India briefings
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
...poverty, food and energy in a changing climate
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| Planting in a rice paddy, Pondicherry © Peter Armstrong |
With almost half of its immense population experiencing food insecurity and malnutrition, India deservedly languishes in 119th position in the UN Human Development Index. There is no lack of political will to tackle poverty, prompted not least by constitutional and democratic obligation. But India is distracted by the elixir of dynamic economic growth, seemingly unable to acknowledge that superpower status will be denied until the country can bestow social justice on its own citizens.
updated May 2011
Poverty Reduction
Progress
In official statements the Indian government expresses confidence in achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the rate of poverty by 2015. The figures are less persuasive. The rate has fallen only to 32.0% from the 1993 baseline of 45.3%.
This figure is based on a preliminary assessment of a National Sample Survey conducted in 2009/10. Even when final results are published later in 2011, the effect of high food price inflation that has troubled India recently will not be reflected.
Home to about one third of the world’s extreme poverty, India's image as a tiger economy is compromised. The justification of foreign aid for a country which boasts a space programme and is the world’s most prolific arms importer is increasingly challenged.
Investment decisions empowered by a strong economy have failed to target some of the key characteristics of poverty in India – the exclusion of the rural economy in general and the poorest States in particular.
The India Chronic Poverty Report observes that “about 65% of the poor in India live in eight (out of twenty-eight) States: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.” These poorest States also have to contend with the largest and fastest growing populations.
Strong macro-economic growth has nevertheless enabled the government to introduce and expand safety net schemes for the poorest families. The 2011 budget claims that as much as 36.4% of national expenditure is earmarked for “social spending”.
The best known example is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which guarantees 100 days of paid employment to one person from every household to work on public infrastructure projects. Initially confined to selected states, NREGA has been extended throughout rural India, reaching over 34 million households in 2010/11.
These safety net schemes have been notoriously wayward in their targeting and prone to chronic losses through the varied standards of governance within individual States which are responsible for implementation. As a result they have failed to penetrate the underlying causes of poverty in India.
The contours of inequality that define the Hindu caste system have survived generations of measures aimed at their elimination. And discrimination continues to impede prospects of 85 million tribal adivasis living in regions associated with the Naxalite insurgency.
India set to reach UN 2015 Poverty Goal? from AP
Poverty Line Politics
Definition of the poverty line in India is political dynamite because it determines the government’s expenditure on social welfare schemes, most of which are limited to families identified as below the poverty line (BPL).
A long overdue review of the formula was conducted in 2009 by the Tendulkar Committee, a government-appointed body. Until then, inadequate adjustments for inflation over a period of about 30 years had progressively eroded the purchasing value of the national poverty line to an embarrassingly frugal basket of food.
The Tendulkar recommendations claim to adopt the international norm of a poverty threshold which is sufficient to purchase basic food and essential non-food items. There are however arbitrary elements in the Committee’s approach which attract criticism from anti-poverty campaigners.
These critics are concerned that the country’s most critical development indicator is determined by political and economic forces rather than human necessity. Some economists have presented credible arguments to the effect that poverty in India should be regarded as close to 80%.
Nevertheless, the Tendulkar proposals passed a first stage of government approval during 2010 and appear likely to be adopted. An indication of their impact can be judged by applying them to historic data from a 2004/05 survey. This adds 100 million people to the poverty count generated by the old formula.
Food Security
Progress
Politicians may be able to manipulate the definition of poverty but they cannot hide its symptoms. The 2010 Global Hunger Index ranks India at 67 out of 122 developing countries, reporting that “serious hunger” exists in all States.
“India is home to 42 percent of the world’s underweight children,” according to the Index. In 2005, 46% of children in India aged under 3 years were underweight. Any improvement in this indicator since 1990 has been far too slow to suggest that the MDG target of 26.8% by 2015 can be achieved.
