EVEN as India’s sense of achievement about one of the world’s fastest declines of extreme poverty can be understood, the nation must remind itself of the very long way it has to traverse to eliminate poverty entirely. The reference is to Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s expression of deep satisfaction about a World Bank Report on this count. He described the decline as a “historic” drop -- which justifies a sense of high achievement for a country like India. The country’s economy made rapid strides in the past 10-12 years to lift millions of people out of extreme poverty -- which the World Bank has appreciated. However, it must be admitted that the country has to go a long way before it eliminates poverty entirely -- which must be one of the national goals to fulfill the aspiration of Viksit Bharat -- Developed India -- by the year 2047, the centenary of India’s Independence.

 

 

Though there is improvement about the general availability of resources in the country’s economic system, thanks to various schemes and programmes of the Government, the ease of living for common people has not improved to a desired level. This reality pops up from unimaginable points. For example, it is still next-to-impossible for the average person in India to dream of owning a house of his/her own. An average Indian person also cannot think of sending his/her children to decent schools and colleges -- right from the entry-levels to higher levels. An average Indian family still cannot think of admitting its members to a good-enough hospital for assured quality of medical treatment. An average Indian still cannot think of living in truly livable conditions in most cities and most villages. And all these issues crop up because of the paucity of financial resources -- no matter the different schemes of the Government to help the average Indian person.

 

This stark reality haunts the larger Indian society in the domain of most basic issues, let alone the aspirational ones. Of course, India’s middle-class is expanding rapidly -- offering a positive picture, all right. Aspirationally, the middle-class lives a different life. Despite this, the reality on the ground is that most aspirations are fulfilled only on borrowed money -- which cannot be considered a good sign in a growing economy. In other words, Indian economic planners appear to follow the western model of economic development in which majority of transactions hinge on borrowed money -- which comes at a cost that is nearly beyond the common man’s capacity of repayment in due time. These are the silent markers of the overall poverty levels of the larger Indian society. There is no doubt that the Government is trying its best to counter these elements, all right.

 

To a reasonable extent, those efforts have shown positive results as well. Yet, the overall picture does not communicate a feeling of a tolerable ease-of-living levels. Of course, the Government does not deny these realities. Its efforts to counter the challenge also are visible to the larger society. There is a general agreement that the Government has succeeded in lifting millions of people from extreme poverty in the past one decade or so. Yet, the people also cannot overlook the actual problems on the ground that highlight economic hardships of the average Indian people. The old political adage describing the economy as a system in which ‘the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting the poorer’ is still pertaining to the reality on the ground. So, even as we agree with the Prime Minister that India has made possible a “historic” fall in India’s extreme poverty, we cannot overlook the other aspects of the larger society’s economic condition. That realisation shouts from the rooftops that India has still to go a long way to before it could even start eliminating poverty at levels a little higher than ‘extreme’. Indian economic planners will have to keep in mind that mere money-supply is only an incomplete measure to combat poverty. In other words, they will have to come up with more mature definitions of poverty, paucity, and priorities on the economic front. They will have to come up with a totally Indian model.