There is a widespread impression among the Indian
intelligentsia, foreign scholars, and residents of developed/rich
countries that India’s economic growth has not reduced poverty, that
globalisation has worsened poverty and/or income distribution, and that
there are hundreds of millions of hungry people in India. These
arguments are buttressed by recourse to India’s ranking on several
social indicators. Esoteric debates about the comparability of survey
data and gaps between NSS and NAS add to the confusion and allow
ideologues to believe and assert whatever information suits the
argument. What are the basic facts about poverty, income distributions,
and hunger at an aggregate level? This paper reviews the available data
and debates on this subject and comes to a commonsense view. It then
tries to link some of the outcomes to the policy framework and
programmes of the government. The paper finds that India’s poverty ratio
of around 22 percent in 1999-2000 is in line with that observed in
countries at similar levels of per capita income. The ratio is
relatively high because India is a relatively poor/ low-income country,
i.e., with low average income. 90 percent of the countries in the world
have a higher per capita (average) income than India. The number of the
poor is very high because India’s population is very large, the
secondhighest in the world. India’s income distribution as measured by
the Gini co-efficient is better than three-fourths of the countries of
the world. The consumption share of the poorest 10 percent of the
population is the sixth best in the world. Where India has failed as a
nation is in improving its basic social indicators like literacy and
mortality rates. Much of the failure is a legacy of the three decades of
Indian socialism (till 1979-80). The rate of improvement of most
indicators has accelerated during the market period (starting in
1980-81). The gap between its level and that of global benchmarks is
still wide and its global ranking on most of these social parameters
remains very poor. This is the result of government failure. The
improvement in social indicators has not kept pace with economic growth
and poverty decline, and this has led to increasing interstate
disparities in growth and poverty. JEL classification: I3, I32, I38
Keywords: Hunger, Poverty, Public Goods, Public and Quasi-Public Goods
and Services, Basic Education, Public Health, Sanitation
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