Commentary/Ashok Mitra

The poor are simply not on the agenda

Cynicism, at some juncture, passes into heartlessness. The story is now out. The regime that came to power in 1991 pressurised the Planning Commission and the Central Statistical Organisation into adopting a somewhat dubious method whereby to measure whether the incidence of poverty has gone up or down in the country over a certain period.

Those at the helm of government were desperately anxious to prove the all-round magnificence of the economic 'reforms' not only were supposed to have given growth; they, it was claimed, had tackled most effectively the problem of income distribution too: thanks to the reforms', poverty in the country had declined dramatically since the 1980s.

Even while this carnival of fiction was making the rounds, in another corner of the Planning Commission, a committee of experts, whose credentials were impeccable, were at work to formulate a more legitimate statistical method of poverty between two points of time. The committee's formula, and the estimates obtained from feeding date thereto, were not allowed to see the light of day during the past quinquennium. A war is a war is war. The reforms were war; the exigencies of the war necessitated falsification of some data and suppression of some others.

A new deputy chairman has been installed in the Planning Commission since last June. He instructed the statisticians in the Commission to re-do the estimates of the poverty line for the relevant years, on the basis of the till-now-carefully-shunned methodology. The results are startling: the proportion of population below the line of poverty instead of shrinking to 18 per cent because of the waving of the magic wand of 'reforms' as per the claims of the previous government, actually rose to about 40 per cent by 1992-93, when the 'reforms' were in full swing.

But there you are, those presiding over the administration in New Delhi have come to regard poverty as an abstract issue. Discussions on how to ameliorate poverty, like the ones on how to remove illiteracy, take place interminably. What emerges is what Karl Marx had once described as vulgar economics. Numbers and percentages are bandied about, the reality behind these statistics matter little to either most of the participants or the establishmentwallahs.

Standard answers are offered for the persistently heavy incidence of poverty: the fruits of growth in industry, agriculture and services have yet to percolate down; the problem is being looked into. There are also other headaches, such as low capital formation because of the reluctance of grumpy foreigners to invest in our country. They too cannot be blamed much thought. They cannot but take into account the current political uncertainties. The incapacity of the Indian working class to rise above their narrow sectarian interests has been, don't you know, another important factor impending the progress of reforms and checkmating efforts to eradicate poverty.

Does not the real issue lie elsewhere? The poor, despite ritual formulations in official, including Planning Commission, documents, are simply not on the agenda. In case they were, the decision-makers could have taken one or two very simple practical steps to bring down the incidence of poverty. To pick an example, they could have stressed the significance of raising the production and productivity of pulses.

The annual output of pulses in the early 1950s was around 11 to 12 million tons; the production of the grain in any of the recent years is estimated to be 12 to 13 million tons. That is to say, within this entire span of four and a half decades, the output of pulses has moved up by barely 10 per cent. The country's population has jumped three times over these decades; the overall production of foodgrains has increased at least four times. Per capita availability of foodgrains for the major food articles has either remained stable or has improved.

Pulses however do not fall into that category. The per capita availability of this grain has shrunk by more than one-half. Irrigation has brought newer areas under cultivation, the acreage under all crops, food and non-food, has increased significantly. Not so in the case of pulses. Acreage under pulses has stayed stagnant at the level of 20 million to 22 million hectares throughout the near half-century. None has bothered about inducting new technology in the cultivation of this grain.

Come to think of it, this decline in the per capita availability of pulses encompasses a grand Indian strategy. Pulses are known to be an inferior grain. As they have ascended to higher and higher income ranges, the relative consumption of this grain by the creamy, and not even so creamy, layers have gone down significantly in the course of the decades.

That has not helped the poor; per capita availability of the grain has declined in drastic fashion for them. And this is where the puzzle commences. These millions of poor have not experienced any appreciable increase in wages and earnings despite the economy's moving lugubriously along the growth path.

Milk and meat and fish and egg articles, rich in protein, are beyond the reach of the poor. To meet their requirements of protein, they willy-nilly have to seek the inferior grain, pulses. We are, however, in a liberated milieu, market forces have to have the final say in such matters as production and consumption.

The poor discover that they cannot fall back on pulses either in their search for protein. Per capital availability of pulses has shrunk and shrunk, the bulk of the grain produced in the country are pre-empted for the consumption of the more affluent classes, the poor, are out.

This, then, is what poverty is about. The nation's vast majority are poor, they lack purchasing power, they do not have the wherewithal to buy pulses of even the very worst category. During these four and a half decades, plenty of talk has taken place on the ways and means to raise the production and productivity of pulses.

Experts have been imported; they have left wise words behind. Some of these experts too have mentioned the necessity of bowing down to market forces; if only the Indian poor would agree to pay sufficiently high prices for pulses, farmers would expand their acreage under the crop, and the country's starving millions would have their requirements of protein fully met. But in case they lack adequate purchasing power, nothing can apparently be done for them. Liberalisation and poverty are irreconcilable bed-fellows.

Such, then is the report card. We are unable to raise our production of pulses. That calls for investment; investment for the sake of the poor is really too much. We will, however, not shy away from importing pulses say, from Australia on the pretext of feeding the poor: that is globalisation. The imported pulses will not go into the bellies of the poor; they do not have the purchasing power to buy the imported stuff. So what, the kickbacks and commissions from the import proceeds are bound to reach the right quarters.

There is, according to the latest statement of the country's finance minister, now a hunger and an aspiration among Indians for quality goods and services. Pulses do not make this list. What the finance minister has in mind is such goods as White Horse Whisky and Gordon's Giri.