Eminent economist Abhijit Banerjee adds that cash transfer not the only answer to end poverty

Seeking a new, renegotiated role for the state in development of India and ending poverty, eminent economist Abhijit Banerjee and Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh said a fresh look was needed at what the state could do and what it should do immediately. Ramesh flagged the challenges of poverty: while overall poverty levels may have been going down, there were new dimensions of impoverishment. He referred to ecological poverty, which was causing large scale of land degradation, leaving huge populations without access to water and forests