Allies and liability,COALITION GOVT

Whatever one might say about the timing, motives or ramifications of Justice Markandey Katju’s sensational disclosure, nobody has yet been able to disprove the facts about the undue extensions given to a “tainted” additional judge of the Madras High Court because of the DMK’s threat to pull out of the UPA government and thus bring it down. My submission is that this was not the only gross impropriety committed in the name of coalition compulsions. At the time when the Congress’s main ally, the Left, was objecting to the government’s proposal to partially privatise several public sector undertakings, for instance, some DMK ministers reportedly barged into the prime minister’s office to warn him that selling any shares of the Neyveli lignite project would bring his government down.

Since public memory is proverbially short, let me remind the reader that when the single-party rule of the Congress ended and the coalition era began, a large proportion of the political class, including pundits and commentators, virtually jumped with joy. At long last, they said, the country will have “real democracy” and those excluded from politics for so long would be empowered. However sincere the belief, reality did not redeem it.

To begin the story from the beginning, it is not clear when exactly the coalition era began. Arguably, it was after the humiliating defeat of Indira Gandhi in the post-Emergency election in 1977. For even though the Janata Party pretended to be a single political entity, it was, in fact, a coalition of four parties, united only in their abhorrence of the Congress and divided over almost everything else. In any case, the Janata collapsed ignominiously in 30 months. Indira spectacularly returned to power. She, and after her assassination, her elder son Rajiv, who was practically dragooned into politics, ruled the country for a decade.

His former cabinet colleague and nemesis, V.P. Singh, replaced Rajiv. Singh headed what he called the National Front, but turned out to be a notional front. In any case, the front’s strength was so limited that it needed the support of two opposite poles of the political spectrum, the BJP and the Communists, to survive. Within 11 months, however, Singh’s government fell because of his unilateral decision to enforce the Mandal report recommending 27 per cent reservations for OBCs. With Rajiv’s patronage, the former Young Turk, Chandra Shekhar, became prime minister but lasted only 120 days.

After Rajiv’s assassination in the midst of the 1991 general election, P.V. Narasimha Rao ran a minority Congress government for the full five years, though the means he used made him the first former PM to be dragged to a court of law on criminal charges. No wonder, the Congress was defeated in the 1996 polls (though it retained140 seats in the Lok Sabha). For the first time, the BJP became the largest party in the House, but Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s first government became a 13-day wonder. A new government of the so-called United Front, headed by H.D. Deve Gowda, was then sworn in. It, too, could not have survived even for a day without the Congress’s support “from outside”. The then Congress president, Sitaram Kesri, for reasons of his own, pulled the plug on Gowda but let the UF rule under the leadership of I.K. Gujral. Another group of Congressmen pulled the rug from under Gujral’s feet because he would not expel the DMK from his government, which the Congress suspected was complicit in Rajiv’s assassination. (Ironically, it later became a close ally of the Congress.)

In the general election in 1998, the BJP came to power by heading the NDA, with Vajpayee again as prime minister. But this government fell, for want of a single vote in the Lok Sabha, only a few days after celebrating its first anniversary. Why? Because J. Jayalalithaa of the AIADMK withdrew her support since the BJP-led government could not or would not withdraw the court cases filed against her by the state government led by her bitterest foe, M. Karunanidhi. The country had to endure another election before which the BJP, as a caretaker government, fought the Kargil war. This time round, it won with a comfortable majority.

It is to Sonia Gandhi’s credit that in the 2004 polls, she led the Congress back to power even though the BJP was so confident of its future that it had advanced the election by some months. By then, the Congress had been in the wilderness for eight years, and the dynasty for 13.

In all fairness, the coalition era in India began in 1999 and ended, for the foreseeable future at least, in May this year, when the BJP won a clear majority on its own and a dominant one with its allies.

