Friday, 17 May, 2024
By: Sutanu Guru
According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in India declined sharply from 37.2% in 2004-15 to 21.9% in 2011-12. Image Source: IANS
By almost all accounts, poverty in India has declined significantly in this century; with the percentage of people living in poverty at the World Bank stipulated line of $ 1.90 per capita per day estimates ranging from 1% to 13%.
In the third and final piece of the series on how Global Hunger Index is a hit job on India, India Tracker looks at two data sets to conclude the malnourishment and child malnutrition data used by the Global Hunger index simply doesn’t match up. In the first feature of this series, we looked at how anecdotal evidence for South Asia and hard evidence for countries like Venezuela and Lebanon reveal there has to be something wrong with the methodology, data and analysis of the Global Hunger Index which ranks India 107 out of 121 countries. In the second part part, we analysed how the methodology adopted is not only flawed; but the arbitrary change in which a parameters to use which year is akin to shifting goal posts.
The first data set relates to the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line. While there need not be a rigorous statistical correlation and causality between declining poverty levels and improved standards of nutrition, both common sense and data suggest there is a strong and visible link. By almost all accounts, poverty in India has declined significantly in this century; with the percentage of people living in poverty at the World Bank stipulated line of $ 1.90 per capita per day estimates ranging from 1% to 13%. Whichever way one looks at the data, it is a huge drop because the percentage of poor Indians by similar measures at the turn of the century was close to 40%.
Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2022/04/14/raising-the-standard-time-for-a-higher-poverty-line-in-india/
Some analysts, particularly critics of the present regime would vehemently disagree with the data and analysis offered by economist Surjit Bhalla and others. Lets look at what the World Bank says about poverty levels in India in September, 2022. (https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099700509122212929/pdf/IDU05b43a261041c504a5f0bb3405d0ef310b9e1.pdf). According to this report, the poverty percentage declined from 18.73% in 2015-16 to 10.01% in 2019-20. Most importantly, this measure of poverty is not based on $ 1.90 per capita PPP per day but an upwardly revised $ 2.15. The World Bank also states that deeper research by economists has shown that the worst case scenario poverty percentage in India based on the higher threshold could be 13%. Now lets look at another data set released by the World Bank in 2016 and compare that with the ‘Hunger Score’ provided by the Global Hunger Index. According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in India declined sharply from 37.2% in 2004-15 to 21.9% in 2011-12. What happened to the Hunger Score? The score improved dramatically from an “alarming” 38.8 in 2000 to a “serious” 28.8 in 2012.
The same World Bank says poverty levels declined further from 21.9% in 2011-12 to 10% even with daily consumption threshold going up from $ 1.90 to $ 2.15. Yet, the Hunger Score actually worsens in 2022 to 29.1. How is that possible? As India Tracker pointed out in the previous feature in this series, the “intellectuals” behind the Global Hunger Report added a parameter called undernourishment based on an unscientific survey 3000 Indians. Would that classify as a hit job or not?
Lets look at the second data set. According to The Department of Animal Husbandry & Dairying, the total milk production in India in 2011.12 was 127.9 million tons and per capita availability was 289 grams per day. By 2021-22, the numbers had increased substantially to 210 million tons and 427 grams respectively. Even if one assumes that poor Indian households still don’t have the financial wherewithal to buy a lot of milk, surely they must have bought and are buying some milk at least because the affluent cannot physically consume so much milk. It doesn’t get re-elected in the Global Hunger Index. According to The Economic Survey of 2021-22, the production of eggs rose from 78.48 billion in 2014-15 to 122.1 billion in 2020-21. Per capita availability jumped in the same period from about 65 per year to 91 per year. Again, it would be physically impossible for the affluent to eat so many eggs. Surely the poor might be consuming some as they move up the income ladder? Again, it is not reflected in the Global Hunger Index. For quite a few years, horticulture-fruits and vegetables- output has surpassed that of food grains and touched a record level of almost 330 million tons in 2020-21, up from 269 million tons in 2012-13. Again, only the affluent cannot physically consumer so much extra fruits and vegetables. The poor must be consuming some. Again, this is not reflected in the Global Hunger Index. To someone who is not blinkered, it would appear to be poor research quality, if not a hit job.
To conclude, child malnutrition remains a serious problem in many states of India despite steady improvements and present a challenge for policy makers. But to use that subset and some more dubiously added parameters to give a rank of 107 out of 121 countries is not good quality academic work. As we mentioned in the first feature in the series, 15% of the total population of Venezuela was forced to flee or migrate because of lack of food n the last few years. Yet, it gets a ranking of 85. If that is not a hit job, what is?
