Utsa Patnaik
The Planning Commission's laughable estimates of the ‘poverty line' follow from a mistake in method that it made 30 years ago and has clung to ever since.
The affidavit that the Planning Commission recently submitted before the Supreme Court stating that a person is to be considered ‘poor' only if his or her monthly spending is below Rs.781 (Rs.26 a day) in the rural areas and Rs.965 (Rs.32 a day) in the urban areas, has exposed how unrealistic ‘poverty lines' are. Some television channels assumed that the figures covered food costs alone and showed how they could not meet minimal nutrition needs at today's prices. These paltry sums, however, are supposed to cover not only food but all non-food essentials, including clothing and footwear, cooking fuel, lighting, transport, education, medical costs and house rent. The total is divided into Rs.18 and Rs.14 for food and non-food items in towns, and into Rs.16 and Rs.10 in the rural areas, and includes the value of food that farmers produce and consume themselves.
Even a child knows that working health cannot be maintained, nor necessities obtained, by spending so little. Amazingly, however, 450 million Indians subsist below these levels. One cannot say that they ‘live' in any true sense: their energy and protein intake is far below normal, they are underweight, stunted, subject to a high sickness load but without the means to obtain adequate food or medical treatment. The majority belong to the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. The official poverty lines do not measure poverty any more; they measure destitution.
The outcry against calling these destitution lines ‘poverty lines,' is justified; for true poverty lines are much higher than these, and show 75 per cent of all persons in India to be poor. Per head energy and protein intake has been falling for the last two decades as the majority of the population is unable to afford enough food. With 60 million tonnes of public food stocks, far in excess of the buffer norms, remaining piled up by mid-2011, the sensible policy is to do away with targeting and revert to a universal distribution system, combining it with an urban employment guarantee scheme. Unfortunately, the neo-liberal policymakers today ask the wrong question: “How can we reduce the food subsidy?” and not the right question: “How can we lift the masses of India from the current level of the lowest food consumption in the world, even lower than the least developed countries?”
Members of the Planning Commission and the Tendulkar Committee are experts, so how have such laughable figures of minimum cost of living emerged from their statistical labours? The fact is that over 30 years ago the Planning Commission made a mistake of method, and the present Commission stubbornly clings to that mistake despite the fact having been repeatedly pointed out by many people including this author (The Republic of Hunger, 2004). The mistake was to change the definition of the poverty line and delink it from nutrition standards.
The original definition of ‘poverty line' was a sensible one, based on an expert committee recommendation in 1979: using National Sample Survey (NSS) data on consumption spending, that in particular observed that the level of total monthly spending per person is to be called the ‘poverty line.' The food spending part of the figure allowed a person to obtain 2,400 kilocalories of energy a day in the rural areas and 2,100 kilocalories a day in the urban areas. Later the rural figure was scaled down to 2,200 calories. The Commission accepted the expert committee's nutrition-based definition but applied it only once, to the 1973-74 data, to obtain the correct monthly rural and urban poverty lines of Rs.49 or Rs.56 at which 2,200 or 2,100 calories were accessible, and found that 56 per cent of the rural population and 49 per cent of the urban population spent less than this, and so were poor.
The claim that poverty has declined is not true because the method of indexation that is actually used has not kept constant the nutritional standard against which poverty is measured, but has lowered it continuously. China's official poverty lines are equally absurd, for the same reason. A nutrition norm was applied in 1984 to obtain a 200-yuan annual rural poverty line, which thereafter was merely indexed, giving 1,067 yuan by 2007, or below three yuan a day. This is supposed to cover all living costs but would not have bought even a kilogram of the cheapest variety of rice, selling then at four yuan, according to information provided by China's residents. The actual extent of poverty in China is far higher than is claimed.
What are the realistic poverty lines today based on officially accepted nutritional norms? The current poverty lines allowing nutrition norms of 2,200 or 2,100 calories in the rural or urban areas to be met, are at least Rs.1,085 a month (Rs.36 a day) and Rs.1,800 a month (Rs.60 a day) respectively. Since each full-time worker needs to support nearly two dependants, these correspond to a minimum daily wage of Rs.108 and Rs.180 respectively. But this is inadequate: no margin exists for medical emergencies, life cycle ceremonies, or old age. From the 2009-10 NSS data at least 75 per cent of the total population is in poverty on this basis. This high level of deprivation is the rationale for going back to a non-targeted, universal food distribution system, but that will not be enough. The purchasing power of the poor has to be raised at the same time through employment generation schemes. Ironically, there has been a rise in unemployment rates according to the latest surveys.
(Utsa Patnaik has been a Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)
I think poverty still remain here due to corruption.But a solution to it is not that easy in a swift..Recently Some people have come up with population control for removing poverty.But i think this wont make any change to poverty but can effect the country in a long run.Just like what happened in countries like Russia,Japan etc.They all had once implementd this idea and now suffering as the future of these countries are in the hands of oldies..!How can we get rid of poverty by reducing population? Poverty is not because there is lack of food but its because of lack of money.Wealth should be equally distributed.And unemployement is not because there is no educated Indians but the government does make place to implement it.So they fly abroad to fulfill their ambitions,just like sunitha williams an Indian stayed in space for months but did it through NASA whereas we still testing with satelite launch vehicles..!
ReplyDeleteAnd its shocking that educated personnels of our country made such foolish margins to describe poverty..Shame on them.ution to it is not that easy in a swift..Recently Some people have come up with population control for removing poverty.But i think this wont make any change to poverty but can effect the country in a long run.Just like what happened in countries like Russia,Japan etc.They all had once implementd this idea and now suffering as the future of these countries are in the hands of oldies..!How can we get rid of poverty by reducing population? Poverty is not because there is lack of food but its because of lack of money.Wealth should be equally distributed.And unemployement is not because there is no educated Indians but the government does make place to implement it.So they fly abroad to fulfill their ambitions,just like sunitha williams an Indian stayed in space for months but did it through NASA whereas we still testing with satelite launch vehicles..!
And its shocking that educated personnels of our country made such foolish margins to describe poverty..Shame on them.