Dr John Mohan Razu
India in recent times has been hitting the rock-bottom in the socio-economic and happiness indices. All these three facets are co-relational and inter-woven with each other. More importantly, price rise and hunger syndrome are directly connected with each other and both are complimentary in nature. For the last 18-months particularly the poor and the lower-middle class Indians have been facing huge problems in meeting both the ends, especially the poor, hapless and economically deprivedsections as the prices of fuel, vegetables, pulses, edible oil and host of others have touched the sky-high – some doubled and otherstripled. The prices of petrol, diesel and cooking gas have been on constantly soaring in recent weeks and months.
Global Hunger Report, 2021, has placed India to 101 position in the Index (GHI) of 116 countries, falling from its 94th rank in 3030 to 101 in 2021. Its findings have been damning to the Government of India (GOI), especially the ruling BJP dispensation. India is behind Pakistan and Bangladesh India’s current ranking is lower than all its neighbors, except one. When we observe the related aspects in detail, 34.7 percent of children under five are stunted, 17.3 percent of children under five are wasted, 3.4 percent of children die before their fifth birthday and 15.3 percent of population in India is undernourished. What is worrying is that the report came out categorically that “India has a level of hunger that is serious.” Global Hunger Report of 2021 has placed India to the position of 101 – its entry into three digits.
As expected, the Government of India (GOI) vis-à-vis the Centre in a strongly worded rebuttal questioned the methodology followed by Global Hunger Report of 2021, where India slipped to 101 from 94 last year, pointing out that the data was based on a “telephonic estimate” from Gallup calls. Unable to stomach that it is lagging behind its neighbors Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, it posed four questions that the survey did not include a query on whether respondent had received support from government schemes during the pandemic; the report’s incongruous conclusion that countries like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal improved their nutritional status as the pandemic had no impact on them at all.
Based on assessment by UN body on “Four Question” the Government of India (GOI) simply rejected the report saying that it was like that of opinion poll as the information collected telephonically. Further, it said that Global Hunger Report concerns world wide, but Welt Hunger Hilife did not carryout the research with due diligence. It also said that the report was “shocking, devoid of ground reality and facts.” Adding further, it said that the report had “completely disregarded government’s massive effort to ensure food security of the entire population during the Covid period, verifiable data on which are available.” In addition, it said that “The opinion poll does not have a single question on whether the respondent received any food support from the government or other sources.
The present dispensation did raise a few questions as against the Global Hunger Report – 2021. It questioned the methodology that the agency had employed and went on saying that it failed to add a few questions particularly that concerns the ways with which the Government at the Centre handled COVID-19 at its peak. Though countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, have not been affected as severely like India by Covid-19 pandemic, they have been able to improve their position much better. Nevertheless, India has been failing and falling on social indices drastically. Healthy population is wealth creation of the country for the present and the future. Joblessness and unemployment are showing the surge. Ninety percent of our workforce is engaged in the informal sectors who work for their livelihood for meagre wages.
Price rise at alarming levels of the edible oil, vegetables, pulses, cooking gas, diesel, petrol and others on regular basis have further escalated hunger and poverty. Take for example, the truck, taxi and auto drivers; those engaged in the delivery of food chains, services in other goods to the designated places have to fill-in gasoline. Since the gasoline per liter has gone beyond Rs. 100/- (diesel and petrol), cooking gas is about to touch Rs. 1000/ and prices of vegetables have phenomenally gone up, all these have necessitated to add up the cost of the commodities they buy and sell. For all these they need initial capital and also reasonable returns in terms of profits.
When joblessness and unemployment grow; prices of essential commodities and sustenance needs escalates, the teeming millions are pushed to hunger and poverty as they have no money to meet both the ends. The unorganized labor that runs to millions hardly have money in their hands. It is obvious and quite natural that this segment would land up in hunger and poverty. In our country a huge per centage of people go to bed on empty stomach. We did witness during the pandemic how the public health system worked, the state and central governments handled the pandemic crises; yet we have no data of those single, double or non-vaccinated. More than anything, does the respective governments have data of those who died of coronavirus?
Taxing the poor and the lower middle-class on essential items is not progressive, rather regressive. Only a healthy population can eventually become the creator of wealth. A population with wellness is an asset for the present and the future. A sickly population is a liability and counter-productive. Unemployment, illiteracy, poverty, hunger, ill-health, infant mortality, lack of PHOs, inequality and other related aspects are important socio-economic indicators. The Government at the Centre keep talking about making India as a “Super Power” or aiming to make India as “World’s biggest military force”, but only when the entire population is healthy having quality life and three meals of balanced food.
Instead of finding problems with agencies on methodologies employed and finding faults on data collected we need to ask: what is the Ministry of Statistics and its agency National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) doing? Has it been regular in providing data on employment both in the formal and informal sectors? What is the percentage of population who live in poverty and hunger (rural and urban India)? Whenever the data favors government’s political ends, NSSO publishes its findings, otherwise the report is shelved. Poverty and hunger are real and existential. We may play with methodology and numbers, but not the severity and intensity of hunger and poverty.
