The Economic Survey 2023–24 claims: “Abject poverty has all but been eliminated.” It goes on to say, “India has registered a significant decline in the proportion of individuals in multidimensional poverty in India”. In this article, we analyse these claims, and present alternate datasets on the real state of poverty and hunger in the country.
The Modi Government’s loyalist economists have been making strenous attempts to show that a huge reduction in poverty has taken place in the country during the past 10 years.
First, the Niti Aayog released a discussion paper, ‘Multidimensional Poverty in India since 2005–06: A Discussion Paper’, in January 2024. This paper was prepared in consultation with the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). In this paper, the Niti Aayog came out with a new measure of poverty, the National Multidimensional Poverty Index (NMPI). On the basis of this, the paper found that 24.82 crore people had been lifted out of poverty in the nine years to 2022–23, and that poverty in India had sharply declined from 29.17% of the population in 2013–14 to 11.28% in 2022–23.[1]
Then, on February 24, the government released the broad findings of the All India Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) carried out between August 2022 and July 2023. On the basis of this survey conducted by the NSSO, the very next day, the chief executive officer of Niti Aayog B.V.R. Subrahmanyam claimed that only 5% people in India were now below the poverty line. He stated that if we take the 2011–12 poverty line and factor in inflation to derive the poverty line for 2022–23, then HCES data show that the per capita consumption expenditure of only 5% of the population in 2022–23 fell below the poverty line for that year.[2]
On 1 March 2024, the US-based think tank Brookings made an even more fantastic claim in a report authored by economists Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin. This report too bases itself on HCES 2022–23 data, and uses the 2011 PPP$ 1.9 poverty line as it closely corresponds to the official India Tendulkar poverty line. The report then says: The Headcount Poverty Ratio (the proportion of a population that lives below the poverty line) has declined from 12.2 per cent in 2011–12 to 2 per cent in 2022–23.[3] The very next day, every major newspaper in India screamed — ‘India has Eliminated Extreme Poverty’.[4]
Budget 2024–25 on Poverty
Backed by so many reports praising India’s ‘inclusive’ growth story under the Modi Government, the Economic Survey 2023–24 claims: “Abject poverty has all but been eliminated.” It goes on to say, “According to the NITI’s paper, India has registered a significant decline in the proportion of individuals in multidimensional poverty in India”. It also claims that HCES 2022–23 findings show that India’s growth has been inclusive, and inequality in the country has reduced.[5]
With poverty all but eliminated in the country, the Finance Minister sees no need to even mention the word ‘poverty’ in her budget speech.
In this article, we first critically analyse the claims being made by official economists about poverty reduction in the country, and then present several other datasets about the real state of poverty and hunger levels in the country.
Claims Made on Basis of HCES 2022–23
On the basis of HCES 2022–23 survey data, the Niti Aayog CEO has claimed that poverty in the country has fallen to less than 5%, while the Brookings report claims that it has fallen even lower to just 2%. Interestingly, both these claims hit the godi media headlines just before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
There are several problems with these claims. Firstly, there is no current poverty line determined by Niti Aayog unlike the erstwhile Planning Commission. In fact, the whole 27-page HCES fact-sheet is silent on poverty estimation. If there is no poverty line, then how have the Niti Aayog chief and Brookings report determined that the level of poverty in the country has fallen to below 5 / 2 percent?[6]
Both have deduced the poverty line for 2022–23 by updating, on the basis of consumer price indices, the poverty line suggested for 2011–12 by the Tendulkar committee.[7] But there is a serious problem with the poverty line proposed by the Tendulkar committee. It is an absurdly low poverty line, on the basis of which a person simply cannot access 2,200 / 2,100 calories in rural / urban India, the original poverty line defined by the Planning Commission in 1973.[8]
Most importantly, both B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, the Niti Aayog CEO, and Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin, the authors of the Brookings report, have based their estimates on reduction in poverty by comparing the HCES report of 2022–23 with the earlier consumption expenditure survey report of 2011–12. But the HCES 2022–23 report clearly points out that the survey has been conducted on different lines from all earlier surveys, because of which its results are not comparable with earlier results. Then how are these economists comparing HCES 2011–12 with HCES 2022–23?[9]
Therefore, the ‘5 / 2 percent below poverty line’ estimation of Niti Aayog / Brookings has little meaning; it is propaganda dished out by Modi Government sycophants before the Lok Sabha elections.
Manufacturing a Poverty Index
The Economic Survey 2023–24 has based its claims about poverty reduction on the basis of a new poverty index, the NMPI, a new tool to measure poverty evolved by the Niti Aayog. This new index is based on a totally new definition of poverty that is vastly different from what has been the understanding of poverty for the past several decades.