What Jayalalithaa did to the first NDA coalition has already been mentioned. Under pressure from other allies, Vajpayee had to put on the back burner some of the prime elements in his party’s programme. Some allies walked out of his government. However, overall, he seems to have managed his coalition better than the diarchy of Sonia and Manmohan Singh did or could during the decade they ran the ruling coalition, the UPA. Vajpayee usually spoke of “coalition dharma”, Manmohan of the “compulsions of coalition politics”.

Addressing vulnerabilities,HDR-2014

The 2014 Human Development Report (HDR) draws attention to the urgent need to address human vulnerabilities and build resilience as conditions for accelerating and sustaining progress. Human insecurity stems from not only low and uncertain incomes, but from many other sources, including inadequate access to health, food and shelter, unsafe environments, and inadequate protection of civil and political freedoms. Individuals experience vulnerability when they become physically weak, economically impoverished, socially dependent, publicly humiliated or psychologically harmed. Families feel vulnerable when they do not have access to good quality affordable healthcare, when they are exposed to unsafe environments, or when safety is compromised when societies are faced with crime and violence. At the same time, all new born babies are vulnerable to diseases, just as all women are to domestic violence. Preparing citizens for a less vulnerable future entails strengthening the intrinsic resilience of communities and countries. The HDR recommends how to do this.

The report connects human vulnerability to factors and conditions that erode people’s capabilities and freedoms. The concept of vulnerability becomes less abstract, the report argues, when broken down into who is vulnerable, what are they vulnerable to, and why.  People feel vulnerable when they lack core capabilities that prevent them from doing things they value and in coping with threats they face without suffering serious consequences.

The report identifies “structurally vulnerable” groups of people that are more vulnerable than others by virtue of their history or of their unequal treatment by the rest of society. Such a disadvantage can be traced to many factors, including gender, ethnicity and geographic location. Human insecurity is compounded by the overlapping of structural vulnerabilities. For example, this could happen to groups that, in addition to having to cope with disabilities, are also poor and belong to a minority group.

The report has an interesting discussion on “life-cycle vulnerabilities” that are contingent upon a person’s age, and hence, stage in life. For example, new born babies are particularly vulnerable during the first 1,000 days of life, older children during the transition from school to work, and adults when they move from the world of work to an era of retirement. Since capabilities are built over a lifetime, the report argues that setbacks at these critical points in a person’s life can have adverse and prolonged impacts. For instance, neglecting childhood development has serious ramifications for learning in school, holding on to a job and coping with growing old. Such neglect also transmits vulnerabilities to the next generation.

The HDRs have gained popularity because of the ranking of countries on the Human Development Index (HDI). What does the 2014 HDR reveal? The not-so-good news is that there has been no change in India’s rank on the HDI. As in 2012, India continues to rank 135out of 186 countries for which the index has been computed. In South Asia, whereas Sri Lanka (ranked 73) and the Maldives (ranked 103) fare better, India does marginally better than Bhutan (ranked 136) and Bangladesh (ranked 142), and much better than Nepal (ranked 145), Pakistan (ranked 146) and Afghanistan (ranked 169).

India fares badly on gender equality and ranks 127 on the Gender Development Index (GDI) — a new measure of gender gaps in levels of human development achievements for 148 countries. Countries are ranked based on the absolute deviation from gender parity on the HDI. This means countries are penalised not only for gaps that disfavour women, but also for those that disfavour men. The largest gender gap in HDI is observed in South Asia (17 per cent), followed by Arab states and sub-Saharan Africa, with a gap of about 13 per cent each. The most unequal is Afghanistan, where the HDI for females is only 60 per cent of the male HDI.

