By Dr. Gyan Pathak
In view of the recent Global Hunger Index 2024 and UN’s Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024, Narendra Modi government must not continue turning its blind eye to the serious level of hunger and poverty in the country, and the alarm sounded must not be shouted down referring its GDP without talking about the nature of its growth that has been sharply widening inequality.
While the Global Hunger Index 2024 has put India in serious hunger level category with a score of only 27.3 in the scale of 100, the UN’s Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2024 said that India has the highest number of poor in the world. India has 234 million people living in poverty, the UN’s Global Poverty Index 2024 has said. All these are only projections on the basis of certain data other than poverty headcount last done in India in 2011-12. To know the latest actual position, India must go for hunger and poverty headcount afresh.
PM Modi’s development narrative chiefly rely on the GDP growth in the country, and totally turns a blind eye to the ground level inequality, hunger and poverty. Moreover, a large number of economists have long maintained that India’s official GDP data overstate growth. It was as recent as in 2023, during the G20 summit, Indian National Statistical Office issued some data about growth that was criticised by many economists as brazen overestimate. It is also well known that how data suppression pressure has cost jobs of top officials 2019 who leaked the real level of unemployment which was 45 years high.
In 2023 also, the director of a survey related to malnutrition and anaemia had to lose his job for highlighting their high-level occurrences in the country, which are used as some of the bases for estimating or rather making projection of hunger and poverty in the country. It should also be recalled how Modi government had junked a 2018 survey, the leaked data of which showed increased level of poverty rate. Last comprehensive consumption-expenditure survey in 2012 showed 22 per cent people living in poverty.
Before going into other details, one should keep in mind few more things. India used Uniform Resource Period (URP) for poverty estimation until 1993-94. Under URP, people were asked about their consumption expenditure across a 30-day recall period. Then Mixed Reference Period (MRP) was adopted in 1999-2000 onwards, which asked about five low-frequency items (clothing, footwear, durables, education, and institutional health expenditure) consumed in the last year and also about consumption for other things across 30-day recall period. Poverty estimation in 2011-12 used MRP. However, now we have Modified Mixed Reference Period (MMRP) which will be used in future surveys, yet to be conducted by the government.
In absence of the real time data, all estimates related to hunger and poverty in India are projections based on cross sectoral data. Global Hunger Index 2024 has given India 105th rank in the world out of 127 countries it has estimated. India’s GHI score 27.3 is based on the values – 13.7 per cent of the population is undernourished, 35.5 per cent of children under five are stunted, 18.7 per cent of children under five are wasted, and 2.9 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday.
Only a few days ago World Bank has also come out with its poverty estimation. It puts India’s extremely poor people in 2024 at 129 million, who were living on less than $2.15 (about Rs 181) a day. However, with a higher poverty standard of $6.85 (about Rs 576) per day more Indians are living below the poverty line in 2024 than in 1990, primarily driven by ‘population growth’.
Here two more things are to be taken into account – absolute poverty and relative poverty. Absolute poverty is the poverty when a person has no income at all to purchase even food to survive. Relative poverty is the poverty when a person has not enough earnings to purchase essential things to survive in a particular market condition.
However, if we go by the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna (PM-GKAY), India’s over 810 million people are living in poverty who are being supplied with free foodgrains. Centre has decided that the scheme would continue until 2029.
As against this India’s growth rate in 2024 is expected to be between 7 and 7.2 per cent according to various national and international estimates. India is the fastest growing country of this world and it is presently the fifth largest economy of the world, which is set to become 4th next year in 2025.
What about the nature of growth? The largest 20 companies have 60 per cent of national wealth and bagging 70 per cent of national earning. Inequality is widening fast. Top 1 per cent of the population now holds 73 per cent of wealth, says Oxfam, while 670 million the poorer half saw their wealth rise by just 1 per cent. Such an anomaly needs urgent redressal. (IPA Service)