It should be noted that the Modi government has just stopped providing the latest data on hunger and poverty since 2019, that too is an estimated one. NSSO data is available for 2011-12, and no such data is available thereafter. The reason was probably worsening of the situation since unemployment rate at 6.1 per cent was record 45 years high in 2017-18 even according to NSSO data. COVID-19 pandemic had further exacerbated the condition, and India needed to supply free foodgrains to 800 million people just to survive. Price rise and inflation pushed majority of the population into cost-of-living crisis, and the unemployment rate was all time high at 8.4 per cent in the beginning of July 2023, as per the latest data collected by CMIE.

Government does not even provide current data on employment. We have only outdated and low quality government data and hence knowing the reality on the ground is just a guess work. The situation might be far worse than it has been projected on the data prior to the pandemic year 2019. Making PM Modi government to appear better on these older data and comparison with decade old amounts to politics in favour of his government ignoring the untold sufferings of the people under extreme poverty, near poverty, and hunger.

Let us start from the latest SDG atlas recently released by the World Bank. It provided the extreme poverty data of 2019, because the government of India does not provide the latest data. About 134 million people were in extreme poverty in India in 2019. Obviously if the data is compared with the data of 1990, or 2005, the country has fared better but still not acceptable such an alarming level of extreme poverty. Then after 2019, COVID-19, price rise, inflation, Ukraine war etc has much exacerbated the condition about which not data is available for the second term of PM Modi government from 2019 to date in 2023. Virtually on cannot know the ground reality and everyone is dependent on other sources to guess, at a time when India has become the largest populated country of the world.

The World Bank atlas has candidly mentioned that the large reduction in extreme poverty at the global level actually masks uneven progress at the regional level. Even in 1990, the most of the extreme poor were located in East and South Asia, that is India, and this remained the same even in 2019. COVID-19 had increased the number of extreme poor by about 70 million globally in 2020, when close to 11 per cent more people lived in extreme poverty compared to 2019. Since then, an uneven economic recovery, rising food prices, and conflict among some of the world’s biggest food producers have stalled the progress further. It must also be noted that as against the average international poverty line at $2.15 a day, India’s poverty line was estimated at $2.17 a day in 2017. Hence even the poverty line is outdated by about six years, which does not include the drastically worsened situation since 2020, and high inflation that considerably reduced the real wages of workers making their life more miserable.

As for hunger, the atlas mentions that 973 million people in India could not afford a healthy diet in 2021, which was about 69 per cent of the entire population of India. It says that the crisis has exacerbated since then due to many national and international factors including price rise of food articles. An earlier estimate jointly made by UNICEF, WHO, and World Bank had revealed recently that stunting and wasting of children in India under 5 were very high at 31.7 (in 2022) per cent and 18.7 (in 2020) per cent respectively, against the global average of 22.3 and 6.8 per cent. Such a picture is indeed frightening, which just indicates that level of hunger in the country is very high, but unfortunately Modi government is not providing the latest data since 2019 and the current estimates are only projected.

It is in this backdrop, the UNDP has released the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which compares the data of 15 years between 2005 and 2021, and praised India for making 415 million people exiting the extreme poverty. It said that India is one of the 25 countries that have successfully halved their MPI values within 15 years. Notably, in India, the incidence of poverty fell from 55 per cent (645 million) in 2005/6 to 16 per cent (230 million) in 2019/21. It also said that multi-dimensionally poor declined from 44 per cent to 14 per cent, while child mortality declined from 4 per cent to 1.5 per cent during this period. Such comparison actually veils what is actually happening since 2014 when PM Modi came to power, since the data are old, and we are totally in dark as far as current ground situation on poverty and hunger is concerned. UNDP report has also admitted the lack of proper and timely data from India, though it lauded the government on the basis of its projected estimates. It, of course, serves the political purpose of the ruling establishment led by PM Modi.

UNDP report has said that the lack of data for most of 110 countries, which includes India, covered by the index restricts the understanding of just how deeply the pandemic has impoverished millions, highlighting the urgent need to strengthen data collection. If it is so, why should UNDP or any other national and international organization report, estimate, and project the level of poverty and hunger in such a way that may politically help the ruling political establishments who are clearly failing in their obligations and commitments to end these by 2030?

It would be of much important if the data on poverty and hunger is made available since 2014 till date, so that real time assessment, planning, and implementation of mitigating measures could be effectively put in place. The poor quality of data from India has been an issue since long, and it is also not acceptable that PM Modi government should stop providing realtime data since 2019, and then in the last year of his five year second term institutions after institutions go on praising that India has made spectacular progress in the last 15 years since 2005 or in the last three decades since 1990 in reducing poverty and hunger.

Citizens of India need real time solutions of their extreme poverty and hunger in which government is failing in real time. Historical comparisons since decades would amount to politically veiling the present government’s failure due to which India is set to miss 2030 target of poverty and hunger free India. (IPA Service)