Four other findings merit attention. First, the top five countries leading the HDI ranking are Norway, Australia, Switzerland, Netherlands and the United States — the same as in 2012. Similarly, as in 2012, the lowest scores in HDI are Niger, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Sierra Leone. For the first time, Japan no longer ranks first on the HDI among Asian countries. Three countries have done better: Singapore, Hong Kong and, importantly, South Korea. Second, levels in human development continue to rise, though the pace has slowed for all regions over 2008-13 compared to 2000-08. Third, inequalities in health are decreasing, those in education remain persistently high, and income inequality continues to grow particularly in developing countries. Four, computation of the Multi-Dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) reveals that, despite recent progress in poverty reduction, more than 2.2 billion people are either near or living in multidimensional poverty. It is however unfortunate that the Indian government’s reluctance and subsequent delay in commissioning the fourth round of the National Family Health Survey has meant that data used for computation of the MPI is seriously outdated (pertains to 2005-06).

Returning to the main theme, the report contains a set of practical recommendations for addressing vulnerabilities and building resilience to future shocks. It advocates embracing the principles of equity and universalism, putting people first, and investing in strengthening collective voice and action. The HDR calls for reinforcing universal access to basic social services, especially health and education, introducing well-designed interventions to address life-cycle vulnerabilities (focusing on early childhood and the transitions from youth to young adulthood and from adulthood to old age), and strengthening social protection (including unemployment insurance and pension programmes). The report highlights the need to build capacities for disaster preparedness and recovery so that communities can better deal with and recover from shocks. At the macro level, it rightly calls for a commitment to full employment (rather than targets of economic growth), recognising that the value of employment extends far beyond the income it generates. Thereport’s main takeaway is that unless vulnerabilities are addressed immediately and effectively, and efforts are made to ensure that every member of society benefits from investments in human development, human progress can be neither equitable nor sustainable. This is indeed a timely and important message — not just for India but for all nations of the world.

Prime Minister launches MyGov: A platform for Citizen Engagement towards Surajya http://mygov.nic.in

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi today launched MyGov, a platform that empowers the citizens of India to contribute towards Surajya. Speaking on the occasion, which also marked the completion of sixty days of the new Government, the Prime Minister said the success of democracy is impossible without participation of the people. Stating that in the past, there used to be a big gap between the people and the processes of governance, the Prime Minister said that in the past sixty days, the experience of his Government was that there were many people who wanted to contribute towards nation-building, and devote their time and energy. The only thing they required was an opportunity to shine and showcase their contribution. The Prime Minister said the MyGov platform is a technology-driven medium that would provide this opportunity to contribute towards good governance. The Prime Minister expressed confidence that the people would welcome this initiative. He also invited suggestions to strengthen and improve the platform. He hoped that everyone would join hands through this platform to take the country forward, and to meet the aspirations of the poorest of the poor. He said he was confident of success in this mission, because he recognized the strength and capability of 125 crore Indians. The Prime Minister said he looked forward to receiving the suggestions, views and ideas of the people. The platform - MyGov - presents an opportunity to the citizens to both ‘Discuss’ and ‘Do.’ There are multiple theme-based discussions on MyGov where a wide range of people would share their thoughts and ideas. Further, any idea shared by a contributor will also be discussed on these discussion forums, allowing constructive feedback and interaction. For those who wish to go beyond discussions and wish to contribute on the ground, MyGov offers several avenues to do so. Citizens can volunteer for various tasks and submit their entries. These tasks would then be reviewed by other members and experts. Once approved, these tasks can be shared by those who complete the task and by other members on MyGov. Every approved task would earn credit points for completing the task. National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) would implement and manage the platform “MyGov” which would facilitate Citizen Engagement in Good Governance. Groups and corners are an important part of MyGov. The platform has been divided into various groups namely Clean Ganga, Girl Child Education, Clean India, Skilled India, Digital India, Job Creation. Each group consists of online and onground tasks that can be taken up by the contributors. The objective of each group is to bring about a qualitative change in that sphere through people’s participation. The Minister for Communication and IT, Law and Justice, Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, and senior officers of the Government of India were present at the launch of the platform. Road Ahead The inauguration of MyGov is a small step towards the larger mission of becoming a one stop centre for citizen engagement towards good governance. Over time the number of groups, tasks and discussions will increase. MyGov would also be used as a comprehensive knowledge repository, giving insights from the sharpest and brightest minds across India.

