Poverty in India

© Peter Armstrong

India's status as an emerging global superpower rests on narrow economic data drawn from its booming middle class of 50 million people, less than 5% of the population. Beneath this veneer, hundreds of millions face a daily struggle for essentials. The global challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is disproportionately dependent on the fight against poverty in India.

Almost half of India's most severe poverty is concentrated in just 5 states: Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. These poorest states also have to contend with the largest and fastest growing populations. Due to such regional disparities the Indian government rejects the World Bank’s $1 per day formula for the MDG benchmark, preferring a “poverty headcount ratio” based on a basket of essential food and non-food items valued separately for each state, and for urban and rural environments. On this unique basis, 37.5% of the population was below the poverty line in the MDG baseline year (1990), falling to 22% in 2005.

This figure suggests that the target of halving poverty by 2015 will be achieved; indeed the alternative $1 per day basis gives a similar result of 24%. However, the World Bank has recently recommended that the threshold for extreme poverty should be raised to $1.25 per day which transforms the picture in India. The revised benchmark captures 42% of the population, over 450 million people, one third of the total world figure. Whatever the merits of these alternative calculations, it is clear that vast numbers of households survive close to the poverty line and that food price inflation poses a serious threat to India’s poverty reduction.

Food Security in India

Whilst India's poverty figures may be open to differing interpretation, there is consensus that the incidence of malnutrition has seen little improvement over the last 10 years. Almost half of all young children are underweight, many of them in the more serious categories of wasting and stunting. Rural households consume less food than in the 1950s. The government's safety net for feeding, known as the Public Food Distribution System (PDS), reaches less than 100 million people and is impaired by corruption at district level.

Regulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which force Indian farmers to compete on an unlevel playing field have been a key factor in the crisis. Agricultural imports have increased four times since the WTO came into effect in 1995 and at least 4 million farmers have been rendered jobless. Apart from the scarcity of affordable food, a tragic human consequence has been the suicide of over 100,000 farmers in the last decade, most of them faced with crippling debts for expensive seeds and chemicals. It can be no surprise that India's insistence on special protection for its farmers was a vital factor in the collapse of the Doha round of WTO negotiations.

Internal factors have also contributed to food insecurity in India. Lack of investment in the rural economy is reflected in the 220,000 villages which lack electricity. Irrigation infrastructure has not been maintained and poor controls over industrialisation have also contributed to the collapse of groundwater levels and the loss of cultivable land. With yields of wheat falling and rice production static, there is bound to be alarm at the Ministry of Rural Development’s decision to invest $375 million in the production of diesel from the untested biofuel crop jatropha. Although this wild plant can be grown on arid wasteland, it grows even better on conventional farm land exposing the risk that commercial forces will overwhelm any regulation.

With almost 60% of the workforce dependent on farm livelihoods, the government has responded with a range of measures intended to boost the rural economy. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) guarantees 100 days of paid employment to one person from every household to work on public infrastructure projects. Initially confined to selected states, NREGA is now being extended to the entire country. The 2008 budget also announced a farm loan waiver scheme which aims to write off the debts of 40 million farmers. Critics have suggested that the vast expenditure involved in these schemes should be more explicitly targeted to rural development needs such as soil regeneration, irrigation and diversifying livelihoods.
Climate Change in India

Wading through Orissa floodwaters © Christian Aid

These faultlines in India’s food security are deep enough already without the uncertain impact of climate change. With more than 60% of agriculture dependent on rain-fed crops, even modest alteration in the intensity, frequency and timing of rainfall should cause consternation. Greenpeace is striving to raise awareness by campaigning in India’s coastal cities where it says 50 million people are at risk from rising sea levels. Adaptation plans are conspicuous by their absence; the Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra K. Pachauri, himself an Indian, has expressed the view that India is completely unprepared for the impact of climate change which he considers could lead to social unrest. Criticism of management of the 2008 monsoon floods which displaced 3 million people in Bihar alone, and which have been described as the worst for 50 years, may hold lessons for the future.

Apart from rainfall patterns, water resources are threatened by the retreat of Himalayan glaciers which currently account for 85% of the source water of India’s 3 major rivers, in particular securing their flow in the summer months. Over 400 million people live in the catchment of the Ganges. Predictions that the glaciers could disappear within decades make a nonsense of the ambitious $200 billion River-Linking Project which aims to connect the apparently healthy rivers in the north to those in the drier south.

India sits on both sides of the table in climate change negotiations. Already the world's 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, its emissions are projected to treble by 2050 at current rates – a new coal-fired power station is scheduled to come on stream almost every month for the next 10 years. The country has no obligations under the Kyoto protocol and has stipulated that it is unwilling to agree to any targets that deny its right to per capita use of energy on a par with that of the current major emitting countries.

Health in India

Indian children © Centre for Science and Environment

Poor standards of nutrition undermine all health indicators. Almost half of all Indian babies are born underweight and rates of infant and child mortality are falling too slowly to meet the MDG targets. Maternal mortality has not fallen at all since the MDG baseline year. Immunisation coverage is static below 50% and the target date for eradication of polio has been pushed back to 2010. Only 15% of the rural population has access to improved sanitation, hopelessly behind MDG targets. These health status checks are an embarrassment for India in relation to the progress made by poorer neighbours such as Nepal and Bangladesh.

The government allows expensive "medical tourism" to flourish whilst its own public hospitals are scraping for funds and facilities. Such is the exodus of qualified staff abroad and to the private sector that a 2008 government department report estimates that there are 600,000 unfilled vacancies for doctors and 1,000,000 for nurses. However, the National Rural Health Mission, launched in 2005 with promises of major upgrading of health centres, has already recruited over 450,000 new front line health workers known as Accredited Social Health Activists. In addition a 2007 Health Insurance scheme funded by central and state governments offers a credit for treatment to families below the poverty line in return for a small subscription.

Data on HIV/AIDS has been unreliable, but government figures published in 2007 have been accepted as a new baseline. They show 2.5 million people living with HIV, a prevalence of 0.36%, about half previous estimates and implying that the MDG target to stabilise and reverse the virus could be achieved. After a slow start with provision for only about one in six of those in need in 2007, the National AIDS Control Organisation plans significantly increased availability of free anti-retroviral treatment.
Education in India

Legislation for affirmative action in employment and education is invariably controversial; for example The Right to Education Bill proposes that private schools should set aside 25% of their places for children of lower caste families.

The expansion of private education is aggravating the shortage of teachers. Although initial primary enrolment is edging towards 100%, absenteeism and poor quality of teaching partly explain why over a third of pupils drop-out. Youth literacy remains below 80%.

A combination of poverty, discrimination and inadequate schools means that child labour is an entrenched problem in India - as many as 23 million children aged 5-14 are believed to work, with another 75 million out of school. Successive attempts to legislate remain largely ineffective.

Whilst state authorities are responsible for a share of budgets, central government investment in health and education amounts only to 1% and 3% of GDP respectively, far short of promises and of similar scale to spending on fuel subsidies which largely benefit the rich.

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