Explain the role of industry associations such as FICCI, NASSCOM, SIAM etc. as vital intermediaries between government & private sector.

Contribution to socio-economic development:

1. Policy advocacy & economic reforms - they represent business interests & help shape pro business, employment friendly policies.

2. Skill development & job creation - seen industry specific skill training programs. eg. NASSCOM's future skills initiative to reskill & upskill IT professionals.

3. Promote MSMEs & startups - eg. CII helps access markets, finance & technology to MSMEs. This value include growth as smaller businesses get helped.

4. CSR compliance - promote sustainability standards focusing on ethical wealth creation eg. Tata group's CSR under C11 umbrella includes education, healthcare & rural development.

5. Balanced regional growth - encourage investments in Tier 2 2 3 cities.

6. Crisis response - eg. industry associations arranged funds for disaster oxygen, migrant worker support during COVID.

7. Encourage management - labour dialogue (Article 43A) and support conducive industrial relations.

8. Create collaborative environment eg. FICCI & C11 bring together industries that work together during national development.

Currently the international poverty line is $3/day (PPP) - World Bank. However, poverty measures are made via multiple methods (Tendulkar, Multidimensional Poverty Index etc) making the focus confusing & inconsistent.

Need for credible & updated poverty framework:

1. Ensure proper identification of beneficiaries for govt schemes like PDS, Ayushman Bharat.

2. Represent demographic shifts. Currently most schemes use SECC 2011 data which is more than a decade old.

3. Monitoring welfare outcomes - in the absence of data, progress cannot be tracked.

4. Outdated poverty lines - Tendulkar threshold of ₹27 (rural) & ₹33 (urban) donot coexist with lived realities as this figure is insufficient to ensure even 3