India began studying poverty in the early 1970s. Till recently, India’s statistical system was considered to be among the best in the world, and set standards for the rest of the world. It had evolved a very robust and efficient system of estimating poverty in the country. It measured poverty on the basis of a threshold level of consumption, that is, spending of a household on a basket of goods — households spending below this threshold, called the poverty line, were considered poor. Within this, nutrition, that is, calorie intake, was taken as the basic criterion for measuring poverty. That is because for a country like India, at least for the poorer sections of society, if calorie intake falls, then it can only mean the family’s real income is worsening (it is only the richest sections that seek to reduce calorie intake to reduce ‘overconsumption’). On the basis of this understanding, India’s Planning Commission defined the poverty line as that particular level of total spending per capita on all goods and services, whose food spending part satisfied the nutrition level of 2,200 calories of energy intake per day in rural India, and 2,100 per day in urban areas. India’s statistical organisations estimated household expenditures on the basis of large sample size surveys called the Household Consumer Expenditure Surveys. These surveys were conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) once every five years.
Subsequently, for reasons unknown, the Planning Commission changed this definition in practice, and stopped looking directly at the total monthly spending on all goods and services which permitted nutrition norms to be accessed. This was despite the fact that every five years NSSO survey data made available the required information on this for every spending level. The definition the Planning Commission now adopted was that the 1973–74 poverty lines were to be adjusted for inflation using a price-index, regardless of whether the lines so obtained still allowed nutritional standards to be met. Ever since then, the new poverty line has had nothing to do with whether a person is able to access the minimum recommended calories.[10]
Now, the Modi Government has completely trashed this definition of poverty and floated a new poverty index. The new index takes a number of indicators and assigns them specific weights to arrive at a composite measure of what it calls multi-dimensional poverty. It uses 12 indicators: three related to Health (nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, maternal health), two to Education (years of schooling, school attendance), and seven Standard of Living indicators (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets, and bank accounts). And it comes to the conclusion that with regards to these indicators, the situation in the country has considerably improved over the 9 years to 2022–23.[11]
There are two important problems with this new poverty index.
Problem One: Conceptual Problem
The first is the very concept of poverty as defined by the Niti Aayog and UNDP.
In any society that is developing, all the indices used by Niti Aayog–UNDP to measure poverty would generally show an improvement: the death-rate for children under eighteen drops; peer pressure and aspirations make parents send their children to school (especially if school attendance entitles a child to free mid-day meals); completing at least six years of schooling becomes quite common, even when children drop out of school later; and so on.
To put it differently, the Niti Aayog measure, which is supposed to reflect what it calls “multi-dimensional poverty”, makes decline in poverty virtually synonymous with ‘development’. If a country is ‘developing’, then poverty reduction must be taking place. On the basis of this definition, there would be no poor persons at all in the developed countries!
It is undeniable that development is occurring in India, and substantially under the aegis of the state. But poverty is not related to the mere occurrence of development, but with the question of who bears the cost of development, whether the working people or the rich. For instance, it is related to the question — whether the government, even while spending a few lakh crores on providing free rations to people, is reducing its overall social sector spending that would lead to a fall in people’s consumption. Therefore, for measuring poverty, it is important to determine whether on the whole the family is experiencing a decline in its living standards or not. And the best measure of this is — the family’s food consumption (since whenever the family’s budget gets stretched it usually cuts back on its food consumption). This is the rationale for taking nutrition as the basic criterion for estimating poverty. And this is what India’s statistical system used to measure, to determine the incidence of poverty in the country. But the Niti Aayog–UNDP measure does not take this into consideration in its measure of poverty.
Of course, Niti Aayog officials would argue that they are not totally ignoring undernutrition; one of their 12 indices is related to nutrition. But actually, their nutrition indicator does not measure nutritional deprivation; it measures the body mass index (BMI), which does not actually measure nutritional status. Here too, the NMPI is only concerned with BMI falling below a certain threshold, namely 18.5 kg/m2; it makes that the sole criterion of assessing such deprivation. The body mass index is defined as weight in kilogrammes divided by the squared height in metres. In India, a large proportion of the present adult population is both underweight and of low height for age. The BMI of all these millions of undernourished people will be within the ‘normal’ range of values, since both numerator and denominator are lower than they should be in a healthy population.[12]
Problem Two: Methodological Problem
The second problem with NMPI is that the very methodology adopted by the Niti Aayog for making the calculations of its poverty indicators is problematic. It takes data for the pre-Covid period for indicators like schooling and people’s health, assumes that Covid had no impact on these indicators, and without any data assumes that in the post-pandemic period the improvement in these indicators has continued at the same rate as the pre-Covid period — as if Covid had never occurred. That defies logic. During Covid, children lost two years of school. That is likely to affect their learning even after they returned to school post-pandemic. And yet, the NMPI totally ignores this. All three health indicators (nutrition, child and adolescent mortality, and maternal health) were all adversely impacted by Covid. And yet, the authors of Niti Aayog’s NMPI have no qualms about ignoring the long term health impacts of the Covid shock to human health. They also have no qualms also about claiming that India’s poorest states (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh) had the best NMPI improvement, despite being the worst affected Covid states.[13]
Based on this flawed methodology, the Niti Aayog’s discussion paper claims that multidimensional poverty in the country had declined even during the Covid years! It comes to the conclusion that between 2015–16 and 2019–21, the proportion of population living in multidimensional poverty declined from 24.85% to 14.96% (see Chart 1). This means that, at the level of projected population in 2021, about 13.6 crore persons escaped poverty between 2015–16 and 2019–21.[14] That is an astounding assertion! It is as if the pandemic never occurred, everything was normal in the years 2019–21, and there was no economic collapse.
