Poverty Data and Niti Aayog’s ‘Helping Hand’ to Modi Sarkar Before Elections

Yeh Jo India Hai Na, here poverty fell from 11 per cent to five per cent in just one month!

Could it be a miracle? No.

Is it even possible? No.

So, is it true? Not at all.

In January 2024, a NITI Aayog discussion paper put ‘Multi-Dimensional Poverty’ in India at 11.3 per cent, considering multiple parameters like Health, Education, and Standard of Living. It was duly amplified by the ‘government-aligned’ media that 25 crore people had been lifted out of poverty in the last 10 years, and that poverty had fallen from 29 per cent in 2013-14 to 11.28 per cent in 2022-23.

But even more stunning claims were to follow.

A month later, Niti Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam claimed poverty had actually plummeted further and was at just five per cent. His claim was based on his reading of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) conducted in 2022-23, and recently published by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO).

But let’s examine this claim. The HCES puts the income of India’s poorest five per cent at 46 rupees a day, of the poorest 10 per cent at 59 rupees a day, and of the poorest 20 per cent at 70 rupees a day.

Modi Sarkar's 'Majboori'

Today, with potatoes at 14 rupees a kilo, onions at 40 rupees a kilo, milk at 30 rupees for a half litre, to which let’s add just salt, aata (wheat flour), rice, and cooking oil - the bare essentials - can we really believe that someone earning 70 rupees a day can afford even this much?

No. In that case, isn’t such a person desperately poor?

So, what yardstick of poverty is the Niti Aayog using? Or is the CEO trying to make his political bosses look good before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? Perhaps. But, is that his job? No. The job, in fact, is to hold up an honest mirror about the present and use that to plan for the future. Hence the name of its previous avatar – the ‘Planning’ Commission.

Today, the government gives five kilos of free grain to over 81 crore people every month. That is 57 per cent of India’s population. And it is one of the BJP’s biggest election promises to extend this for five more years. It is being packaged for the public in a media blitz as ‘Modi Sarkar ki Guarantee’.

It may be closer to the truth to say that it is in fact a majboori, a compulsion. It is a quiet acceptance of India’s real hunger and poverty levels.

Poverty is a massive challenge, which will take years to bring down. The government could claim its small but hard-won annual successes against the juggernaut of poverty. Instead, it seems bent on claiming that poverty has been fully dealt with by putting a spin on statistics.

We Disrespect Our Poorest Fellow Citizens by Pretending That Poverty Has Vanished

Remember these images? Walls were built to literally ‘hide’ India’s poverty when Donald Trump visited Ahmedabad in 2020. Earlier too, green screens were placed to ‘hide’ our urban poor, when Japanese PM Shinzo Abe visited Ahmedabad in 2017. The same green screens came up again in September 2023, to hide Delhi’s slums during the G20 summit.

This denial of our reality is playing out again in the clumsy claims by Niti Aayog of having done away with poverty.

Instead, let’s ask the NITI Aayog - why are 67 per cent of India’s children below the age of 5, and 57 per cent of our women between the ages of 15 and 50, anaemic in India? The answer is poverty. Why are 15.4 crore workers, i.e., 11 per cent of India’s population, registered under the MGNREGS scheme, even today? Poverty.

Labour economist Santosh Mehrotra, questioning Subrahmanyam’s five per cent claim, points out that six crore people have moved from the non-farm sector, back to agriculture, since 2019. Five crore people have returned to unpaid family labour. Mainly because manufacturing jobs have declined since 2016. All this spells falling wages, which again spells poverty.

So, do all these statistics suggest that poverty in India is at five per cent? Surely not.

How can we pretend poverty has vanished just because there’s an election to win? How can we disrespect our poorest fellow citizens, by pretending they don’t exist?