With bringing out a white paper, the attempt to whitewash everything with white myths is trivialising the intensity of suffering masses are faced with. We have been labelled the ‘republic of hungry citizens’. It is one of the facts that our people have learnt to live with. Starving is the rule for seniors, adults, children, including those not yet born. It is a burning truth not only based on economy but also speaks of the character the rule of the regime has.

Hunger has become the crudest reality and more than two hundred years back, Karl Marx had predicted about this dimension as the classic case of crisis of capitalism.

Signals are there that the burden of credit will pass over the production limit, opening doors for the glut. The level of credit by the Centre and the states has become equal to GDP. All the production in the country would be drowned in credit. IMF has issued a warning that the ecological threats would force India to invest immensely and it would be difficult to remit the credit in time. Last year alone the net RBI credit to government had assumed significance in reserve money creation, having gone up to Rs 11, 010 crore in contrast to a decline in of Rs 8,947 crore in the same period last year.

India has entered one of its darkest phases of deprivation when the annual income of the poorest has been steeply falling and still continues to fall from the levels of 2015-16. It was in the advent of the pandemic years that the richest twenty percent were reaping an income growth of 39 percent. It was the result of the Covid days that had impacted the economy splitting the population in a perfect contrast of Haves and Have Nots.

As the economic activity has been declining to almost zero level, especially in the months of 2020-2021 and still continues, it caused GDP to contract up to 7.3 percent, the urban poor was also affected hugely as the decline in their household income was receding steeply.

With erosion, there was also the sharp categorisation, though with very little difference among them except with the top twenty percent. The poorest 20 percent started stretching its limits and almost covered the greatest share of population in its folds, causing the most brutal erosion of people’s financial levels. There was also a time when for the lower middle category, the decline in their household income came down to 32 percent.

In the middle income category, the decline was found to be of nine percent, while for the upper middle category, it was a rise of seven percent. It also faced decline but it was only nine percent, and then the rise. It was the richest twenty percent that registered the highest rise among the entire population. It rose to 39 percent, when the famine and joblessness had caused big masses to migrate towards their roots.

In fact the richest sections had earned more in the post liberalisation years including the days of pandemic. In contrast to it, for the most impoverished sections, it was starvation, and more deprivation.

In the last eleven years before pre Covid days, between 2005- 2016, the household income for the top rich went up from 20 percent to 34 percent, for the poorest 20 percent, it also saw a hike in the average income growth rate of 9.9 percent. In 2021, the share of the poorest dropped to 3.3 percent in the same period.

In contrast to those poorest, the richest accounted for a jump of 56.3 percent in 2021. In the days of pandemic, economy was getting more formalised, and big companies in the top twenty percent benefitted at the cost of smaller ones. There have been surveys that had brought in the light the fact that while job losses were almost all pervading among small and medium enterprises in the casual labour segment, large companies did not suffer much on this account.

It has also been noticed that the impact had been divergent especially between urban and rural regions. Those among the poorest in urban areas were stricken with the biggest share of deprivation, in fact more impacted than their rural counterparts since Covid and the lockdown. They have been facing a regular worsening in economic activities in urban areas. This resulted in job losses and loss of income for the casual labour, petty traders and household workers.

The miseries of people in the country caused by the economic policies that have been supportive to those having the largest share were not thought of worthy to be taken into account. The ruling regime, joining hands with the rule of finance capital, has been reluctant to even list the disastrous consequences of such policies that have brought decline in per capita income of the major section of people, who already suffer from rise in malnutrition, that causes stunting and wasting among children, slipping down to the rank of 94 out of 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index. In addition, demonetisation has pushed the country to the brinks. Millions of people have been pushed into a state of acute impoverishment. Then there are the MSME who have hardly any support from the system.

In such extreme situation of ‘policy paralysis’, the government has come out with a white paper on the Indian economy, comparing its performance over 10 years with the UPA decade. (IPA Service)