India’s Declining Poverty - Figures don''t add up by Utsa Patnaik, Academics Stand Against Poverty 11:28am 12th Feb, 2013   In this featured article, Utsa Patnaik, Professor of Economics (Retired) at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, argues that the Indian government massively undercounts the poor because the consumption standard against which poverty is measured has itself been allowed to fall over time. If the original definition of poverty line is used then three-quarters of India’s population today are poor. China also would see a dramatic increase, and the World Bank’s global poverty numbers would be revised far upward.    Poverty estimates from India’s Planning Commission recently stated that a person was to be considered ‘poor’ in 2009-10 only if his or her monthly spending was below 22.4 Rupees per day – the equivalent of 48 U.S. cents — in rural areas, and 28.7 rupees per day in urban areas. This has exposed how unrealistic ‘poverty lines’ are.    Some television channels assumed that these figures covered food costs alone and showed how they could not meet even a fraction of a person’s minimal nutrition needs at today’s prices. These paltry sums, however, are supposed to cover not only food but all non-food essentials, including clothing and footwear, fuel for cooking and lighting, transport, education, medical costs and rent.    Even a school child knows that working health cannot be maintained, nor basic necessities obtained, by spending so little. Amazingly, however, 350 million Indians subsist below these levels. They can hardly be said to ‘live’ in any true sense: their energy and protein intake, and consumption of cloth and other necessities, is far below normal.    They are underweight, stunted, and subject to a high sickness load, but without the means to obtain adequate food or medical treatment. The official poverty lines do not measure poverty any more; they measure destitution.    The outcry against calling these destitution lines, ‘poverty lines’, is justified, for true poverty lines are much higher and show 75 percent of all Indians to be poor. Per head energy and protein intake, as well as cloth consumption, has been falling for the last two decades. Despite a good growth rate of per capita income, this result is because of worsening income distribution, with a small minority monopolizing all the gains while the majority has suffered loss of purchasing power. With 80 million tons of unsold public food grain stocks — 50 million tons in excess of normal levels — piled up by July 2012, the sensible policy is to do away with targeting and revert to a universal distribution system, combining it with an urban employment guarantee scheme.    Unfortunately the neo-liberal policy makers today ask the wrong question: ‘How can we reduce the food subsidy?’, and not the right question: ‘How can we lift the masses of India from the current level of the lowest food consumption in the world, even lower than the least developed countries?”    The poverty line for rural India has been revised upwards by 15 percent by the Tendulkar Committee, whose brief in 2009 was to review poverty measurement, but it still remains absurdly low. Members of the Planning Commission and the Tendulkar Committee are academic experts, so how have such laughable figures of minimum cost of living emerged from their statistical labors? The fact is that over thirty years ago the then-Planning Commission made a mistake of method, and the present Commission stubbornly continues to cling to that mistake despite its being repeatedly pointed out, including by this author (The Republic of Hunger, 2004). The mistake was to change the definition of poverty line and de-link it from nutrition standards.    * Access the complete essay via the link below: http://academicsstand.org/patnaik-poverty-line/    One in three malnourished children worldwide found in India. (InfoChange India)    Data from UNICEF shows that one in three malnourished children worldwide is found in India, with 47 per cent of under-threes underweight.    India"s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called malnutrition in the country "a national shame" as he released a major survey that found 42 per cent of children under five are underweight.    "The problem of malnutrition is a matter of national shame," Singh said on Tuesday at the launch of the HUNGaMA (Hunger and Malnutrition) Report, which surveyed 73,000 households across nine states.    "Despite growth in our GDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high. We have also not succeeded in reducing this rate fast enough," the prime minister added.    Singh said the findings of the report by an alliance of non-government organisations were both "worrying and encouraging" for India - a fast-growing country of 1.2 billion people with the highest number of children worldwide.    The research found the proportion of under-fives who are underweight had declined 11 percentage points in seven years, but Singh said it remained "unacceptably high" at 42 per cent.    "We cannot hope for a healthy future with a large number of malnourished children," he said.    India"s economy has grown in the last 20 years, with GDP growth rates of nearly 10 per cent in the last decade helping to change perceptions of the country.    Rohini Mukherjee, from the Naadi Foundation, one of NGOs that produced the report, said the wealth created in a country estimated to have 57 billionaires last year had not been shared with the impoverished masses.    Measured by the prevalence of malnutrition, India is "doing worse than sub-Saharan Africa," she told AFP, echoing observations made by UN children"s agency UNICEF.    This is despite the government program for early childhood development, called the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme, which is seen as riddled with corruption and inefficiency.    