Chart 1: Percentage of People Below the Poverty Line (NMPI Estimate)[15]
It is well established that the Modi Government’s callous handling of the epidemic, the unplanned and brutal lockdown and the paltry relief package, totally devastated the economy, and it suffered its most severe collapse in post-independent India. Several studies have made estimates of the increase in poverty during the Covid years in India.
A study by Azim Premji University, State of Working: India 2021, has analysed the impact of Covid on household incomes. The study found that from March to October 2020, households experienced a significant loss of income (as compared to the previous eight months, July 2019 to February 2020). The income loss was more pronounced among the poorer households, leading to a substantial rise in poverty across the country. The study takes the poverty line as the national floor-level minimum wage recommended by the Anoop Satpathy committee, after adjusting it for inflation up to 2020 (we discuss this below). Basing itself on this poverty line, the study reveals that during these eight months of 2020, an additional 23 crore people fell into poverty.[16]
Another study by Pew Research Centre, a non-partisan American think tank based in Washington, D.C., has also come to a similar conclusion. Basing itself on the World Bank poverty line of $2 a day, it estimates that because of the economic contraction due to the pandemic, the number of poor in India swelled by 7.5 crore in 2020.[17]
Whatever be the actual increase in poverty in 2020 — 7.5 crore or 23 crore — both the above studies are in conformity with the observed ground reality that the unprecedented economic collapse suffered by the Indian economy during the Corona pandemic in 2020 pushed crores of Indians into poverty.
In an article published in The Wire critiquing the NITI Aayog’s claim of 24.8 crore emerging out of poverty in 9 years, the noted economist Santosh Mehrotra is constrained to observe:
“Unfortunately, manufacturing evidence has been rather systematic in the last several years. In fact, the whole purpose of making NMPI the poverty indicator for India, while consumption expenditure surveys were not done for eight years from 2014 to 2022, is part of a political strategy…. The newest fabrication of a multidimensional poverty estimate by Niti Aayog is yet another effort to create a narrative in the run up to Lok Sabha elections 2024.”[18]
The Junked HCES Report of 2017–18
In this entire drum-beating about the results of the new poverty index (NMPI) framed by the Niti Aayog, everyone has forgotten the Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted during 2017–18, that was junked by the Modi Government even though it had been approved for release by the National Statistical Commission. This HCES is the most important and large scale survey conducted by the NSSO to collect information on the consumption spending patterns of households across the country, in both urban and rural areas. It has been conducted every five years without a break since 1973–74, and no government has ever tried to manipulate or suppress its findings. The Modi Government is the first government to do so.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) in a press statement issued on 15 November 2018 stated that it was not releasing the results of the HCES 2017–18 due to “data quality issues”. It claimed that it had found concerns with the survey’s figures and had referred them to a committee of experts, that had “noted the discrepancies and came out with several recommendations including refinement in the survey methodology and improving the data quality aspects on a concurrent basis.”[19] The government did not release the expert panel’s report; a request by Pramit Bhattacharya (a noted journalist) to obtain a copy of that expert panel’s report under the RTI Act was turned down by MoSPI, citing the “sensitivity” of the matter.[20]
But a few days later, the Business Standard reported, quoting an unidentified official, that the expert panel had not found “any issues related to data collection and data validation” in the 2017–18 report, and that it had in fact approved the report for release in July 2019 itself. The panel was set up under the leadership of NSO director general and National Statistical Commission member G.C. Manna and had members from the NSO and the Central Statistics Office.[21] Clearly, the government was lying.
In any case, as the Mint reported quoting several of India’s top statisticians (such as P.C. Mohanan, former chairman of NSSO), in any survey there would be data quality issues. But that can be no reason for suppressing the survey results — at the most, such issues help in improving future surveys. Likewise, discrepancies between the results of different data sets have existed for long, but again that cannot be a reason to suppress the survey report. A landmark study has in fact opined that there was no reason to privilege one data set over the other. A group of 201 economists from around the globe also issued a statement protesting the suppression of the report and seeking the release of the raw underlying data, so that it may be discussed and debated.[22]
Why did the government junk the HCES 2017–18 report? This became clear when the Business Standard published a leaked copy of the report. The report’s findings were startling. The leaked data showed that over the period 2011–12 to 2017–18, the average amount of money spent by an Indian in a month [called monthly per capita consumption expenditure or MPCE] had fallen from Rs 1,501 in 2011–12 to Rs 1,446 in 2017–18 — a decline of 3.7% in six years. The decline was primarily because of rural areas, where consumer spending fell by 8.8%. The figure rose by 2% for urban areas. It is the first time the MPCE had dropped in the past four decades.[23]
This clearly means that poverty in the country had increased over the period 2011–12 to 2017–18. The renowned economist Utsa Patnaik has estimated that the proportion of the rural population not able to access 2,200 calories per person per day, the original benchmark actually applied by the Indian Planning Commission for estimating rural poverty, had increased from 68% in 2011–12 to over 80% in 2017–18. The proportion of urban population below the urban poverty line (proportion of urban population not able to access 2,100 calories per person per day) had marginally decreased from 65% to 60% over this period. Combining the rural and urban figures, the total population living below the poverty line in 2017–18 must have been significantly higher than in 2011–12, given the much higher weight of rural India in the total — we can estimate it to be at least 70%.[24]
No wonder the BJP Government at the Centre, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is so concerned about his self-image that it borders on narcissism, decided to scrap HCES 2017–18 altogether.