Ban of Endosulfan

The study done by ICMR’s National Institute of Occupational Health in 2002 showed significantly higher prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders, congenital malformations in female subject and abnormalities related to male reproductive system. Another study conducted by Calicut Medical College in Nov-Dec 2010 in the same area showed reproductive morbidity, sexual maturity congenital anomalies and cancer in younger ages. Infertility in the women 30 years and older was significantly higher but amongst younger age group (20-29) infertility was comparable with the unsprayed area indicating that the probable effect of Endosulfan is gradually coming down. State Government of Kerala has sent a proposal amounting toRs. 448.258 crores for relief and rehabilitation of Endosulfan victims in Kasargod district of Kerala. Based on Programme Implementation Proposals received from the State under the National Rural Health Mission (Now NHM), support has been provided to the State within their resource envelope. Government has sanctioned Rs. 10.88 crore for health facilities in Kasargod district during the period 2012-13 to 2014-15(till date). The Hon’ble Supreme Court passed an ad-interim order on 13.05.2011 banning production, sale and use of Endosulfan in the country till further orders. Accordingly, the Central Government issued instructions on 14.05.2011 to all State Governments/Union Territory Administrations to implement the interim order of the Court in toto, which are binding on all manufacturers. The Secretariat of Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee has written to the Pesticide Associations to recall Certificates of Registration for Endosulfan. These certificates have been treated as withdrawn in compliance of Supreme Court’s directions. On the basis of the interim report of the Joint Expert Committee on Endosulfan, Hon’ble Supreme Court of India vide its order dated 30-09-2011and 13.12.2011 allowed export of existing stocks of Endosulfan Technical to the tune of 1090.596 MT and formulation 2698.056 KL which was manufactured prior to the banning of Endosulfan by Supreme Court vide its order dated 13.5.2011. Further, the Hon’ble Supreme Court in its Order dated 23-04-2012 directed the Union of India to file a report on the disposal/phase out of Endosulfan Technical, Endosulfan Formulation and its raw material viz., HCCP available with manufacturers, States & formulators. Accordingly, a report was submitted by Ministry of Agriculture on 12-07-2012 on the manner of disposal of Endosulfan& HCCP stock available with manufacturers, States, formulators.

National Skill Development Agency (NSDA)

