Political Diary

New Delhi, 24 September 2011

Pantomime Of Poverty

BIG JOKE ON THE POOR

By Poonam I Kaushish

Q) How much does it cost a poor man to keep body and soul together per day?

A) Rs 32 in urban and Rs 26 in rural areas. Namely, Rs 5 for 136gm rice and 166gm wheat, Rs 1.8 for 180gm potato, 90 gm each of tomato-onion, 20gm dal for Rs 1.85ml milk for Rs 2.3, fruit for 44 paisa, 70 paisa on sugar, 78 paisa on salt and spices and another Rs 1.51 on other foods per day, Rs 1.55 on edible oil and Rs 3.75 on fuel per day is good enough to provide adequate nutrition and keep a person healthy.  

This is not all. All one needs to stay healthy is Rs 39.70 per month, no matter that this is barely enough to buy an aspirin. Another, Rs 61.30 and Rs 9.6 for clothes and footwear, Rs 28.80 on personal items, Rs 29.60 on education and Rs 49.10 on rent and transport per month. Succinctly, Rs 965 per month in urban and Rs 781 in rural India is adequate. Thus a family of four needs only Rs 4,284 per month and Rs 3,860 per month in a city and village respectively.

Are you joking? Laugh all you want. But dear readers, this is Government-speak. The conclusion of the wise (sic) men who adorn the high portals of the Planning Commission. Adding salt to wounds, they grandiosely told the Supreme Court that this sum would also keep people above the poverty line without the need of subsidized rations from the Government.

Clearly, underscoring that what ails India and its burgeoning poor is not poverty, which can be corrected, but the ruthless heartlessness of our netagan who not only lack humility but also empathy for the garib. Worse, it exposes their sheer ennui and paucity of ideas along-with accentuating their moral bankruptcy. What to speak of a perspective completely divorced from reality.

Sadly, the Commission has ignored its own standards set decades back. Which stated that if one consumed less than 2200 calories in rural or 1800 calories in urban areas he would be considered to be below the poverty line (BPL). Obviously, this extremely low expenditure is aimed only at artificially reducing the number of BPL persons to reduce Government expenditure on them.

Why blame them? They don’t know what poverty is. They haven’t suffered hunger pangs? Why should they? Think. They are more equal than us, the carpet-baggers who thrive on un-ending free lunches all at the aam aadmi’s hard-earned taxes. Chicken biryani for Rs 30, two idlis for Rs 1, dosa Rs 2.4, vegetarian thali (dal, 2 sabzis, raita, rice and 4 roti) for a princely Rs 10 against Rs 45 from a footpath vendor for the same.   

Undoubtedly, VIP is the three grimy letters that underline what is wrong with our powers-that-be. In a milieu flooded with loutish and loathsome VIP culture where our netagan refuse to conform to rules preferring instead to rule by law. Enjoying varying degrees of Z+ category status that entails gun-toting security-men in a retinue of 10 cars with red beacons breaking all traffic rules, no IDs’, no frisking and long queues etc. God forbid, if anyone questions their misdemeanor be prepared for open fury.

Shockingly, we pay them for this boorishness. Our MPs cost the tax payer Rs.1.30 lakhs per month. He gets 34 air journeys during a year and innumerable first class train travel both with companion. Topping this, is rent-free accommodation in five acre Lutyens Delhi bungalows, costing the aam aadmi Rs 60 crore annually. Scandalously, on those who can afford the most luxurious of homes or hotels, given that 315 of the 543 lawmakers in the Lok Sabha are crorepatis!

More. If one goes by the per capita equation, our MPs cost to the nation is 100 times what an aam aadmi makes. Thus, obfuscating the harsh reality whether it behoves a poor country to pay such high dividends to its undeserving Right Honourables. Also, when funding for essential projects is becoming scarce, this hike is an unjustifiable extravagance at the expense of the taxpayer.'

Undeniably, our rulers are playing a game of see-saw with the number of the country’s poor to unrealistically harp on Brand India instead of Asli Bharat. Bluntly, the deprived with famished bellies and tattered clothes aam aadmi who wait for hours on end for their mai-baaps translate into just sterile statistics to keep the vote-bank tillers ringing.  

Arguably, the expanding poverty seems to raise more questions than answers. According to a new Oxford University study, 75.6 percent of India’s population of 1.2 billion population or 828 million people live below the poverty line. The United Nations World Food Program reports that nearly 350 million people — roughly 35 per cent of our population is food insecure and consumed less than 80 percent of their total energy requirements.

Inexcusably, India has not only a third of the global poor but also there are more hungry people than any other country, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. Worse, hunger stalks every State and the condition of its mal-nourished, over 50 per cent, is worse than some sub-Saharan countries. With food prices continuing to rise, naturally more would be pushed to poverty.

More. Over 230 million of the rural poor are mal-nourished which accounts for nearly 50% of child deaths in India and 43 per cent of children under-five years of age are underweight. Over 61 million children are stunted, the largest for any country, according to a UNICEF report. It also stated that the health of children suffers not just due to poor hygienic conditions and lack of nutritional food but also because mothers often suffer from anaemia and malnutrition. Worse, 80% of rural households don’t have toilets.

Thus, as India spends crores of rupees on new Nehru-Gandhi dynastic Garibi Hatao schemes to fight poverty, it would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying the impoverished, what they are eating and whether or not they are receiving State help.

Our netagan also need to concentrate on the big picture. Wherein, their energies are channelized to address poverty through faster, broad-based growth, supported by well-functioning delivery mechanisms. The effort must be to reduce the number of people in need of handouts. Between giving a man a fish a day and teaching him to fish, there is no disputing which makes more sense --- and is more sustainable long-term. Teach him.

The writing is on the wall. In the ultimate, if India cannot provide the aam aadmi with adequate resources to meet his basic needs, it will cripple his full participation in the country’s progress. Our leaders must grasp that the Planning Commission’s ‘poor’ joke is no substitute for poverty alleviation. Else India will continue it pantomime of poverty! ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)