The HCES 2017–18 completely demolishes the findings of the NMPI, that estimates a secular decline in poverty in India since 2013–14!
After 2017–18, the economy slowed down over the next two years, and then collapsed due to the pandemic. Post-pandemic, the economy has been recovering, but as we have analysed in the first article of this 2024–25 budget analysis series, the official growth rate figures are exaggerated, the recovery is actually anaemic.[25] CMIE data show that unemployment has started rising again, and unemployment in 2023–24 was more than before the pandemic. PLFS data show unemployment to have declined to historic low in 2022–23; but when reworked on the basis of internationally accepted definitions, the same data show unemployment rate to have gone up to staggering levels in 2022–23.[26] Therefore, poverty levels in the country cannot have significantly improved in the post-pandemic years relative to 2017–18.
This is also borne out by wage data provided by the Labour Bureau. Using this data, the RBI has estimated the annual wage for general agricultural labourers, construction workers, and non-agricultural labourers for the period 2014–15 to 2021–22, in its Handbook of Statistics on Indian States. Conversion of these nominal wage figures into real wages using the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL) yields startling results. They show that during these eight years, the growth rate of real wages was below 1% per year across the board for all three groups of workers — agricultural and non-agricultural workers, and construction workers.[27] According to the Economic Survey 2023–24, this stagnation in real wages turned negative for the year 2022–23 (for rural workers). In 2023–24, wages again rose by less than 1% for agricultural workers, and around 2% for non-agricultural workers.[28]
Clearly, the claim of the Niti Aayog that the poverty ratio has come down sharply as compared to 2013–14, whence it would follow that it has come down even more sharply compared to 2017–18, is not credible.
PLFS Reports and Poverty Estimates
Using the NSSO survey data for 2017–18, Prof. Utsa Patnaik has estimated the per capita expenditure level at which exactly 2,200 calories were accessed in rural India to be Rs 70 in 2017–18 (this is the original benchmark for poverty accepted by the Planning Commission in 1973). For a family of four persons, this amounts to Rs 8,400 per month.[29] The urban poverty line would be higher. But let us take Rs 8,400 per month as the poverty line for 2017–18 for both rural and urban areas. Between 2017–18 and 2022–23, there has been a 30% increase in the Agricultural Labourers Price Index.[30] Therefore, the monthly household expenditure for a family of four that should define the benchmark for poverty in rural India in 2022–23 works out to Rs 10,920.
In a previous article on the unemployment crisis in the country, we have given data for real wages of workers based on PLFS data.[31] The data shows that over the six-year period 2017–18 to 2022–23, real monthly wages of casual workers, self-employed and regular workers increased at a very low rate (CAGR) of 2.6%, 1.6% and 0.6% respectively.
A recent report jointly prepared by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development (IHD) estimates (from PLFS data) that 92% of all casual workers and 65.8% of all regular workers were earning below Rs 10,000 per month in 2021–22.[32] Since the wage increase of workers in the previous years has been paltry, we can estimate that at least 90% of all casual workers and 60% of regular workers must have been earning below Rs 10,000 per month in 2022–23, that is, were earning below poverty line wages. The ILO–IHD report does not give distribution of self-employed workers by monthly wages. But since the average monthly wage of self-employed workers was only Rs 13,347 in 2022–23, much below the average monthly wage of regular workers, we can assume that at least 60% of the self-employed workers too must have been earning below poverty line wages in 2022–23 [See Table 1].
Table 1: Casual, Regular and Self-employed Workers: Distribution, Monthly Wages, and
Percentage of Workers Earning Below Poverty Line Wages, FY22 and FY23 [33]
| % of Total Workers, FY23 | Average Monthly Wage, FY23 (in Rs) | Increase in Average Monthly Wage, FY22 to FY23 | FY22: % of Workers earning less than Rs 10,000 pm | FY23: % of Workers earning less than Rs 10,000 pm* | |
| Casual Workers | 26.7% | 7,899 | 0.6% | 92% | 90% |
| Regular Workers | 25.6% | 20,039 | 3% | 65.8% | 60% |
| Self-Employed | 47.7% | 13,347 | 10.4% | NA | 60% |
*Our estimate
The percentage of all workers earning below poverty line wages (less than Rs 10,000 per month) in 2022–23, even by conservative estimate, then works out to at least 68%.[34]
This closely corresponds to the poverty levels for the post-pandemic period worked out above.
