T N Ninan: How poor are we?

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

But, can the NSS numbers be correct, or should we put them to a simple reality check? The easiest way to do that is to look at the number of mobile telephone connections, which in March was in excess of 300 million. The mobile industry thinks that in two years that number will be 500 million subscribers (at the present rate of 8 million new connections every month), in a country that by 2010 will have about 1,150 million people. Somehow, that does not gel with the NSS numbers.

The maths is not complicated. India has some 210 million families. Allow three connections per family for the top 50 million families who live (according to the NSS) on more than Rs 20 per head per day, and you account for 150 million connections. You still have 150 million connections that are there with the 160 million families that are (as the Sengupta report classifies them) extremely poor, poor, marginally poor, or vulnerable. That makes for virtually one phone connection per family in that very deprived group