The National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) was notified on 6 June 2013 and has been functional ever since. The NSDA is an autonomous body, with functions which inter alia include  taking all possible steps to meet skilling targets as envisaged in the 12th Five Year Plan and beyond; coordinating and harmonizing the approach to skill development in the country; anchoring and operationalizing the National Skills Qualification Framework to ensure that quality and standards meet sector specific requirements; being the nodal agency for State Skill Development Missions; evaluating existing skill development schemes with a view to assessing their efficacy and suggesting corrective action to make them more effective; creating and maintaining a national database relating to skill development including development of a dynamic labour market information system; and ensuring that the skilling needs of the disadvantaged and the marginalized groups like SCs, STs, OBCs, minorities, women and differently abled persons are taken care of. NSDA is an agency that is mandated to coordinate the skilling effort of the Government of India. It is not mandated to skill a targeted number of people.  However, as per details provided by NSDA, the Ministry-wise physical achievements made during 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 are given in Annexure. C&AG of India Takes Over as Member of UN Board of Auditors  The Comptroller & Auditor General of India today assumed office as Member of the United Nations Board of Auditors for a six year term upto June 2020. Shri Shashi Kant Sharma took over the charge of this prestigious position from Mr. Liu Jiayi, the Auditor General of the People’s Republic of China at the United Nations Headquarters at New York today. Shri Sharma was elected to this position defeating Philippines by a convincing margin of 62 votes in November 2013.    United Nations Board of Auditors The United Nations General Assembly established the United Nations Board of Auditors to audit the accounts of the United Nations Organization and its funds and programmes and to report its findings and recommendations to the UN General Assembly. For this, the Assembly appoints three members, each of whom must be the Auditor-General of a Member State. Other two members of the Board are Mr. Amyas Morse, Comptroller and Auditor General, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Mr. Ludovick Utouh, Controller and Auditor-General of United Republic of Tanzania. CAG’s international audit experience The CAG of India has been the external auditor of various international organizations.    Presently, besides being a Member of the UN Board of Auditors, he is the external auditor of the World Food Programme, World Intellectual Property Organization, International Atomic Energy Agency, UN World Tourism Organization and the International Organization for Migration.  In recent past, he has been the external auditor of major UN Agencies like the World Health Organization, Food and Agricultural Organization, International Maritime Organization, Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons etc. Benefits for India The UN Board of Auditors is one of the key oversight organs of the United Nations and its importance has grown in recent years, especially in view of the resource crunch being faced by all Member Nations in the wake of economic crisis.  The reports of the Board form a key input in policy-making within the UN system.  The election of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India to the UN Board of Auditors is a matter of prestige for the country and would greatly enhance the visibility of India within the UN system. Unlike most elections in the UN and its Agencies, this election was a rare case where an institution was involved.  With the election of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India as a member of the UN Board of Auditors, one of the most prestigious institutions of Indian democracy got its due recognition at the international stage and image of the country has enhanced in terms of its democratic traditions. CAG of India will now get access for audit of UN Organizations, the prominent one being the UN Headquarters itself. By auditing international organizations of the UN system, not only would the Comptroller and Auditor General of India add value to the operations of UN, but its own officers would also be further exposed to the best international auditing and accounting practices leading to enhancement of their professional skills.  Deploying of such professionals in India would translate into high quality of auditing and accounting and would promote accountability, transparency and good governance in India. Benefits for United Nations With their wide experience in the audit of UN and its Agencies and other International Organizations, the auditors of the CAG of India would assist the UN in bringing about greater efficiency, economy and effectiveness in its operations by focussing their audit thrust on key risk areas within the UN. Presently, the United Nations is in the process of business process transformation by way of migrating to International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) for financial reporting and introduction of a SAP based Enterprise Resource Planning solution. C&AG of India has a pool of audit professionals specialising in IPSAS, who have assisted World Health Organization (WHO), International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) in their on-going migration to an IPSAS compliant financial accounting system. Similarly, C&AG of India is known for its expertise in the audit of IT systems. India’s twin strengths in IPSAS and auditing ERP systems would bring immense value to the United Nations in its ongoing migration to IPSAS and implementation of its SAP system, UMOJA. Comptroller and Auditor General’s Credentials The Institution of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India has a history of over one hundred and fifty years and is regarded as one of the key pillars of India’s democratic polity.  It is one of the largest Supreme Audit Institutions in the world, with a large human resource pool which is professionally qualified in diverse fields. Highly regarded in the international community of Supreme Audit Institutions, the CAG of India chairs the Knowledge Sharing Committee - one of the four major Committees of International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI) besides being a member of a number of other standards setting committees/sub-committees. He is on the Governing Board of INTOSAI.  He is member of the UN Panel of External Auditors. The CAG also chairs the Asian Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (ASOSAI). By virtue of his active participation in these international forums, the CAG is closely associated with activities in establishing standards, best practices and guidance in different areas of audit for use by the SAI community at large.