The Tendulkar Committee’s definition of the national poverty line makes allowance for individual food consumption of 1776 and 1999 calories per day, in urban and rural environments respectively. These thresholds are low by international standards.
The legacy of the “green revolution” has contributed to falling agricultural productivity. This impressive boost to food security dating from the 1970s and 1980s was achieved through intensive farming methods, necessitating subsidies for fertiliser, water, fuel and electricity.
However, a heavy price has been paid in neglecting ecological sustainability. According to the government’s State of Environment Report 2009, about 15% of agricultural land has been degraded through excessive application of subsidised chemicals. Many groundwater aquifers have been depleted to critical levels. The consequence is that the amount of daily food grain available per capita is lower than in the 1950s.
Furthermore, the richer farmers have proved more adept at exploiting subsidies, to the detriment of almost 100 million households whose farms cover less than two hectares. The majority of these smallholdings are rain-fed, vulnerable to the droughts and flooding associated with the vagaries of a monsoon climate.
This uneasy state of food security in India will be further stressed by a structural pincer movement over coming decades. The demands for alternative use of farmland from an industrialising economy will conflict with the human needs of a population projected to rise from 1.2 billion to 1.7 billion by 2050.
Seemingly oblivious to the squeeze on land, the government announced at the end of 2009 a target to resource 20% of India’s fuel consumption with biofuels by 2017.
Inefficiencies in the Government of India’s food storage infrastructure impede the distribution of food to the poor, provoking protests, from Al Jazeera English
Solutions
Food security policy in India has for many years favoured extensive government intervention. Farmers are assisted by input subsidies and, if necessary, their harvests will be purchased at guaranteed minimum support prices.
A safety net for the poor is provided by the long established Public Distribution System (PDS). This offers BPL families the opportunity to purchase heavily discounted food and cooking essentials through a vast network of 489,000 “fair price shops”.
The persistence of hunger in India has finally persuaded the government that this strategy has failed. Corruption and fraud has ravaged the PDS to the extent that 70% of its resources may be misdirected. The government’s food storage facilities have proved woefully inadequate.
A new National Food Security bill currently under consideration would introduce radical reform. Recognising the right to food under international law, the bill would bypass the PDS structure by issuing credits for staple wheat and rice direct to eligible families. A new system of Universal Identification smart cards would fulfil the role of cash at the fair price shops.
There is much debate as to whether the new right to food should be universal rather than limited to BPL families. This would overcome the inherent unfairness between those families who are just above of the poverty line and those just below.
With food, fuel and fertiliser subsidies already absorbing 12.5% of the national budget, it is no surprise that government finance departments are more cautious. There is also uncertainty whether the government could acquire sufficient food, despite the prospect of good harvests. These concerns have together delayed publication of the Food Security bill.
The agriculture sector was favoured in the 2008 budget which introduced a loan waiver scheme writing off debts totalling $14 billion for tens of millions of farmers. This was a response to the mounting tragedy of over 200,000 suicides since 1997, most of them believed to be related to crippling debts for farm inputs.
Community and civil society organisations are piloting schemes for more sustainable and nutritious farming practices. For example, Greenpeace is campaigning for a switch of subsidies from fertiliser to low input methods.
Micro-irrigation sprinkler technologies are attracting widespread interest as the alternative to wasteful flooding methods. Farmers are encouraged to plant indigenous crops such as millet which are more nutritious than rice and consume far less water.
At the opposite extreme, resort to genetically-modified food crops appears unlikely as farmers are generally opposed. In a landmark decision in early 2010, the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, rejected proposals to develop Bt Brinjal, a modified aubergine.
Although the government expresses confidence in the vision of national food sufficiency, the reality is betrayed by its passive stance on controversial foreign land acquisition by Indian commercial interests. Purchases of agricultural land in Africa alone are believed to total over $2 billion.
