28 Rs per day

Our planning commission still doesn’t get it I think. They insist that a citizen in India should join the group of privileged or the rich if they earn 28 Rs per day! Guess the only way to make them see the truth is to force them to show it to the nation. Let our media also have a field day in airing their woes live to the nation while they try subsisting at 28 a day for at least a month.

It was for this same reason that two youngsters, Tushar Vashisht and Mathew Cherian  tried this experiment.

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

Rs100aday is an attempt by two friends to bring to light the issues affecting the common man in India through direct experiences.

This blog has its beginnings in an effort to live on India’s average income - Rs. 100/person/day without rent – to observe and understand the constraints that come with life at a monthly income of 3000.

However, after the Planning Commission came out with the proposed poverty line of Rs. 32/person/day, we decided to spend one week living at that income level in addition to three weeks at Rs. 100/day. Besides coming to the realization that the Rs. 32 figure is nonviable, we also gained some key insights into the lives of the poor

While they were at it:

Hardly a day went by during the past month, in which we didn’t think of food. And no, it wasn’t because we couldn’t get our minds off of planning the first meal we would have at the end of our experiment. Rather, it was because, food was the largest component of our budget at both Rs. 100/day (50%) and Rs. 32/day (68%).

  States like Kerala had a well set up PDS system much earlier than the rest of the country.

It is well known that Kerala had one of the best run and most effective PDS networks in India. Prior to the introduction of targeting, Kerala was the only state in India with near-universal coverage of the PDS.

If these youngsters had a tough time in a state like Kerala, it would be even tougher in other states. Since APL (Above poverty line) and BPL(Below poverty line) is fixed as per the planning commission’s figure of poverty line, the poor of India is yet again squeezed.

Planning Commission on Monday further reduced poverty line to Rs.28.65 per capita daily consumption in cities and Rs.22.42 in rural areas, scaling down India's poverty ratio to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10, the estimates which are likely to raise the hackles of civil society.

It is not as though India does not have enough to distribute through it’s PDS scheme but this very important “Poverty Line” determines who shall get it, even when half of it rots away.

According to information revealed from a RTI petition filed in Delhi, the FCI has spent crores of rupees over the past decade in just disposing off the rotten foods lying in the go-downs.

Will those at the Planning Commission, specially Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia dare to take up this experiment?


Source:http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-poverty-line-now-lowered-to-rs-28-per-day/1/178483.html

http://rs100aday.com/about/
http://planningcommission.nic.in/news/index.php?news=prbody.htm
http://ccs.in/ccsindia/downloads/intern-papers-08/PDS-in-Kerala-204.pdf
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/article2882340.ece

The state that spends the most...

A glance at the NSS consumer expenditure survey made me copy down a few points more as reference since one fails to reach a conclusion when it comes to Kerala.

The NSS consumer expenditure survey aims at generating estimates of average household monthly per capita consumer expenditure (MPCE), its distribution over households and persons, and its break-up by commodity group, separately for the rural and urban sectors of the country, for States and Union Territories, and for different socioeconomic groups. These indicators are amongst the most important measures of the level of living of the respective domains of the population. The distribution of MPCE highlights the differences in level of living of the different segments of the population and is an effective tool to study the prevalence of poverty and inequality. These numbers enable the apex planning and decision-making process to allocate the nation’s resources among sectors, regions, and socio-economic groups, and assess the “inclusiveness” of economic growth.

Among the major States, Kerala (Rs.1835) had the highest rural MPCE. It was followed by Punjab (Rs.1649) and Haryana (Rs.1510). In all other major States, average rural MPCE was between Rs.750 and Rs.1250.



Average rural MPCE year 2009-2010

 Maharashtra (Rs.2437) and Kerala (Rs.2413) were the two major States with the highest MPCE in the urban sector, followed by Haryana (Rs.2321). Urban MPCE was lowest in Bihar (Rs.1238).

In the major States, the share of food in rural MPCE varied from 46% for Kerala and 48% for Punjab to 64% in Assam and 65% in Bihar. In the urban sector it varied from 40- 41% in Kerala and Maharashtra to 52% in Jharkhand and 53% in Bihar and Assam.

The share of cereals in total expenditure in rural India varied across the major States from 7% in Punjab and Haryana to 21% in Assam and Bihar. In urban India, the share varied from 6% for Haryana, Punjab and Kerala to 13% in Assam and 15% in Bihar.

How is Kerala spending?

Kerala spends equally on cereals and intoxicants! :)

The percentage of rural population with MPCE above Rs.1000 exceeded 70% in Haryana and Punjab, while in Kerala 80% of the rural population had MPCE exceeding Rs.977

 At the all-India level only about 0.4 percent of rural households had access to internet at home compared to about 6 percent of urban households. Among the larger States, Kerala had by far the highest proportion of households with internet access in the rural sector (about 3 percent), followed by Himachal Pradesh (about 2 percent). In the urban sector Maharashtra (about 10 percent) reported the highest percentage among the larger States, followed closely by Kerala and Himachal Pradesh, and Haryana. While States like Goa and Arunachal Pradesh (rural) and Chandigarh (urban) clearly had greater internet access compared to most major States, larger sample sizes would be necessary in order to estimate the percentages of households with internet access in these small states and UTs with reasonable accuracy.

Why is Kerala showing these figures?

NRI remittance?

Migration?

Keralites migrated to different places including states in India much earlier. This meant that at least one member (more in some places) in every family was not depending on the state for his sustenance, instead in most cases he became a major or a minor contributor.

According to the latest studies done by the Centre for Development Studies, the diaspora's remittances account for 31.23 percent of Kerala's net state domestic product.

The link between migration and poverty is complex and dependent on the specific circumstances in which migration takes place. Migration can both cause and be caused by poverty. Poverty can be alleviated as well as exacerbated by migration. In Kerala, India, for example, migration to the Gulf States has caused wages to rise, reduced unemployment, and improved the economic situation of those left behind.19 In
other situations, migration does not lead to economic or social improvement. Research on the impact of labour migration in tribal Western India found that for poorer migrants ‘many years of migration have not led to any long-term increase in assets or any reduction in poverty’. However the study also noted that migration offered poor migrants ‘a short-term means to service debt and avoid the more extreme forms of dependency and bondage’.

http://www.migrationdrc.org/publications/other_publications/Moving_Out_of_Poverty.pdf

100% literacy

For the Keralites, 100% literacy also meant that they were better equipped to benefit from migration. Migration itself could be an off shoot of education. If the state could absorb only a part of the educated ones, the rest had to find a way out.

Guess, at the end of the day it is EDUCATION which plays a major role.

But if migration had not happened, would Kerala be in the present state? I doubt since the state has not much to boast in terms of job creation in the state itself.

The current government barely exists but Kerala has been lucky to have two parties governing one after the other. A strong opposition party always existed.

Kerala shall remain as a consumer state and hence the sector which can be improved is the tertiary sector. Since Kerala has already found a place in the tourist map, it needs to urgently improve the roads and other infrastructure. Higher education is another area where it can do much. It also needs to do much more in conserving water by encouraging rain water harvesting and it’s likes. It also needs to clean up its water sources.

The recent budget proclamation made some of us want to rush back to Kerala :) but since Keralites are the worst cynics, we know that these shall remain in paper only. God’s own country needs only a little push from the government be it the center or the state to live up to it’s name but will that ever happen?



Source:
http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Level%20and%20Pattern%20of%20Consumer%20Expenditure.pdf

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8546952.stm

http://www.mathrubhumi.com/english/story.php?id=121592