Successive attempts to give an estimate about the number of poor in the country have failed. Perhaps it’s time for the Government to focus on elevating poverty by bringing agriculture to the centre-stage of policy formulation
After failing to reach a consensus on how many people in India are poor, Niti Aayog has requested the Union Government to form another panel of specialists to do the job. This has once again raised the time-worn and TRP-less issue of poverty in our country.
Niti Aayog, which is considered to be a premier policymaking body in the country, worked for around one and a half years, with 16 members in a group, to come up with the conclusion that it could not come up with a figure or a formula to assess the poverty line in the country.
The problem is an old one where successive Governments have failed to judge the number of poor in the country. To address the poverty line in the country, the Aayog had been measuring the impact of the Government’s anti-poverty schemes and welfare initiatives.
The Planning Commission had in 2004-2005, suggested that poverty in India stood at 27.5 per cent. During the same period, the panel re-assessed the number of poor in the country and found that the numbers were much more than it had arrived at. It came up with a new figure and estimated the overall poverty rate to be 37.2 per cent. This eventually added 10 crore people below the poverty line.
In 2011-2012, the Planning Commission stated that 21.9 per cent of India’s population is below the official poverty limit. These figures were declared amid confusion as to which methodology must be adopted to determine poverty rate in the country — whether it should be based on the methodology of the Rangarajan Committee or the Tendulkar Committee.
Clearly, no method has ever evolved to find out the exact number of poor in the country, leave aside doing something concrete for them. While responding to an affidavit in the Supreme Court, the then UPA Government made an insulting attempt to define the poor. It gave an explanation that a person spending Rs 32 and Rs 26 in a city and a village respectively, will not get the benefits of below-poverty line schemes.
The UPA Government had to take a ‘U’ turn when this affidavit of the Planning Commission was criticised. Several social groups openly challenged the panel’s Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, taunting him to run his household on Rs 32 for a day.
Different countries across the globe have their own definition of the poverty line. The World Bank says that, despite New Delhi’s notable stride in tackling poverty and promoting growth among the poor, more than 270 million Indians still live on less than $1.25 per day.
As per the World Bank, India is home to more than 26 per cent extreme poor of the world. This can seriously halt the prime objective adopted by it to end poverty by 2030, globally, if India’s efforts to reduce poverty are not on track.
India is a country where the Seventh Pay Commission, which will only serve 0.8 per cent of the population, puts an additional burden of Rs 1.02 lakh crore on the exchequer. And, on the other hand, around 67 per cent of the population, which is engaged in agriculture and allied activities, is left to decide its own fate.
Needless to say that agriculture is one sector which has the potential to boost the economy. It is important to mention that four out of every five of India’s poor live in rural areas and are engaged in agriculture and allied activities.
Sickness in the agriculture sector, which consists of the maximum number of poor in the country, is seriously hampering the efforts of Governments to reduce poverty, because of the continued dependence of two-third of the population on farming.
If the Union Government and State Governments can bring agriculture to the centre-stage of policy formulation, it will definitely shorten the ever-growing poverty line. Growth in agriculture has a multiplier effect on development, especially on employment. It can put the economy on the high trajectory the Government aims for.
If our Governments focus on agriculture equally, if not more than on the miniscule group of a little over 10 million Central Government employees, it will result in a rapid reduction in the poverty levels of the country.
The nation has witnessed high gross domestic product and job-less growth for a long time now. This has naturally failed to translate into better living standards for a major portion of the population.
Corruption and ineffective management of social sector schemes have also added to the problem. The Government’s social and financial policies should not just focus on GDP numbers; they should rather focus on a sector which can achieve self-reliance at the national level. It will be tragic for the country if counting the poor becomes the prime task rather than helping the poor.
(The writer is an advocate in the Supreme Court of India and a social activist)