Professor John Dreze discusses the proposed Food Security Bill in an NDTV interview
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
The 2010 Maplecroft Climate Change Vulnerability Index ranks India as the world’s most vulnerable country apart from Bangladesh. With climatic zones ranging from the Himalayas to the humid sub-tropics of South India, with 5,700km of mainland coastline and 400 million people living in conditions of extreme poverty, India is fully exposed to the hazards of global warming.
The Indian government commissioned a major study into the effects of climate change by its own scientists. The Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA) published its report towards the end of 2010. Focusing on impacts predicted as early as the 2030s, the results make disturbing reading for government planners.
Average temperature across the country is predicted to rise by at least 1.7°C from a 1970s baseline. India’s most respected plant scientist, Professor M.S.Swaminathan, estimates that each one degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces the wheat growing season by a week.
The volume of rainfall is predicted to increase, but with greater variability and risk of flooding or drought. This is the prospect of greatest concern to small farmers.
Sea level has been rising at 1.33mm per annum, a rate likely to increase and exceed predictions of UN scientists. Studies suggest that a one metre rise in sea level would displace over 7 million people, threaten freshwater supplies and the concentration of industry and infrastructure. Three of the world’s major cities – Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai – must contemplate this risk.
The World Bank says that 500 million people live in States prone to devastating cyclones which are predicted to reduce in frequency but increase in intensity.
Much attention focuses on the observed retreat of Himalayan glaciers, the source region for India’s three major rivers. The INCCA report anticipates an increase in water run-off in the Himalayan region of 5%-20%. Beyond the 2030s, the 500 million people living in the catchments of the Ganges and Indus rivers may experience diminishing water availability in summer.
Adaptation
As the world's 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India has to juggle the imperative demand for economic development with pressures for greater efficiency in the use of energy.
This dilemma is reflected in the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) published in 2008. Of the eight “national missions” tasked with the response to climate change, only those concerned with water, agriculture and the Himalayan ecosystem are specifically focused on adaptation.
The NAPCC recognises that climate adaptation is served by accelerating conventional human development as well as targeted measures. Indeed its claims that the government is already spending over 2.5% of GDP on climate change adaptation may simply reflect the relabeling of existing rural development programmes.
For example, support for small farmers in soil and groundwater conservation, inspired by concerns for poverty reduction and food security, simply acquire greater urgency in the context of climate change. The same is true of the search for seed varieties resistant to drought, flooding and salinity.
Although coastal vulnerability is not addressed within the NAPCC missions, the World Bank is supporting an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project which will assist Indian States in building capacity for adaptation to rising sea levels - for example, through mangrove plantation and regeneration of coral reefs.
Disaster Risk Management
The World Bank estimates that annual economic losses arising from natural disasters already amount to 2% of India’s GDP. Climate change will progressively accentuate almost all of the disaster risks involved.
The government approved its National Policy on Disaster Management in 2009, backed by supporting institutions and funds. This policy marked a shift from recovery management to anticipation and reduction of disaster risks.
However, disaster risk does not feature prominently in the NAPCC and greater integration of India’s institutional response to climate change and disasters may be appropriate.
The World Bank is offering support for the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Program which aims to improve the resilience of coastal communities to the threat of extreme storms and tidal surge. This will include the construction of shelters and installation of early warning systems, similar to those pioneered in Bangladesh.
To assess sea level risks more thoroughly, the government has commissioned a digital aerial mapping project covering a 7 km belt around the entire coastline. The objective is to identify hazards by reference to topographical contours.
Rural Electricity Access
Latest estimates suggest that over 400 million people in rural India have no access to electricity. These families largely resort to kerosene for lighting and wood for cooking, fuels which are expensive, damaging to health and a cause of deforestation.
The drive towards rural electrification rests with the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, a plan of lofty ideals, 90% funded by central government. It absorbs all previous initiatives in a goal to achieve universal electrification by 2012, including free connections for BPL households.
The programme’s launch in 2005 quantified the task as connecting 78 million households in 125,000 villages. Government progress reports suggest that the programme is about one third of the way to completion.
