On the country’s 77th Independence Day, from the ramparts of the historic Red Fort in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that in the last five years, from 2015-16 to 2019-21, his government lifted 135 million people out of poverty. This is a commendable achievement based on the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MDPI) prepared by the NITI Aayog. The UNDP had earlier estimated that India lifted 415 million people out of poverty (MDPI) over the period 2005-06 to 2019-21. I think this has been the biggest lift-off so far in independent India’s history.
After political freedom, the first and foremost job of an elected government is to reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition. When India got freedom more than 80 per cent of people were in extreme poverty, which today hovers around 15 per cent as per MDPI and about 11 per cent based on income criterion ($2.15 PPP). This gives us self-confidence and almost all governments of the day have contributed to varying degrees. But the pace of reduction has been much faster since 2005-06 than at any time in the past. A lot depends on the policies adopted by the government of the day.
The year 1991 was a watershed moment in India’s economic history when India started shifting from a state-controlled to a market-oriented economy. It started paying rich dividends after a few years of transitional adjustments. The biggest achievement that I see today is in foreign exchange reserves that hover around $600 billion, up from a meagre $ 1.4 billion in July 1991. This did not figure in the PM’s Independence Day speech, but it is this that has made the Indian economy much more resilient to any external shocks than perhaps any other achievement. In the absence of this, India could have been in a similar crisis as some of our neighbours like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
But let me get back to poverty, hunger and malnutrition. India seems to be on track to almost abolish poverty in the next five to 10 years. On hunger, at least in terms of food availability, India has done well. The Green Revolution turned India from a “ship to mouth” economy to the largest exporter of rice. It has also enabled India to give free rice or wheat (5kg/month/person) to more than 800 million people under the PM Garib Kalyan Yojana, thus improving their economic access to basic staples. India also experienced the White Revolution (milk) and emerged as the largest producer of milk (222 MT), with the US coming at number two with just 102 MT of milk production. The gene revolution in cotton that was triggered by then PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s decision in 2002 to introduce Bt cotton, made India the largest producer of cotton (39 million bales in 2013-14, up from just 13 million bales in 2002-03). Remember what PM Vajpayee often said, “What IT is for India, Bt is for Bharat.
But malnutrition is still on the table, especially amongst children below the age of five. As per NFHS-5 (2019-21), 32 per cent of children were underweight, 35 per cent stunted, and 19 per cent wasted. Although India made reasonably good progress in reducing infant mortality from 57 per 1,000 in 2005-06 to 35 per 1,000 in 2019-21, the progress on other indicators of malnutrition is not very satisfactory. This is a real challenge for the Modi government.
On top of this, climate change and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, from heat waves to flash floods, pose a big challenge not only to India’s food system but also to poverty alleviation – gains could reverse with these shocks.
How can one deal with all these challenges that relate to a large segment of the population at the bottom of the economic pyramid? One simple answer would be to keep focus on accelerating economic growth and making it more inclusive. PM Modi talked about gender-led development in India citing the case of India having more women pilots than any other country. He also talked of giving training to women in 15,000 self-help groups, and these women will fly drones for agriculture use. That’s a unique idea, and if implemented, India could be at the top rank in women-driven drones.
But then if we look at women’s participation rate in our labour force (age group 15-59 years), it is pitiably low at about 30 per cent (2021-22). If we can focus on improving the literacy rate and providing quality education to young women, along with their skill formation, several of India’s problems, especially poverty, hunger and malnutrition can be solved. In our earlier research at ICRIER with Shyma Jose on the unit-level data of NFHS-3 and NFHS-4, we found that women’s education beyond 12th grade is a key determinant of nutrition amongst children, as is access to better sanitation and more nutritious food.
The upshot of all this for policymakers is the following: Incentivise and improve the access and quality of education for women through liberal scholarships, especially after 10th grade to Master’s level. This can give high returns, limiting family size and contributing significantly to the nation’s growth story. Next focus on improving productivity in agriculture while making food more nutritious and the food system more climate resilient. This will require doubling or even tripling R&D expenditures in agriculture to make abundant food available at reasonably competitive prices. Putting export controls and stocking limits to push prices down is no solution. These are defunct policies of the Socialist Raj of the 1960s when India did not have foreign exchange to buy food. The Punjab Agriculture University which played a yeoman’s role in spreading the Green Revolution, and still ranks at the top, can be roped in to usher in a new revolution of sustainable growth and more nutritious food in agriculture.
Gulati is a Distinguished Professor at ICRIER. Views are personal