Knowing India’s nuclear credentials

Manufactured Western outrage ignores the reality that under the landmark 2005 India-U.S. agreement, the IAEA has unprecedented access to Indian nuclear facilities

There has been a concerted attack on India from the usual suspects in recent days even as it was entering into negotiations to formally accede to the Nuclear Suppliers Group. As if on cue, Jane’s Intelligence Review carried out a “(non)-exposé” of an Indian military nuclear facility in Karnataka. As exposés go, it was lame even by Jane’s standards. The nature of the facility and location have been publicly available since 2010. Yet, this new “exposé” was carried by all mainstream print news outlets and predictably sensationalised with everyone feigning alarm and anxiety. This manufactured outrage culminated with a sanctimonious editorial in The New York Times that was remarkable for the sheer incoherence of its own arguments. As the designated chief of the non-proliferation ayatollahs (with blinkers) and representative of a motley anti-India group in the U.S. that is shrinking ever so rapidly, this too was on expected lines.

Assault on credentials

Nevertheless, it is important to dismantle the uneasy arguments of this concerted assault on India’s credentials. The first proposition that must be taken issue with is the propagation of a falsehood that Pakistan and its reckless build-up of nuclear stockpile is somehow driven by India’s posture. While Pakistan’s careless impulse may be a result of more than one central factor, it is important to understand that this may have a lot to do with its suspicion of American intentions. The oft-quoted argument is that Pakistan seeks to equalise the conventional mismatch with India through a misguided reliance on numbers of strategic and tactical warheads. The irrationality and illogic of this behaviour has been proven by the fact that a country like North Korea has deterred both the U.S. and South Korea with explosions that may not even have been nuclear. Pakistan’s vertical proliferation has no mooring to India’s strategic programme — only to its own paranoia. The question is what fuels this? There is no denying the fact that Pakistan was able to obtain “nuclear immunity” for its sub-conventional activities against India with even 10 warheads. It may well be the fear of the U.S. that motivates its build-up today.

 New Delhi is already providing support to FMCT negotiation; its signature on the CTBT is linked to similar commitments by the U.S. and China 

One motivator is the pressure the U.S. has been applying on Pakistan (without success due to the China factor) to sign onto the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), which will forever cap the Pakistani arsenal. Contrary to what the commentary would have us believe, the FMCT, instead of curbing fissile material, has demonstrably accelerated Pakistan’s programme. So much for flawed logic. The second is the fear of the American “Plan B”, which involves the seizure and confiscation of much of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. The former has driven Pakistan to enrich their extant stockpile of radioactive material to weapons grade at breakneck speed. The latter has ensured that Pakistan is rapidly weaponising its fissile stock, in order to disperse and complicate any such weapons seizure plans. These facts are well understood in Washington policy circles. The exposés and op-eds of the past weeks are for most just another edition of Aesop’s fables.

The second issue has to be the demonstrated lack of understanding of the reality that shaped the landmark civil nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India. This nuclear deal was based on one clear principle — that India’s military programme would irrevocably be separated from the civilian programme. This was not an optimal solution for India or for the P5, but like all international agreements it was based on arriving at an outcome that would benefit all parties and enhance the global order. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohammed El Baradei in an op-ed in the Washington Post, specifically welcomed the deal without reservation, his rationale being “either we begin finding creative, outside-the-box solutions or the international nuclear safeguards regime will become obsolete.” This is now accepted wisdom. The IAEA has gained unprecedented access to India’s nuclear facilities. India has accepted additional protocols this June, and has strengthened its own export laws. Significantly, the same journals and reports confirm that India’s own arsenal has remained stable over the period with no increases despite the turbulence in the neighbourhood. The benefits of bringing India inside the ‘non-proliferation tent’ are therefore vast, visible and tangible.

While these editorials and reports may very well have got their facts and numbers right, the analysis is so convoluted that the facts they quote cease to be relevant. The argument goes that India needs to sign the FMCT, the CTBT, and agree to mutual weapons reduction with China and Pakistan, since it is the nuclear deal with the U.S. that has set the cat amongst the pigeons. Here then is some measure of reality. India is already providing active support to the FMCT negotiations — it is a work in progress, not yet a concrete treaty. It has been Pakistan that has been blocking the work at the conference on disarmaments negotiations.

