Bare necessities: Economic Survey takes a leaf out of 'Jungle Book'

Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat have highest access to basic amenities

The Economic Survey constructed a Bare Necessities Index (BNI) to measure the quality of housing, toilet, drinking water and clean cooking fuel, and the progress on their delivery.

“Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities, forget about your worries and your strife, I mean the bare necessities” — quoting from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, the Survey said availability of bare necessities have improved across all regions of India, including urban and rural, on the BNI.

“The ‘bare necessities’ of housing, water, sanitation, electricity and clean cooking fuel are jointly consumed by all the members of a household. They, therefore, touch the life of every member in the household. Access to these saves time for a household, which they can utilise in productive activities, such as education and learning,” the Survey noted.

The Survey used data from two rounds of the NSSO — 69th and 76th on drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and housing condition in India. Many states saw a surge in access to bare necessities between 2012 and 2018. The index found that access to bare necessities is the highest in Kerala, Punjab, Haryana, and Gujarat, while it is the lowest in Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Tripura.

The states that showed improvement are Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Goa, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh.

To further stress the importance of access to bare necessities, the Survey recalled Pitambar Pant’s call to focus on “minimum needs” in the 1950s.

Suggesting strategies to improve access, the Survey said, “There should be effective targeting of the needier population, be they in urban or rural areas or across states.” As civic amenities in urban areas are also provided by local self-governments, there must be effective convergence in scheme implementation at the Centre, state, and local levels.