There are 10,000 remote villages that lie beyond the reach of the Rajiv Gandhi plan. These should benefit from India’s solar mission, currently the most advanced of the eight programmes of the NAPCC. Armed with an initial budget allocation of $900 million, the mission plans a mix of major solar plants and micro-installations of household lighting systems.
Environmental groups support such moves towards decentralised renewables. There is also considerable interest in finding business models to merge such solutions for remote villages with the Rajiv Gandhi plan - which has created grids rather more effectively than the supply of power itself.
It is possible that the proceeds of a new coal tax, introduced in 2010, may be allocated to the transition towards renewable energy sources for rural areas. Large power projects, especially hydro, have a poor reputation for human and environmental impact in India and experience increasingly hostile public protest.
Potential of solar lanterns in India, from Ashden Awards
Progress
In official statements the Indian government expresses confidence in achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the rate of poverty by 2015. The figures are less persuasive. The rate has fallen only to 32.0% from the 1993 baseline of 45.3%.
|
| Woman carrying water, Rajasthan © CARE India |
Home to about one third of the world’s extreme poverty, India's image as a tiger economy is compromised. The justification of foreign aid for a country which boasts a space programme and is the world’s most prolific arms importer is increasingly challenged.
Investment decisions empowered by a strong economy have failed to target some of the key characteristics of poverty in India – the exclusion of the rural economy in general and the poorest States in particular.
The India Chronic Poverty Report observes that “about 65% of the poor in India live in eight (out of twenty-eight) States: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.” These poorest States also have to contend with the largest and fastest growing populations.
Strong macro-economic growth has nevertheless enabled the government to introduce and expand safety net schemes for the poorest families. The 2011 budget claims that as much as 36.4% of national expenditure is earmarked for “social spending”.
The best known example is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which guarantees 100 days of paid employment to one person from every household to work on public infrastructure projects. Initially confined to selected states, NREGA has been extended throughout rural India, reaching over 34 million households in 2010/11.
These safety net schemes have been notoriously wayward in their targeting and prone to chronic losses through the varied standards of governance within individual States which are responsible for implementation. As a result they have failed to penetrate the underlying causes of poverty in India.
The contours of inequality that define the Hindu caste system have survived generations of measures aimed at their elimination. And discrimination continues to impede prospects of 85 million tribal adivasis living in regions associated with the Naxalite insurgency.
India set to reach UN 2015 Poverty Goal? from AP
Poverty Line Politics
Definition of the poverty line in India is political dynamite because it determines the government’s expenditure on social welfare schemes, most of which are limited to families identified as below the poverty line (BPL).
|
| Garbage piled high in Indian municipal dumps © Centre for Science and Environment |
The Tendulkar recommendations claim to adopt the international norm of a poverty threshold which is sufficient to purchase basic food and essential non-food items. There are however arbitrary elements in the Committee’s approach which attract criticism from anti-poverty campaigners.
These critics are concerned that the country’s most critical development indicator is determined by political and economic forces rather than human necessity. Some economists have presented credible arguments to the effect that poverty in India should be regarded as close to 80%.
Nevertheless, the Tendulkar proposals passed a first stage of government approval during 2010 and appear likely to be adopted. An indication of their impact can be judged by applying them to historic data from a 2004/05 survey. This adds 100 million people to the poverty count generated by the old formula.
Food Security
Progress
Politicians may be able to manipulate the definition of poverty but they cannot hide its symptoms. The 2010 Global Hunger Index ranks India at 67 out of 122 developing countries, reporting that “serious hunger” exists in all States.
“India is home to 42 percent of the world’s underweight children,” according to the Index. In 2005, 46% of children in India aged under 3 years were underweight. Any improvement in this indicator since 1990 has been far too slow to suggest that the MDG target of 26.8% by 2015 can be achieved.