Additionally, India’s signature on the CTBT is explicitly linked to a similar U.S. and Chinese commitment. As long as they do not ratify these two treaties, India has a voluntary unilateral moratorium on testing. What is holding up Indian accession is U.S. and Chinese accession.

Experts in Beijing claim that China’s expansion and modernisation of its nuclear forces is being driven by the ill-advised and deeply destabilising withdrawal of the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. This has nothing whatsoever to do with India.

India, therefore, is first being made the whipping boy for the failure of the American non-proliferation lobby in their own country and then it has to accept blame for the complex relations the U.S. shares with Pakistan and China that is driving these Asian allies to increase their arsenals. Can we get real, please?

Squaring the poverty circle

The method proposed by the Rangarajan expert group to set poverty lines is both theoretically and empirically implausible. A simple and transparent benchmark, amenable to democratic debate, would be more useful

The Rangarajan expert group on poverty measurement has done a great deal of hard and useful work. In its recent report, the group probes a wide range of critical issues — how to set poverty lines, the choice of price indexes for poverty comparisons, the discrepancy between National Sample Surveys (NSS) and the National Accounts Statistics, and more. Massive amounts of data were crunched to shed light on these issues. The report also presents a very helpful summary of earlier “expert group” reports on poverty, chaired by Y.K. Alagh, D.T. Lakdawala and Suresh Tendulkar respectively. The combined brainpower of four expert groups is brought to bear on the committee’s terms of reference, including, most importantly, whether and how “a particular method can be evolved for empirical estimation of poverty in India.”

The calorie trap

So what did the expert group come up with? Simplifying a good deal, it has reverted to food intake norms, long sanctified by use if not by logic until they were discarded by the Tendulkar expert group in 2009. These norms are now extended from calories to include both protein and fat. The food component of the poverty line (for rural and urban areas separately) is the level of food expenditure at the point in the 2011-12 NSS per-capita expenditure distribution where households just make the norms. These norms, recently set by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), take into account the age and sex composition of the population as well as activity levels, and, for reasons that are unclear, they are a good deal lower than previous ICMR recommendations, even at fixed age and activity levels. On top of this, there are two different and not-obviously compatible schemes for establishing the non-food components of the poverty line: for some non-food items, the poverty-line expenditure is read off the same fractile of the NSS per-capita expenditure distribution as the food component, but for other items, it is read off the median of the expenditure distribution. All in all, an elaborate construction of wheels within wheels.

If you find it hard to see the justification for this method, don’t worry — there is none. Indeed, nowhere in the report do the authors explain clearly why this is an appropriate method for setting poverty lines in India. It is well known, and clearly recognised by the expert group, that average calorie (or protein) intakes in India do not correlate well at all with nutrition outcomes. In particular, the intake norms adopted by the expert group provide absolutely no guarantee of good nutrition. This is in part because good nutrition depends on many factors other than food intake, such as sanitation, water, health care and the disease environment. But it is also because of the long-appreciated point that different individuals — and populations — have different requirements, even beyond their variation in age, sex, and activity levels.

The expert group understands the first point very well, but presses on with intake norms, arguing that meeting these norms would still have a “favourable impact” on nutrition “taken in conjunction with public policies for full nutrition support for children in the 0-6 age group and public provisioning of a range of public goods and services … on a universal basis.” Surely the poverty line should be one that works in India, as it is, and not in some imagined Nirvana.

Implausible results

As for the second point, the expert group seems to take it as a justification for discounting calorie norms by 10 per cent — an arbitrary step in the absence of any information on the joint distribution of intakes and requirements. In short, the expert groups’ method perpetuates the illusion that the poverty line tells us something about nutrition, when in fact it does nothing of the sort.