Anoop Satpathy Committee Recommendations
In January 2018, the Ministry of Labour and Employment set up an expert committee under the Chairmanship of Dr. Anoop Satpathy (Fellow, the V. V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA), with members from the ILO and the Wage Cell of the ministry, to determine the methodology for fixing the national minimum wage, which may become a baseline minimum wage in India covering all workers. The committee submitted its report in early 2019. It proposed a wage such that the expenditure on minimum recommended food intake, essential non-food items (namely clothing, fuel and light, house rent, education, medical, footwear, and transport) and other non-food items for the wage earner and their dependents can be met. The recommendation was Rs 375 per day for rural areas (Rs 9,750 per month) and Rs 430 for urban areas (Rs 11,180 per month) as of July 2018, for a family comprising of 3.6 consumption units.[35] Note that this recommendation is 16% higher for rural areas and 33% higher for urban areas as compared to the poverty line for 2018 mentioned above (Rs 8,400 per month) derived from the Planning Commission’s original benchmark for rural poverty.
If we take this to be a more appropriate poverty line, then the percentage of population below the poverty line would probably go up to a staggering 80%!
More Recent Datasets on Poverty
These mind-boggling figures are corroborated by another recent data set. Of the 28 crore unorganised sector workers registered on the e-Shram portal as of 2022, 94% reported an income of less than Rs 10,000 per month.[36]
The Bihar caste survey (that made headlines for several months because of intense opposition by the Modi Government) has taken a poverty line of Rs 6,000 per month for a household of four. This is very close to the Tendulkar committee poverty line of 2011–12, updated to 2022–23. It shows that 34.1% of Bihar’s population has a monthly household income of Rs 6,000 or less. As mentioned above, the original Planning Commission poverty line (at which rural households can access 2200 calories in rural India), updated to 2022–23, works out to Rs 10,920 per month. If we take this as the benchmark, then the Bihar caste survey shows that around 65% of the population in the State was living in absolute poverty.[37] This is data for a major state. The percentage of population in the country living in poverty must not be very different from this figure.
All these various datasets only point to one inescapable conclusion — that at least 60 to 70% of the country’s population does not earn what can be called a living wage and lives in destitution.
Is Inequality Decreasing?
Basing itself on HCES 2022–23, the Economic Survey 2023–24 claims that inequality in the country has reduced. Comparing the survey data of HCES 2022–23 with the results of the previous survey of 2011–12, the Economic Survey says: “The HCES offers many reassuring findings on inclusive growth in the past decade…. Within rural and urban areas, the consumption of the lowest 5 per cent of the MPCE population grew faster than the top 5 per cent, indicating a decline in economic inequality over the last decade.”
But as we have pointed out above, such conclusions have no meaning because changes in the methodology make the HCES 2022–23 survey non-comparable with previous surveys. The HCES 2022–23 factsheet itself has an entire section on ‘Issues related to Comparability’ that cautions readers about the change in methodology in the current HCES as compared to earlier ones.[38]
A new study by economists from Harvard and Paris, Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj, demolishes this Modi Government narrative about declining inequality. The study says, “Between 2014–15 and 2022–23, the rise of top-end inequality has been particularly pronounced in terms of wealth concentration. By 2022–23, top 1% income and wealth shares (22.6% and 40.1%) are at their highest historical levels and India’s top 1% income share is among the very highest in the world. At the other end of the distribution, the bottom 50% were getting only 15% of India’s national income (and 6.4% of the national income) in 2022–23.” The report goes on to say: “As per our benchmark estimates, the Billionaire Raj headed by India’s modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces.”[39]
Rising Suicide Rate
The country’s unemployment and poverty crisis is also reflected in another grim statistic: rising suicides among daily wage earners, the self-employed and the unemployed. According to NCRB data, not only has the number of suicides in the country been going up in absolute numbers, it is also increasing as a percentage of the population. And within the total suicides, the number of daily wage earners, farm labourers, self-employed and unemployed who took their lives has also been increasing. By 2022, this number had crossed more than half of the total suicides (see Table 2).
Table 2: Suicides in India, 2017 to 2022 [40]
*Rate of suicides = Incidence of suicides per one lakh population– Figure in brackets is percentage of total suicides
A quarter of the suicides in the country are of daily wage workers (26.4% in 2022, or 45,000 workers). Nearly 19,500 self-employed workers also committed suicide in 2022. Obviously, the prime reason for their committing suicide is economic distress — a reflection of the fact that real wages / earnings in the country are so low that people are finding it difficult to make ends meet, and are committing suicide out of frustration.
Hunger and Malnutrition Emergency
Such huge poverty levels also mean the country would be facing a ‘hunger emergency’ too.
As mentioned above, the Modi Government has suppressed release of all data on the condition of the people, including nutritional status of the Indian population. But there are several facts available from multiple sources that show that large sections of the Indian people are undernourished or face hunger.