Data from UNICEF shows that one in three malnourished children worldwide is found in India, with 47 per cent of under-threes underweight.    One of the findings in the new research was widespread ignorance about nutrition among Indian parents.    "It is very clear that in Africa (malnutrition) is a result of absolute poverty. They are starving," Mukherjee said. "In our case, to me it seems it is about eating and feeding practices. We have a big gap there. "Most children we measured, what the child is eating is almost all carbohydrate."    Food prices have soared in India over the last six years, causing increased hardship for at least 455 million people estimated by the World Bank to live below the poverty line.    http://infochangeindia.org/children/    Women"s lives put at risk in India by private healthcare providers, by Sarah Boseley. (The Guardian).    Profoundly shocking stories are coming out of India about the exploitation of poor, ill-educated or illiterate women at the hands of doctors in private hospitals. Thousands are being given hysterectomies and caesareans that they do not need by doctors and hospitals that can make substantial sums of money out of the operations. They leave women in pain, infirm, unable to work to earn a living and in horrendous debt.    Indian women earning just enough to feed themselves and their families cannot go to government clinics because they are too few and far between. The private healthcare market has swept all before it. In 1949, the private sector provided 8% of India"s healthcare facilities. Now, with the unfettered growth permitted by the unquestioning worship of market forces, it accounts for 93% of hospitals and 85% of doctors.    The private health sector in India makes a fortune out of health tourism, attracting people from Europe and the US for high-quality care that is cheaper than at home. Meanwhile, the absence of government regulation allows the appalling abuse of the country"s own people.    Oxfam"s staff and partners in India have been amassing distressing evidence of the plight of women who go to private clinics with a minor complaint and come out unable to work and with an impossible burden of debt. This was the account of 38-year-old Kaushalya, who works as a farm labourer in a rural district of Rajasthan. She visited a private clinic with stomach pains and was told she must have a hysterectomy. She was charged 30,000 rupees for the operation (around £360).    I went to get medication and have a check-up. Because the government hospitals are far away, I went to a private clinic. They didn"t check me, they didn"t give me any medication, but they gave me an injection and performed an operation. Even though I only had a tummy ache, they took my uterus out. I still have the same stomach pain I had before. I can"t work, I can"t lift heavy things. Being a poor farmer, I don"t have any money, so I had to borrow money. I have not even been able to pay the interest.    Akhil Bhartiya Grhak Panchayat, a local NGO in Dausa district, Rajasthan, found evidence of hundreds of women who had been subjected to unnecessary hysterectomies. The NGO filed an RTI (right to information) case. Nearly 70% of the women at three of five clinics which provided information had had their uterus taken out. The RTI also revealed a large number of the women who had undergone the procedure were aged under 29, with the youngest being just 18. Complaints have been made to the police and local government, but no action has yet been taken.    "Whatever abdominal stomach problems they are coming to doctors with, the doctors make them scared that they have cancer and are going to die. They mislead them into undergoing surgery that is not necessary … in their greed for money," said Durga Prasad Saini of the NGO.    Chandra Kala, a mother of two in her late twenties, was told she must have a caesarean by a private clinic for both of her deliveries. She was charged 20,000 rupees for the delivery of her first child and 15,000 rupees for the second baby she delivered recently.    I said I didn"t want an operation performed on me, but they said I had to have one and they charged me. We are only villagers who farm, but I managed to borrow some money from here and there. But being a farmer now I can"t work, I can"t lift anything heavy or bend too low, I don"t feel well enough to work. I only finished off paying my debts two months ago from my first child who is now nine years old.    There have been accounts of unnecessary operations that risk lives taking place in other parts of India too. Dr Satyaveer Singh, chief medical officer for a government hospital near Bharatpur, said the abuse was widespread:    For private doctors who do a normal delivery, what will they get? Only 5,000 or 6,000 rupees. But whenever they perform a caesarean, they charge 18, 20,000, and they will add a bed charge, a consultation charge – with all these included, it"s about 30,000. Most of the women having a caesarean face problems financially. They have to sell their assets, or borrow money.    Dr Narendra Gupta from Prayas, a partner organisation working with Oxfam India, said:    Subjecting women to unethical and unnecessary hysterectomies or Caesarean sections for financial gain is a violation of human rights and most awful form of gender-based violence. The mass hysterectomies by private clinics in Dausa is a wicked act, but such malpractice is happening in other areas as well.    The stories of these women, damaged by doctors for financial gain, are the strongest possible testimony in favour of a comprehensive system that delivers affordable healthcare to all people. Oxfam is calling for the Indian government to make healthcare for all a priority – and is urging international donors to support them and back regulation of the private healthcare sector in developing countries.
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