation must target real poverty, and accurate identification is key
When poverty alleviation fails to target real poverty, it runs counter to the Party's poverty alleviation policy. We must never let poverty alleviation go in the wrong direction and help the wrong people.
Seventy million is a mountain. This "mountain of seventy million" must be scaled. By the end of last year, China still had 70.17 million people living in poverty under the current standard, and all of them must be lifted out of poverty by 2020.
Just as the whole nation is working together to bravely scale this "mountain of seventy million," in a few places, when identifying poor households, real poverty is not targeted, and even "non-poor" households have become poverty alleviation targets.
Failure to accurately target poverty alleviation beneficiaries is unjust to the poor people who truly need assistance. When the author conducted research in Zhaotong, Yunnan, located in the contiguous poverty-stricken area of the Wumeng Mountains, I found that the poorest family in the village consisted of only a single elderly person living alone. The straw on the roof had already rotted, and the house was pitch dark. The entire household belongings were a broken bed made of straw piled in one corner of the wall, while in the other corner were sprouted potatoes and corn, which were all the elderly person's food for the entire year... Although such absolute poverty is already very rare nationwide, if poverty alleviation does not help such an elderly person but instead helps the "non-poor," ordinary people would probably not accept it.
Failure to accurately target poverty alleviation beneficiaries harms the efficiency of poverty alleviation policy. The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to poverty alleviation work and have successively issued a series of poverty alleviation policies. Since reform and opening up, China has lifted 660 million people out of poverty, creating a miracle in human history in the fight against poverty. High poverty alleviation efficiency has become the main theme of China's heroic epic in combating poverty. Historical experience in poverty alleviation has proven time and again that accurately identifying poor households is the guarantee of success in poverty alleviation. If the "accuracy" is lost in targeting poverty alleviation beneficiaries, poverty alleviation efficiency will be harmed, delaying the achievement of expected poverty reduction goals.
Failure to accurately target poverty alleviation beneficiaries highlights the importance of transforming poverty alleviation work and the urgency of institutional reform. The stricter the requirements, the more problems can be discovered. While poverty alleviation achievements are enormous, it is hard to conceal that there are still some deficiencies in the methods of poverty alleviation work. Poverty alleviation "cooking everything in one pot" and "flood irrigation" do produce results, of course, but poverty alleviation efficiency is much worse. Without targeting poor people, poverty alleviation policies and resources will be wasted. Accurate identification of poverty alleviation beneficiaries is the foundation of poverty alleviation work and the basis of precise poverty elimination. Therefore, innovating and reforming the poverty alleviation mechanism has become an inevitable requirement for stimulating the internal driving force of poverty alleviation in the new era.
Poverty alleviation means doing everything possible to overcome poverty and escape poverty. Now, we have a clear poverty line standard for measuring the poor population. It should be said that when poverty alleviation fails to target real poverty, it runs counter to the Party's poverty alleviation policy. We must never let poverty alleviation go in the wrong direction and help the wrong people.
Only by finding the "root of poverty" can we prescribe the right remedy and provide targeted treatment. The "six precisions" emphasized by General Secretary Xi, namely precise targeting of beneficiaries, precise project arrangements, precise use of funds, precise measures to households, precise dispatch of personnel based on village conditions, and precise poverty elimination results, ensuring that the benefits of all policies fall on poverty alleviation beneficiaries, are the sacred mission of every poverty alleviation worker.
With precise identification, the "non-poor" will not be mistaken for the truly poor; with precise identification, policies can be implemented by category, tailored to people and places, tailored to causes of poverty, and tailored to types of poverty. With all poor people lifted out of poverty on schedule by 2020, this "mountain of seventy million" is destined to be scaled.