The Tendulkar Committee’s definition of the national poverty line makes allowance for individual food consumption of 1776 and 1999 calories per day, in urban and rural environments respectively. These thresholds are low by international standards.
|
| Pesticide spraying, India. © Centre for Science and Environment |
However, a heavy price has been paid in neglecting ecological sustainability. According to the government’s State of Environment Report 2009, about 15% of agricultural land has been degraded through excessive application of subsidised chemicals. Many groundwater aquifers have been depleted to critical levels. The consequence is that the amount of daily food grain available per capita is lower than in the 1950s.
Furthermore, the richer farmers have proved more adept at exploiting subsidies, to the detriment of almost 100 million households whose farms cover less than two hectares. The majority of these smallholdings are rain-fed, vulnerable to the droughts and flooding associated with the vagaries of a monsoon climate.
This uneasy state of food security in India will be further stressed by a structural pincer movement over coming decades. The demands for alternative use of farmland from an industrialising economy will conflict with the human needs of a population projected to rise from 1.2 billion to 1.7 billion by 2050.
Seemingly oblivious to the squeeze on land, the government announced at the end of 2009 a target to resource 20% of India’s fuel consumption with biofuels by 2017.
Inefficiencies in the Government of India’s food storage infrastructure impede the distribution of food to the poor, provoking protests, from Al Jazeera English
Solutions
Food security policy in India has for many years favoured extensive government intervention. Farmers are assisted by input subsidies and, if necessary, their harvests will be purchased at guaranteed minimum support prices.
A safety net for the poor is provided by the long established Public Distribution System (PDS). This offers BPL families the opportunity to purchase heavily discounted food and cooking essentials through a vast network of 489,000 “fair price shops”.
The persistence of hunger in India has finally persuaded the government that this strategy has failed. Corruption and fraud has ravaged the PDS to the extent that 70% of its resources may be misdirected. The government’s food storage facilities have proved woefully inadequate.
|
| Dairy co-operative in Pondicherry © Peter Armstrong |
There is much debate as to whether the new right to food should be universal rather than limited to BPL families. This would overcome the inherent unfairness between those families who are just above of the poverty line and those just below.
With food, fuel and fertiliser subsidies already absorbing 12.5% of the national budget, it is no surprise that government finance departments are more cautious. There is also uncertainty whether the government could acquire sufficient food, despite the prospect of good harvests. These concerns have together delayed publication of the Food Security bill.
The agriculture sector was favoured in the 2008 budget which introduced a loan waiver scheme writing off debts totalling $14 billion for tens of millions of farmers. This was a response to the mounting tragedy of over 200,000 suicides since 1997, most of them believed to be related to crippling debts for farm inputs.
Community and civil society organisations are piloting schemes for more sustainable and nutritious farming practices. For example, Greenpeace is campaigning for a switch of subsidies from fertiliser to low input methods.
|
| Indian farmers burn genetically modified crop © Intercontinental Caravan (ICC) |
At the opposite extreme, resort to genetically-modified food crops appears unlikely as farmers are generally opposed. In a landmark decision in early 2010, the Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, rejected proposals to develop Bt Brinjal, a modified aubergine.
Although the government expresses confidence in the vision of national food sufficiency, the reality is betrayed by its passive stance on controversial foreign land acquisition by Indian commercial interests. Purchases of agricultural land in Africa alone are believed to total over $2 billion.
Professor John Dreze discusses the proposed Food Security Bill in an NDTV interview
Climate Change
Effects of Climate Change
The 2010 Maplecroft Climate Change Vulnerability Index ranks India as the world’s most vulnerable country apart from Bangladesh. With climatic zones ranging from the Himalayas to the humid sub-tropics of South India, with 5,700km of mainland coastline and 400 million people living in conditions of extreme poverty, India is fully exposed to the hazards of global warming.
|
| Wading through Orissa floodwaters © Christian Aid |
Average temperature across the country is predicted to rise by at least 1.7°C from a 1970s baseline. India’s most respected plant scientist, Professor M.S.Swaminathan, estimates that each one degree Celsius rise in temperature reduces the wheat growing season by a week.