Leaked excerpts from the NSSO’s HCES 2017–18 reveal that there has been a dip in food consumption for the first time in decades. Monthly spending of rural Indians on food fell from Rs 643 in 2011–12 to Rs 580 in 2017–18 (both figures in real terms). Note that the figure for 2011–12 itself was low; it has fallen further.[41]
The National Family Health Survey–5 (NFHS–5) of 2019–21, whose data was released in 2022, found that:
- 36% of children under the age of five are stunted (indicating chronic or long-term malnutrition); 19% are wasted (indicating acute malnutrition); and 32% are underweight (indicating both chronic and acute malnutrition).
- 57% of women (up to age 49 years) suffer from anaemia, of whom 31.4% suffered from severe anaemia.[42]
These data are so shocking, and so completely blow up the Modi Government narrative of sharp decline in poverty during the Modi years, that following the release of NFHS–5, the Modi Government suspended the director of the institution that conducted the survey, the International Institute for Population Sciences![43]
Latest figures from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), for the year 2019, which are based on data provided by governments, also show that the nutritional intake of India’s population is very low. The FAO data in fact show that Indians consume significantly less food than every other region in the world, including the least developed countries! India’s consumption of cereals as food plus feed was just 171 kg per capita per year, compared to 190 kg for Africa, 205 kg for the least developed countries, 360 kg for both China and Brazil, and 407 kg for Russia. For the developed countries, this figure was 494 kg in the European Union and 590 kg in the United States. The world average was 304 kg.[44]
The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) is a report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in association with four other UN organisations. It presents an assessment of the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity (PMSFI) around the world, based on the food insecurity experience scale (FIES), a widely accepted index. (SOFI defines food insecurity as: People are moderately food insecure when they are uncertain about their ability to obtain food, and so reduce the quantity of food they eat; people are severely food insecure when they experience hunger, and go for days without food.) The latest edition of the report for the year 2023 presents alarming data for India. According to the report:
- 36.8 crore people in India (28.1% of the population) suffered from moderate or severe food insecurity in 2014–16. During the triennium 2020–22, this number had increased to 59 crore (42.3% of the population). The number of people suffering moderate or severe insecurity has increased by more than 14 percentage points during the Modi years, a shocking increase!
- The proportion of the population that is severely food insecure in the country has risen by nearly 50% over this period, from 20.5 crore (15.6% of the population) in 2014–16 to 32.2 crore (23.1% of population) in 2020–22.
- India alone accounted for more than one-third, or 36% of the severely food-insecure population in the world in the triennium 2020–22.[45]
Chart 2: India: Total Number and Percentage of People Suffering
Moderate to Severe Food Insecurity [46]
These are staggering figures. No wonder that though the UN agencies involved in the publication of this report conducted data surveys in India, the self-obsessed Modi Government refused to allow publication of data related to India in this report! We have calculated PMSFI data for India by subtracting the data for “South Asia excluding India” from the total figure for South Asia.[47]
These findings by UN agencies are supported by another survey, conducted between December 2021 and January 2022. This survey, by the Right to Food Campaign, the Centre for Equity Studies, and some other organisations, calculated “food insecurity” based on the methodology developed by the FAO for the above mentioned survey. Its results say:
- A total of 79% of Indian households across 14 states which responded to the survey reported some form of “food insecurity” in 2021.
- As many as 25% of the families reported facing “severe food insecurity”, such as skipping meals, cutting back on food, running out of food, not eating throughout the day and going to bed hungry.[48]
Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in 2023, the Global Hunger Index (GHI) has ranked India at a low 111 out of the 125 countries for which the ranking was done (high income countries are not ranked). The GHI is a report brought out annually by two European organisations that attempts to track and measure hunger globally as well as by country. The GHI score is based on a formula which combines four indicators that together capture the multi-dimensional nature of hunger, including under-nourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality. India’s hunger levels have been rated as “serious” by the latest edition of the report. Only a few countries like Afghanistan, Haiti and a few sub-Saharan countries are ranked below India.[49]
Despite the presence of so much evidence regarding the country’s abysmal poverty levels, and the alarming hunger crisis facing the country, the Modi Government has denied all of it, claiming that it is a conspiracy to malign the country. Not only that, it has manufactured a report to claim that in the 9 years to 2023, nearly 25 crore people have been lifted out of poverty, and that in 2022–23, only 5% people were below the poverty line!
But then this shouldn’t be surprising, considering that PM Modi and his government have told innumerable lies ever since he came to power in 2014, from increasing farmers’ incomes to demonetisation to the corona relief package to electoral bonds to … The full list of his lies could fill a library.
Let us conclude this article with a quote from the eminent economist, Prabhat Patnaik. In an article published in the National Herald on Modi Government’s rejection of the Global Hunger Index, he writes:
Whatever the differences between fascist parties and movements may be, one element binds them all — the outright rejection of any evidence that contradicts the narrative they spin.
Hindutva at the helm in India is no exception. Its narrative presents India as the fastest growing economy in the world, where people have never had it so good. And if the facts collected by international agencies or even by the government’s own agencies reveal otherwise — why, then the facts must be wrong.
In keeping with the Führerprinzip or leadership principle, who dares contest what the leader has said? Reality is whatever Modi says it is. The rest is conspiracy.[50]
Notes
1. “24.82 Crore Indians Escape Multidimensional Poverty in Last 9 Years”, Niti Aayog, Press Release, 15 January 2024, https://pib.gov.in.
