Editor,
There is a contradiction between what the NITI Aayog claimed recently and the figures in various government reports and surveys. As per the NITI Aayog, 248.2 million Indians were lifted out of poverty in nine years and the percentage of poor people has come down from 29.17 percent in 2013-’14 to 11.28 percent of the population in 2022-’23.
But the government’s recent growth figures suggested that the consumption growth was only 4.4 percent. If so many people were lifted out of poverty, then why did not they start buying essential items like soaps, toothpastes and milk packets? Why were there so many poverty-related suicides?
It is estimated that India’s population stands at 144 crore in 2024. Therefore, the NITI Aayog’s claim that at present the percentage of people deemed to be poor is 11.28 percent means there are 16 crore poor in India now.
This totally contradicts government’s own estimate that around 81 crore people require food assistance for five more years. However, the 81 crore estimate is based on the 2011 census. The next census is overdue by two years. Economists pointed out that more than 10 crore deserving Indians would not get the benefit of the five-year extension of the free ration programme for the poor because of government’s failure to conduct the long-due population census.
Therefore, the government’s own estimate of 81 crore plus this 10 crore means that 91 crore people of our country need food assistance. This figure is in tune with the 2023 report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation, a specialised agency of the UN, that over 100 crore Indians (74.1 percent of the population) could not afford a healthy diet in 2021. To put it simply, three out of four Indians are underfed.
The National Family Health Survey is conducted by the union health & family welfare ministry. The nutrition indicators for children under five years shows that 35.5 percent of children (one out of four children) are victims of stunting and 19.3 percent (one out of five) are victims of wasting as per the recent NFHS-5 (2019-20) report.
There is not much difference between various government reports, the UN report and the Global Hunger Index (GHI) report. The GHI is based on four indicators, undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting and child mortality. India’s child wasting and child stunting rates are horrific in both government and GHI reports. India’s position in the 2023 GHI has slid into an alarming 111th rank among 125 countries. The new National Educational Policy has rightly proposed that the midday meals provided to students in government and aided schools should be supplemented by breakfast as children are unable to learn optimally when they are hungry.
So we see that the odd one out among all international and government figures about India’s poverty is the report by the NITI Aayog. Such a confusing data can do a lot of damage. Now, let us also view the NITI Aayog’s figures in light of the latest National Crime Records Bureau-2022 annual report. It says that 154 farmers and daily-wage labourers die by suicide in India every day and there is around four percent increase in overall suicide rate from 2021.
The distress in agriculture sector is evident from the data that 11,290 persons engaged in farming (5,207 farmers and 6,083 agriculture labourers) ended their lives last year. The highest group among 1,22,724 male suicides was the daily-wage earners. As per the report, as many as 41,433 male daily-wage earners were suicide victims last year. This shows that extreme poverty is the main culprit that drives a person to take such a drastic step.
As per the Oxfam’s report, out of all the wealth generated in India in 2017, the richest one percent got 73 percent of it, while the poorest 50 percent had to remain satisfied with only one percent. The fact of the matter is, wealth and income inequality is not a new crisis in our country, but it has reached an alarming height in the last 10 years.
Sujit De,
Kolkata