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170m Indians living

in abject poverty

ISLAMABAD: Some 50 years after independence, at least 170 million Indians are mired in lives of abject poverty and experts warn that the number is rising despite India's official claims to the contrary.

According to India's Federal Planning Commission, the number of people living below the poverty line decreased from 25.2 percent of the population in fiscal 1987-88 to 19 percent, in fiscal year 1993-94, but a large number of economists say the calculations are faulty and fabricated.

Media reports of starvation deaths and of people selling children for paltry sums are not uncommon in India, where the poverty line is drawn at a level far beneath the UN stipulation of a dollar (Rs 35) a day. The poverty yardstick - fixed at Rs 264 a month in urban areas and Rs 229 a month in villages - overlooks other basic indicators of poverty such as access to housing, health and education.

Abhijit Sen, an economist, said that the Indian government was manipulating the numbers and was playing with figures to project a drop in poverty rates which actually increased from 34 percent in 1991-92 to 42 percent in 1993-94. A number of experts endorse that the poverty levels have risen since fiscal 1991-92 - the year when India launched its much trumpeted sweeping economic reforms.

The devaluation of the rupee, the rise in prices of food stuffs and abysmal poverty relief measures have led to a higher poverty rate which has been suppressed, Sen said.

He and others argue that the government uses an all-India consumption index which bypasses regional and sectoral variations and then adds the consumption of the well-healed in the country to calculate a misleading poverty level.

Even a UN human development index based on life expectancy, educational attainment and real gross domestic product ranks India 143rd among 174 countries. Kamal Narayan Kabra, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Public Administration, says that about 40 percent of total public expenditure has bypassed the poor. The corporate sector and other sections of the organised sector, the well-to-do and urban people corner 65 percent of social sector public expenditure, he said.

Jay Dubashi, an economist and an ideologue of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, said that the number of poor in India now totalled about 350 million. There has been a 10 to 12 percent growth in annual inflation since the reforms started, Dubashi said. The poor have gone poorer and their numbers are increasing and factually the Indian government has forgotten about social welfare completely and gradually the common Indian is being deprived of even the basic amenities of life, he added.-APP