2. “Poverty Levels Below 5%, Claims NITI Aayog Chief”, 25 February 2024, https://www.thehindu.com; “India’s Poverty Level Down to 5% of Population, Says NITI Aayog CEO”, 26 February 2024, https://www.indiatoday.in.
3. Surjit S. Bhalla and Karan Bhasin, “India Eliminates Extreme Poverty”, 1 March 2024, https://www.brookings.edu.
4. A few examples: “India Has Eliminated Extreme Poverty, Says US Think Tank Brookings”, 2 March 2024, https://www.ndtv.com; “Brookings Report Backs PM Modi’s Policy Thrust, Says it Helped Eliminate Extreme Poverty”, 2 March 2024, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com; “India Officially Eliminates ‘Extreme Poverty’, Claim Multiple Reports”, 2 March 2024, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
5. Economic Survey 2023–24, pp. xii, 34, 220.
6. Santosh Mehrotra and Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, “Why the 2023 Consumption Survey Is Not Comparable with Previous Rounds”, 27 February 2024, https://thewire.in.
7. “Poverty Levels Below 5%, Claims NITI Aayog Chief”, 25 February 2024, https://www.thehindu.com; Prashanth Perumal J., “Has Poverty Really Dropped to 5% in India?”, 15 March 2024, https://www.thehindu.com. The Brookings report uses the World Bank 2011 PPP$ 1.9 poverty line as it closely corresponds to the official India Tendulkar poverty line.
8. Prabhat Patnaik, “Once More on Poverty Figures of India”, 25 March 2024, https://www.networkideas.org; Utsa Patnaik, “Number Games: India’s Declining Poverty Figures Based on Flawed Estimation method; Accurate Figures Show 75 Percent in Poverty”, Academics Stand Against Poverty, https://academicsstand.org.
9. Santosh Mehrotra and Rakesh Ranjan Kumar, “Why the 2023 Consumption Survey Is Not Comparable with Previous Rounds”, op. cit.; Prabhat Patnaik, “Once More on Poverty Figures of India”, ibid.
10. For more on this, see: Utsa Patnaik, “Number Games: India’s Declining Poverty Figures Based on Flawed Estimation method; Accurate Figures Show 75 Percent in Poverty”, Academics Stand Against Poverty, https://academicsstand.org; Utsa Patnaik, Republic of Hunger and Other Essays, Three Essays Collective, March 2007.
11. For more on this, see: Santosh Mehrotra, “Everything Wrong with NITI Aayog’s Claim of 24.8 Crore Emerging Out of Poverty in 9 Years”, 16 January 2024, https://thewire.in.
12. For more on this, see: “’Hunger, Undernutrition Stalking India; Placed Worse Than Least Developed Nations’: Prabhat Patnaik”, Subhoranjan Dasgupta interviews Prabhat Patnaik, 19 January 2024, https://thewire.in; Prabhat Patnaik, “The Poverty of UN Poverty Estimates”, 31 July 2023, https://www.networkideas.org; Utsa Patnaik, “Shooting the Messenger: Adverse Health Trends Revealed in the NFHS (5) 2019–2021”, 13 August, 2013, https://peoplesdemocracy.in. Note that the critiques by Prof. Prabhat Patnaik are of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) developed by the UNDP, based on which the Niti Aayog has developed its NMPI. The NMPI retains all the ten indicators from the global MPI and incorporates two additional indicators, Maternal Health and Bank Accounts (see: “National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023”, p. xii, Niti Aayog, July 2023, https://www.niti.gov.in). Therefore, Prof. Patnaik’s criticism is equally valid for NMPI too.
13. Santosh Mehrotra, “Everything Wrong with NITI Aayog’s Claim of 24.8 Crore Emerging Out of Poverty in 9 Years”, op. cit.; Deepanshu Mohan and Centre for New Economics Studies, “NiTi Aayog ‘Poverty’ Stats: Serious Theoretical, Methodological, Empirical Questions”, 18 January 2024, https://thewire.in.
14. “National Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Progress Review 2023”, p. xv, op. cit.
15. “Multidimensional Poverty in India Since 2005–06: A Discussion Paper”, p. 5, op. cit.
16. State of Working India 2021, p. 24, https://cse.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in.
17. Rakesh Kochhar, “In the Pandemic, India’s Middle Class Shrinks and Poverty Spreads While China Sees Smaller Changes”, 18 March 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org.
18. Santosh Mehrotra, “Everything Wrong With NITI Aayog’s Claim of 24.8 Crore Emerging Out of Poverty in 9 Years”, op. cit.
19. Household Consumer Expenditure Survey, Press Release, 15 November 2019, https://pib.gov.in.
20. Pramit Bhattacharya, “India’s Statistical System: Past, Present, Future”, 28 June 2023, https://carnegieendowment.org.
