Essays

The Government of India set up an Expert Group to suggest a methodology to measure poverty. The group submitted its report in 1993 and suggested a new poverty line: Rs 49 and Rs 56, for rural and urban areas at 1973-74 prices. This line was higher in real terms by approximately 15 percent. The availability of an absolute poverty line allows comparisons across countries. But what should an international poverty line be? Over the last decade, most comparisons of international poverty have been made by the World Bank, and the definition used is a purchasing power poverty line of $1 per capita per day, at 1985 prices, The most recent publication of the World Bank, however,

reports a new international poverty line of $1.08 per capita per day, at 1993 prices. This new line marks a historical first in that it reduces the original poverty line by approximately 15 percent — i.e. the new line of $1.08, at 1993 prices, is equivalent to $ 0.82, at 1985 prices. The reasoning behind this large reduction in the absolute poverty line is not transparent, and debatable.

Before getting into the growth and poverty reduction debate, it is necessary to understand that mysterious thing called the poverty line. The most widely used measure of poverty in India was the 'head-count ratio'. This is a measure of income poverty. In the early-'60s, the GOI appointed a special working group of eminent economists to assess the level of poverty in India. The experts came up with a definition of the Poverty Line. This was based on a nationally desirable minimum level of consumption expenditure based on a standard balanced diet prescribed by the Nutrition Advisory Committee. In other words, any family who could not afford to buy a rudimentary food basket, which when consumed yielded a minimum level of calories, was considered poor. They declared that 50 percent of Indians lived below the poverty line. Thus began the war to push this figure down to preserve the country's izzat (honour).

However, a poverty line thus defined, is something of a destitution line since it takes into account only the expenditure required for subsistence food, leaving out everything else needed for a minimally decent living, such as basic housing, clothing, education and health services. This has gained weight since Amartya Sen's Nobel Prize. Sen has finally succeeded in bringing into economics and the poverty debate a modicum of moral philosophy, which, until now, had been disregarded as non-scientific because it was stated by lesser luminaries. In India, of our famous one billion people, 350-400 million are below the poverty line. There are not many poor people who earn more than a dollar a day. This figure means nothing because poverty is comparative.

In India, poverty is hunger. Real hunger. Never having even three basic meals a day. Poverty is hearing your children cry themselves to sleep because there is no rice and dal or a few chappatis to give them. Poverty is lack of shelter. In an urban area it might be fear of a slumlord. In a rural area it could be a creditor, the forest department waiting to evict you, or an alcoholic husband signing away the one fragment of land you live on, to drink his last drink. Poverty is being sick and not being able to afford a doctor. Poverty is not being able to send your child to school and not being able to read. Poverty is not having a job and insecurity and fear about the future. Poverty is living one day at a time. Poverty is watching your child die a senseless, needless death from malnutrition or diarrhoea brought on by unsafe drinking water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and lack of freedom. Poverty is shrinking from the contempt of others merely because you were born you.

Disparities exist between and within communities in India.

For instance, communities classified as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have significantly lower literacy and higher child mortality rates than the rest of the population. Of our 350 to 400 million poor, roughly 75 percent live in the rural areas. Of these 75 percent, the worst-off are women, children, adivasis and Dalits. Was it always like this? Every literary tradition has quotations like 'the poor will always be with us.' The question is, were they always with us? We have historical accounts of our peat and glorious past, as in the reign of Ashoka or the prosperous Maurya period where the poor were supposedly looked after. However, the only societies that practiced egalitarianism and were economically homogeneous to a large extent were adivasi societies. This was especially true among hunter-gatherer tribes where there was no tradition of hoarding. Wealth, in the form of Same hunted, was distributed equally. Hoarding and storing treasures, creating wealth to be amassed and passed on to heirs was the next step in settled societies.

Pro-modern Indian society was feudal. However, the beginning of an even more oppressive system began with the introduction of the Permanent Land Settlement Act by Lord Cornwallis in 1793, by which individuals loyal to the British were awarded huge tracts of land. They were turned into landlords or zamindars overnight, provided they collected revenue for the British Crown. This was the beginning of the zamindari system and life for the peasantry became infinitely worse. It also laid the foundation for the huge discrepancies in our economic system and an inequitable, exploitative pattern of land distribution, which kept the poor perennially oppressed.

Under the British, there were unprecedented famines, the last being the Great Bengal Famine in 1943 when food grain and wealth were diverted to the war effort even as people died slow, painful, tortuous deaths of starvation on the streets. It left a lasting and sobering impact on Indian leaders  fighting for independence. Imbued with the spirit of patriotism, the founders of the nation produced a brilliant Constitution that held visions of justice and freedom for

all. Nehru's words rang out passionately from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the eve of Independence. He sought 'the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity.' A finer Constitution could not have been written.

The Indian nation was born with the mission to eradicate poverty and bring prosperity to its people. How far have we succeeded, 54 years down the line?