The volume of rainfall is predicted to increase, but with greater variability and risk of flooding or drought. This is the prospect of greatest concern to small farmers.
Sea level has been rising at 1.33mm per annum, a rate likely to increase and exceed predictions of UN scientists. Studies suggest that a one metre rise in sea level would displace over 7 million people, threaten freshwater supplies and the concentration of industry and infrastructure. Three of the world’s major cities – Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai – must contemplate this risk.
The World Bank says that 500 million people live in States prone to devastating cyclones which are predicted to reduce in frequency but increase in intensity.
Much attention focuses on the observed retreat of Himalayan glaciers, the source region for India’s three major rivers. The INCCA report anticipates an increase in water run-off in the Himalayan region of 5%-20%. Beyond the 2030s, the 500 million people living in the catchments of the Ganges and Indus rivers may experience diminishing water availability in summer.
Adaptation
As the world's 4th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India has to juggle the imperative demand for economic development with pressures for greater efficiency in the use of energy.
This dilemma is reflected in the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) published in 2008. Of the eight “national missions” tasked with the response to climate change, only those concerned with water, agriculture and the Himalayan ecosystem are specifically focused on adaptation.
The NAPCC recognises that climate adaptation is served by accelerating conventional human development as well as targeted measures. Indeed its claims that the government is already spending over 2.5% of GDP on climate change adaptation may simply reflect the relabeling of existing rural development programmes.
For example, support for small farmers in soil and groundwater conservation, inspired by concerns for poverty reduction and food security, simply acquire greater urgency in the context of climate change. The same is true of the search for seed varieties resistant to drought, flooding and salinity.
Although coastal vulnerability is not addressed within the NAPCC missions, the World Bank is supporting an Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project which will assist Indian States in building capacity for adaptation to rising sea levels - for example, through mangrove plantation and regeneration of coral reefs.
Disaster Risk Management
The World Bank estimates that annual economic losses arising from natural disasters already amount to 2% of India’s GDP. Climate change will progressively accentuate almost all of the disaster risks involved.
|
| Damage in Ersama town after the cyclone © Centre for Science and Environment |
However, disaster risk does not feature prominently in the NAPCC and greater integration of India’s institutional response to climate change and disasters may be appropriate.
The World Bank is offering support for the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Program which aims to improve the resilience of coastal communities to the threat of extreme storms and tidal surge. This will include the construction of shelters and installation of early warning systems, similar to those pioneered in Bangladesh.
To assess sea level risks more thoroughly, the government has commissioned a digital aerial mapping project covering a 7 km belt around the entire coastline. The objective is to identify hazards by reference to topographical contours.
Rural Electricity Access
Latest estimates suggest that over 400 million people in rural India have no access to electricity. These families largely resort to kerosene for lighting and wood for cooking, fuels which are expensive, damaging to health and a cause of deforestation.
|
| Photo-voltaic panels in India © Peter Armstrong |
The programme’s launch in 2005 quantified the task as connecting 78 million households in 125,000 villages. Government progress reports suggest that the programme is about one third of the way to completion.
There are 10,000 remote villages that lie beyond the reach of the Rajiv Gandhi plan. These should benefit from India’s solar mission, currently the most advanced of the eight programmes of the NAPCC. Armed with an initial budget allocation of $900 million, the mission plans a mix of major solar plants and micro-installations of household lighting systems.
Environmental groups support such moves towards decentralised renewables. There is also considerable interest in finding business models to merge such solutions for remote villages with the Rajiv Gandhi plan - which has created grids rather more effectively than the supply of power itself.
It is possible that the proceeds of a new coal tax, introduced in 2010, may be allocated to the transition towards renewable energy sources for rural areas. Large power projects, especially hydro, have a poor reputation for human and environmental impact in India and experience increasingly hostile public protest.
Potential of solar lanterns in India, from Ashden Awards
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