CB Bureau‘You cannot have two Indias. What is this stark contradiction in our
whole approach in eradication of malnutrition? You say you are a powerful
country but at the same time, starvation deaths are taking place in various
parts of the country.’
That was a rejoinder from the Supreme Court on the matter of
increasing number of deaths due to starvation. The court has warned the
government against dividing India into two sections – one for the elite and the
other for the impoverished.
A bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma asked the
government why additional subsidized food grains cannot be released to 150 poor
districts ahead of the summer months when starvation and malnutrition reach a
peak rate. The bench said, ‘The government has to do something. We have our
food granaries full and in many places overflowing. And prediction is for a
bumper crop this year. If that is so, why not allocate substantial food grains
to take care of hunger and malnutrition?’
The observation was made during a hearing for a PIL filed by
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), a rights body with which Dr Binayak
Sen is also associated. PUCL suggested release of 10 million tonnes of grains
to 150 ‘most poor’ districts as malnutrition was caused in summer mainly
because of non-availability of adequate food.
Additional solicitor general Mohan Parasaran, who appeared for the
centre, undertook to file a comprehensive affidavit by May 10 about the
government’s proposed steps to tackle hunger and starvation deaths in pockets
of Maharashtra, Orissa and Bihar. Rejecting the argument of the centre’s law
officer that the malnutrition number has come down, the SC bench said, ‘Coming
down is of no consequence, it must be eliminated.’
The Supreme Court also asked the planning
commission to explain why the criterion to determine the number of people under
below poverty line (BPL) category was 36 per cent of the population. Several
states have disputed the figure, arguing that there were many more people
living below the poverty line.
‘We have affidavits of all the states which have said that BPL
figures were much larger than 36 per cent even on the basis of parameters set
by the planning commission,’ the court said.
The top court asked Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the
planning commission, to file an affidavit explaining the per-capita daily
income for the BPL category. The commission had calculated BPL population by
employing the expenditure criterion – a person is poor if he spends less than
Rs 17 per day in urban areas and Rs 12 per day in rural areas.
‘How can you
justify this meagre amount when even in the rural areas the amount is not
enough?’ the bench questioned.
Petitioner’s representative Biraj Patnaik said the figure should be
doubled to get the real picture of spread of poverty in India. The bench said
the fixing of purchasing power by the commission appeared arbitrary.
Planning commission
flaunts the success of inclusive policy
The latest analysis by the planning commission says that around 382
million Indians were below poverty line in 2009-10, a decline of 27 million
since 2004-05. Asserting that the government’s policy for inclusive growth is
paying off, Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia emphasised that actual
reduction in poverty levels may be higher as the sample on which this poverty
level was based was taken in 2009 – the period when the economy was under
tremendous pressure due to global slowdown and drought in many parts of the
country.
‘These are preliminary data. Abhijit Sen has worked on them. He has
reported that the 2009-10 data show a decline in poverty from 37 per cent in
2004 to 32 37 per cent in 2009. I agree with him,’ Ahluwalia said.
The initial findings suggest that absolute poverty in the country
may have come down by five percentage points during the 11th Five-Year Plan
period (2007-12). Ahluwalia admitted that the exact impact of the 11th Plan on
poverty reduction will be known only when results of the second sample survey
of 2011-12 are available in 2013.
‘The results are neither good nor bad,’ said Sen, plan panel member,
who calculated the new poverty figures for India based on preliminary data
provided by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) from its survey for the
year 2009-10. ‘Not good because we may not achieve the 11th Plan target. Not
bad as there was a drought year and global economic recession in between.’