21. “NSO Panel Did Not Recommend ‘Junking’ Consumer Survey Report”, The Quint, 21 November 2019, https://www.thequint.com; “Consumer Spend Survey: Panel Didn’t Flag Quality Issues, Ask for Scrapping”, 21 November 2019, https://www.business-standard.com; “Consumer Expenditure: Expert Panel Didn’t Suggest Withholding Findings, Reports Business Standard”, 21 November 2019, https://scroll.in.
22. “After Junking Report on Consumption, NSO Now Looks for Reasons”, 22 November 2019, https://www.livemint.com.
23. “Consumer Spending Sees First Fall in Over 40 Years on Back of Weak Rural Demand: Report”, 15 November 2019, https://thewire.in; “First In 46 Years, Food Consumption Falls, Modi Govt Scraps Consumer Spending Survey”, 18 November 2019, https://www.newsclick.in.
24. Prabhat Patnaik, “Once More on Poverty Figures of India”, op. cit.
25. Neeraj Jain, “Analysing Budget 2024–25 from People’s Perspective – Part 1: The GDP Claims”, 21 August 2024, https://countercurrents.org.
26. Neeraj Jain, “Analysing Budget 2024–25 from People’s Perspective: Part 2 – The Economic Survey on India’s Unemployment Crisis”, 4 September 2024, https://countercurrents.org.
27. Jean Dreze, “Wages are the Worry, Not Just Unemployment”, Indian Express, 13 April 2023, https://indianexpress.com.
28. Economic Survey 2023–24, p. 289.
29. Prabhat Patnaik, “The Pervasiveness of Poverty in India”, 27 November 2023, https://www.networkideas.org.
30. Our calculation, based on data for agricultural labourers given on the Labour Bureau dashboard, https://labourbureau.gov.in.
31. Neeraj Jain, “Analysing Budget 2024–25 from People’s Perspective: Part 2 – The Economic Survey on India’s Unemployment Crisis”, op. cit.
32. India Employment Report 2024, ILO, p. 28, https://www.ilo.org.
33. Data sources for table: Column 2 (% of Total Workers, FY23): This is reworked data, after excluding unpaid workers from the employed, taken from – Neeraj Jain, “Analysing Budget 2024–25 from People’s Perspective: Part 2 – The Economic Survey on India’s Unemployment Crisis”, op. cit.; Column 3 and 4: sourced from ibid. Column 5: from – India Employment Report 2024, p. 28, op. cit.
34. Calculated by us from data in Table 1.
35. “Expert Committee Submits its Report on Determining Methodology for Fixing National Minimum Wage”, 14 February 2019, https://pib.gov.in.
36. “Income of 94.11% Registered Informal Workers at Rs 10,000 or Below”, 29 May 2022, https://www.business-standard.com.
37. Prabhat Patnaik, “The Pervasiveness of Poverty in India”, op. cit.
38. “Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022–23: Fact Sheet”, https://www.mospi.gov.in.
39. Nitin Kumar Bharti et al., Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj, 18 March 2024, https://prod.wid.world.
40. Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2022, NCRB, https://ncrb.gov.in and similar NCRB reports for previous years.
41. “First In 46 Years, Food Consumption Falls, Modi Govt Scraps Consumer Spending Survey”, 18 November 2019, https://www.newsclick.in.
42. Utsa Patnaik, “Shooting the Messenger: Adverse Health Trends Revealed in the NFHS (5) 2019–2021”, Peoples Democracy, 13 August 2023, https://peoplesdemocracy.in.
43. Ibid. See also: “’Unhappy With Data Sets,’ Modi Govt Suspends Director of Institute Which Prepares NFHS”, 28 July 2023, https://thewire.in.
44. Utsa Patnaik, “Shooting the Messenger: Adverse Health Trends Revealed in the NFHS (5) 2019–2021”, op. cit.
45. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 and 2023, https://www.fao.org. Population data from: Human Population Estimates & Projections, FAO, https://data.apps.fao.org.
46. Source for chart: Ibid.
47. T.K. Rajalakshmi, “Starved of Data: India’s Hungry People Go Missing from FAO Report”, Frontline, 24 July 2022, https://frontline.thehindu.com.
48. “79% of Indian Households Experienced ‘Food Insecurity’ Last Year, Shows Survey”, Scroll Staff, 23 February 2022, https://scroll.in. Deepanshu Mohan and Centre for New Economics Studies, “NiTi Aayog ‘Poverty’ Stats: Serious Theoretical, Methodological, Empirical Questions”, op. cit.
49. Jagriti Chandra, “India Ranks 111 Out of 125 Countries in Global Hunger Index”, 12 October 2023, https://www.thehindu.com.
50. Prabhat Patnaik, “Global Hunger Index: Evidence Speaks Louder Than Denial”, 8 November 2023, https://www.nationalheraldindia.com.
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Neeraj Jain is a BTech in Electrical Engineering. He is a social-political activist with an activist group called Lokayat in Pune, and is also the Associate Editor of Janata Weekly, a weekly print magazine and blog published from Mumbai. He is the author of several books, including ‘Globalisation or Recolonisation?’, ‘Nuclear Energy: Technology from Hell’, and ‘Education Under Globalisation: Burial of the Constitutional Dream’.
Email: [email protected].
