| Poverty
Poverty means deprivation.
Poverty means inability of a person or society to achieve minimum
level of welfare.
How does one measure poverty or welfare. One way is to measure
income. One way is to measure food consumption. Another way is to
measure health outcomes, education etc.
However in a poor society like India, the calorie norm was applied
and 2400 calorie was applied. In 1938, when Nehru and other national
leaders discussed poverty, they included shelter, food, education,
health and clothing and thus were multidimensional view of poverty.
However after independence the focus on poverty was limited to food
calorie consumption. The food consumption was 2400 calorie in rural
area and 2100 calorie in urban area. However this calorie based
approach was abandoned by Tendulkar Committee recently.
However measuring poverty only by calorie consumption has its flaws,
since it does not take into account consumer preferences, prices
of other items and other issues. Further there is a debate on the
calorie requirement. Indeed with improvement in health services
calorie requirement has declined.
Indeed data show that calorie consumption of higher incomes has
declined even as calorie consumption of lower incomes has increased,
but not to extent required. Hence undernourishment has increased
from 60% to 90%, between 1972 to 2004, if one takes 2400 calories
as minimum required norm.
Perhaps the calorie requirement of 2400 calories is an outdated
premise. Indeed even washing hand before taking food reduces calorie
requirement by as much as 25%. If one takes NSS data, 1982 92 percent
said that they get 2 square meals a day, but now in 2004, NSS data
says that more than 99 percent get 2 square meals a day. So according
to self perception poverty has declined.
For instance FAO has been reducing calorie norms to 1800 calories
taking into account improvement in other living standards. Hence
the 2400 calorie norm is wrong and outdated.
However some Indian economists estimate that calorie requirement
as a little above of 2000 calories instead of earlier of 2400 calories
and by that token level of undernourishment is lesser.
One cannot continue with the old calorie norm of 2400 calories.
There is need to downward revision of calorie requirement by 300
calories.
But the fact that there is undernourishment despite downward revision
of calorie requirement, points to policy inadequacy.
Furthermore one needs to question the comparability of NSS data
across different years. Earlier in 1970s substantial amount of payment
was in kind, whereas, now substantial amount of payment is in cash.
Hence, a comparison of poverty through NSS data between different
times is flawed.
Challenges
1. Consumer Education is a challenge on how to achieve food security
with limited budget.
2. Consumer expenditure on non food items has been increasing.
3. Availability of food is also is challenge.
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