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Mass poverty is back in India

After 45 years, the world’s fastest poverty-reducing country adds the maximum
poor in a year
 

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By Richard Mahapatra (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/author/richard-mahapatra-46)

Published: Wednesday 07 April 2021

The pandemic struck India when it recorded its lowest economic

growth in over a decade. The slowing economy had
disproportionately impacted the rural areas, where the country’s
majority of consumers and poor reside.

Even in absence of any official data, one could perceive a rise in

rural poverty. Unemployment was high; consumption expenditure
was constantly coming down; and public spending on development
was stagnant. These three factors together dictate the wellbeing of
an economy.

Cut to 2021. Rural Indians — mostly an informal workforce and poor

by any accepted definition — have lived with irregular jobs for over a
year. Anecdotal stories of precarious survival are pouring out.
People are cutting back on food items; many have stopped having
the basics like lentil as food inflation has spiked.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee

Scheme is no more able to absorb demands for employment. Many
are digging into their meagre savings. With the second wave of the
pandemic hitting hard, it is a situation of extreme desperation. One
can argue the economy for the poor and the marginally well-off
have ceased. What does this result in?

Pew Research Center, using World Bank data, has estimated that the
number of poor in India (with income of $2 per day or less in
purchasing power parity) has more than doubled to 134 million
from 60 million in just a year due to the pandemic-induced
recession. This means, India is back in a situation to be called a
“country of mass poverty” after 45 years.

With this, India’s uninterrupted progress in poverty reduction since

the 1970s has stalled. Last time India reported an increase in
poverty was in the first quarter-century after Independence. From
1951 to 1974, the population of the poor increased from 47 to 56
per cent of the total population.

In the recent years, India emerged as the country with the highest
rate of poverty reduction. In 2019, the Global Multidimensional
Poverty Index reported that India lifted 271 million citizens out of
poverty between 2006 and 2016. Contrast this with the situation in
2020: the highest global poverty increase happened in India.

India has not counted its poor since 2011. But the United Nations
estimated the number of poor in the country to be 364 million in
2019, or 28 per cent of the population. All the estimated new poor
due to the pandemic is in addition to this.
 Also, as estimates point out, millions in urban areas have also
slipped below the poverty line. Even the middle class has shrunk by
a third, says Pew Center’s estimate. Overall, cutting across
population and geographical segments, millions of Indians have
either become poorer, or poor, or on the brink of becoming poor.

Is this a temporary phase? The usual belief is that with economic

recovery, many would climb above the poverty line. But the
question is: how?

People have reduced spending or are not able to spend. They have
already exhausted their savings, reducing their capacity to spend in
future. Government spending is also proportionate to the crisis.
This means a perpetuation of the current economic situation. And a
way out of it is not certain, like the pathway of the pandemic.

Economic growth (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/economic-growth)

covid-19 pandemic (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/covid-19-pandemic)

coronavirus (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/coronavirus)

Rural Poverty (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/rural-poverty)

Governance (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/governance)

India (https://www.downtoearth.org.in/tag/india)

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India’s homemakers being wooed by

political parties is path-breaking
The socio-political message of parties promising cash value to homemakers is a
recognition of women’s work in a typical male-dominated society