Poverty : India's Middle Name

In 2010 almost 847(68.7%) million people in our country lived on less than $2 a day, of which an estimated 400(32.7%) million are BPL surviving on less than $1.25 a day. In 2011 Global Hunger Index report our country is only one of the three nations whose GHI has increased between 1996and 2011. India is placed at an abysmal 136^th rank in UN Human Development Index, 94^th out of 119 in the world hunger index. We house highest number of malnourished people in the world at 230 million and a whopping 43% of India’s children below 5 are malnourished (that’s 46% of world’s total)!

A few more facts, the average annual income of India- US$ 619, China- US$ 439, South Korea- US$ 770. Can’t digest it, well its true, or was, in 1947. These are the incomes at the time of independence. We were ahead of China and comparable to South Korea. The same figures changed drastically by 1999, India –US$ 1,818, China-US$ 3,259 and South Korea-US$ 13,317. While these two nations changed from developing to developed in half a century our country became one of the poorest nations of the world. So, where did we go wrong ?

Most of the people in our country live in rural areas with farming being their sole source of income. Majority of our poor are from rural areas or the ones who migrated to cities in search of a better livelihood. When people couldn’t earn much money just by selling crops the government encouraged them to grow ‘cash crops’ and most farmers followed suit. It was all done in good faith but there was just an itsy-bitsy problem- the prices weren’t decided by the farmers but the market forces. When the price used to fall the farmers were left in the cold and since they weren’t growing crops they could actually eat, hunger became prevalent.

The Indian stock market grew by a whopping trillion dollars in the time frame 2003-2007, but only 4%-7% of population hold any equity. In the same time frame the public investment in agriculture has decreased to 2% of the GDP and India faced one of its worst agrarian crises ever. The per capita food availability has decreased every 5 year without exception from 1992-2010 whereas it had increased every 5 year from 1972-1991, again without exception.

We can’t exactly pin-point the time when things started to go horribly wrong for us, but License Raj has to be given a big chunk of the credit, about which BBC said this-

“The labyrinthine bureaucracy often led to absurd restrictions- up to 80 agencies had to be satisfied before a firm could be granted a license to produce and the state would decide what was produced, how much, at what price and what sources of capital was used.”

The neo-liberal policies introduced during 1990s really broke the spine of agrarian economy. While other sectors saw growth over time, these policies made little reforms in the rural sector. The result – rural economy across the country has collapsed or is on the verge of collapse. There have been over 200,000 farmer suicides between 1997-2007. The inequality between rich and poor has reached extraordinary levels while at the same time hunger has scaled new heights. The poor family in 2007 has 100kg less food than it had in 1997.

We can’t just support the richer half of our country to grow and leave others to fend for themselves, in a cruel world where they get as little support as they can possibly imagine. Sure, reforms like MNREGA and mid-day meal have been a step forward to alleviate poverty but they need a lot more than just a few economic reforms. We have a long way to go and the path’s not going to be easy but all we need to do is, keep trying.