Leaving that aside for the moment, what sort of estimates does the method produce? Interestingly, the rural poverty line proposed by the expert group is almost the same as the “Tendulkar poverty line.” It looks higher, but as the authors themselves note, that is mainly because their computations are based on the NSS’ “modified mixed reference period,” instead of the “mixed reference period” used by Tendulkar. When both methods are used with the same reference period, the Rangarajan poverty line for rural areas is only six per cent higher than the Tendulkar poverty line. The corresponding poverty rates are also very similar.

It is for urban areas that the Rangarajan method leads to a substantial upward revision of the poverty line. In the Tendulkar method, there was a single poverty line – the national urban poverty line “inherited” from earlier expert groups. State-wise urban and rural poverty lines were derived from this single national poverty line by applying suitable price indexes. But in the Rangarajan method, there are two poverty lines (rural and urban), obtained by applying the method described above to rural and urban data separately. And as it turns out, this leads to a much larger gap between rural and urban poverty lines (the latter being higher, in money terms) than in the Tendulkar method. At the raised Rangarajan urban poverty line, urban poverty is almost double the corresponding Tendulkar estimate, even though rural poverty rates are much the same using both methods. One odd consequence of this is that for half of India’s major States, urban poverty is higher than rural poverty according to the Rangarajan expert group. This is highly counter-intuitive, and the expert group does nothing to defend the reality of this pattern.

Way forward

In short, the Rangarajan expert group method is both theoretically and empirically implausible. What then is the way forward? Appointing another expert group is unlikely to serve the purpose, given the record of previous expert groups. Perhaps the time has come to abandon the elusive search for a technical method of deriving a poverty line that can be interpreted, in some normative sense, as the minimum cost of dignified living. Would it not be simpler, and more useful, to regard the poverty line as a mere statistical benchmark, and set it in a simple and transparent manner that the public can understand?

The Rangarajan expert group recommends, rightly in our view, that entitlement programmes should be delinked from the poverty line (that is, no more “BPL targeting”). This would effectively restore poverty lines to their original statistical purpose of tracking poverty and making poverty comparisons, without creating an artificial social division between the poor and non-poor. In the statistical approach, the poverty line is just a conventional benchmark — or a set of benchmarks for that matter, à la Arjun Sengupta and his colleagues (not mentioned in the Rangarajan report). These benchmarks focus on an important component of poverty — purchasing power — and avoid the unsustainable argument that somehow, other components are taken care of in the background.

Even a conventional benchmark, of course, can benefit from having some sort of rationale. But if an intuitively appealing poverty line is to be identified, that is best done by keeping things simple and submitting the line to democratic debate. Clarity and transparency are essential for this purpose. It is in that respect, more than any other, that the Rangarajan report disappoints. By clouding poverty estimation in a fog of technicalities, it hampers inclusive and informed public discussion of the entire issue. In fact, like the Tendulkar method, the Rangarajan method is so abstruse and uses so much hard-to-obtain information that it also frustrates independent verification of the results, again hampering democratic debate.

One might argue that, in India at least, the poverty line is not just a statistical benchmark — it also has a policy purpose. The Rangarajan expert group itself suggests that the line might continue to be used for the purpose of allocating Central government funds to different States (in the context of Centrally-sponsored schemes), if not for the purpose of identifying eligible households. But if the poverty line has a policy purpose, in addition to its statistical purpose, that makes it all the more important for it to lend itself to public debate. One way or another, the selection of a poverty line is a social and political question that needs to be subject to widespread democratic debate; it should not be the prerogative of experts, or groups of experts. Indeed, there is no such thing as an “expert” about who is poor and who is not.

Last but not least, it is very important to supplement expenditure-based poverty estimates with other indicators of living standards, relating for instance to nutrition, health, education and the quality of the environment. India’s social statistics are awfully out of date, with, for instance, no reliable and comprehensive data on child nutrition since 2005-6 (when the third National Family Health Survey (NFHS) was conducted). Noting this in passing, the Rangarajan expert group “recommends a regular programme of NFHS or NFHS-type surveys.” On this at least we agree wholeheartedly with the expert group.