It is over 10 years since India estimated its poverty; for which poverty reduction did the Finance Minister then take credit for?
Photo: @nsitharamanoffc / X
For the first time, the word “multidimensional poverty” appeared in the budget speech of an Indian finance minister. Nirmala Sitharaman claimed that the National Democratic Alliance government had “assisted” 250 million people escape multidimensional poverty in the last decade.
Appearance, rather acceptance, of multidimensional poverty as a measure of poverty is a great stride in how we approach poverty and deprivation. Income poverty — the usual measure that we use to quantify poverty level or to identify the poor — is solely based on economic factors. But poverty is multidimensional. So, the multidimensional poverty index includes three dimensions — health, education and standard of living.
The apex public policy think tank NITI Aayog has developed the country’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index to capture deprivation in the three dimensions — health, education and standard of living. For each of these dimensions, the Aayog has indicators that are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. For health, the indicators are: Nutrition, child and adolescent mortality and maternal health. For education, they are: Years of schooling and school attendance. And for standard of living dimensions, the indicators are: cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets and bank accounts.
Based on this, the NITI Aayog has measured the multidimensional poverty in the country. And it said that 250 million people have escaped multidimensional poverty in the last one decade which the minister quoted to claim reduction in “poverty”. Going by this measure, multidimensional poverty was 55.3 per cent in 2005-06 and dipped to 29.2 per cent in 2013-2014. In the next 10 years (in 2022-2023), this dipped to 11.3 per cent.
But this index doesn’t include the income poverty or dimension that is used in India to measure poverty. All our development projects are directed at “the poor” based on the poverty line which, in turn, is drawn upon the poverty survey (India uses the proxy of expenditure to conclude income level).
India has not carried out a poverty survey since 2011. There has not been a consumption expenditure survey since 2014. So, there is no data on income poverty, which is the base of measuring poverty levels. The other dimensions — the multidimensional poverty index — are further added to get a comprehensive view on poverty and deprivation, which are entwined.
India was supposed to eradicate poverty by 2022, eight years before the Sustainable Development Goal target year of 2030. Prime Minister Narendra Modi made this promise on September 25, 2017, at a national executive meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party. This was at the centre of his promised “New India”.
The current government that claims an unprecedented decline in multidimensional poverty, has more to hide and cover up the real state of poverty in India. It is all the more concealing when the “multidimensional poverty” figure is used interchangeably with “poverty”, mostly by government documents that deal with poverty reduction figures.
It seems that henceforth, poverty eradication will be measured in terms of the NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index that doesn’t include income poverty at all. There are already claims over how various government welfare programmes have resulted in “income” growth of people. For instance, the free foodgrains under the Public Distribution Scheme have been monetised to give a sense of income growth for households.
On January 30, 2024, the NITI Aayog published a working paper on its website. Titled Bharatiya Model of Inclusive Growth: Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas and written by its member Arvind Virmani, the paper has officially articulated the new measure of growth, prosperity and poverty measurement that has been termed as “Bharatiya”.
It read: “The Bharatiya approach to social welfare is multi-faceted, including direct transfers to recipients & indirect subsidies through service providers, cash transfers (e.g. to farmers) & in kind transfers such as free or below market price provision of goods and services (such as scholarships) and a broad range of “basic needs.”
The paper has also stamped the multidimensional poverty index as the “Bharatiya” way of poverty measurement. It says, “Development economists have since formalised & quantified some of these Bharatiya welfare & development practices in terms of outcomes, termed multidimensional poverty indicators.”
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