Will economic stress and hunger lead to political change?

Will economic distress affect how people perceive the role of the political class as a whole, and judge how they responded to their suffering?

Even while the buzz is that the Indian economy is on the road to recovery, Agence France Presse (AFP) reports that many middle class Indian families are selling gold to stay afloat. Mumbai jewellers told AFP that a majority were women selling off their personal jewellery – gold bangles, rings, necklaces and earrings. One of them said, “You start crying when she takes off the ‘mangalsutra’ from her neck and says, ‘Give me money for this’. That’s the worst scenario.”

Mannapuram, an active player in the gold loans segment, auctioned a massive Rs1300 crore worth of gold (about 4 tonnes) in April-June this year alone. The increase in gold auctions by banks and non-banking institutions over the summer, point to increasing defaults on gold loans and suggest that Covid-19 has decimated even the savings of the middle class.

An important indicator of increasing economic distress are worsening indices for hunger. India has slipped to the 101st position amongst 116 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) in 2021 -- behind its rank of 94th in 2020. India now trails Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar. The joint report prepared by Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide and German organisation Welt Hunger Hilfe, has described the hunger situation in India as “serious”. 

While India has shown improvement in child mortality rate and child stunting (percentage of children below five who have low height for their age), the proportion of undernourished people in the total population has risen. India ranked among the worst in ‘child wasting’ (percentage of children below five years of age who have low weight for their height) -- worse than Djibouti and Somalia. Even with improvement in indices for stunting, over one third of Indian children under five are still stunted.

India’s slippage in the GHI over two decades is continuous and worsening. Chillingly, this report does not capture the impact of Covid-19; that will be reflected only in the next year’s report. The GHI study estimates that nearly 190 million Indians go to bed hungry. Dalits and Adivasis are disproportionately affected by hunger with 50% of children in an Adivasi household being stunted – the rate twice as high in girls than among boys. 

Hunger has also increased among the elderly. According to the findings of Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) for 2017-18, food insufficiency in adults and the ageing (those above 45) is growing in India. The LASI report is based on a sample size of 72,250 adults over 45 years of age and their spouses (irrespective of age). It shows that because of food scarcity, 6 per cent of those above 45 years of age consumed smaller portions or skipped meals; 5.3 per cent did not eat even when hungry, and 3.8 per cent went without eating the whole day. The situation for the elderly was worse in rural areas -- with 7.2 per cent, 6.2 per cent and 4.6 per cent in each of the three categories of food insufficiency among the aging. The LASI report too does not reflect the even more adverse experience of the Covid pandemic period.

The only big survey to partially include the Covid period is the latest edition of the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), released jointly by five UN organisations in July this year. The SOFI report, based on surveys carried out from the beginning of 2020 to early 2021, claims that the number of people facing severe food insecurity in India went up from 430 million in 2019 to 520 million in one year due to pandemic related disruptions. Moderate to severe food insecurity increased from about 31.6 per cent in 2019 to 38.4 per cent in 2021.

However, the suffering of the poor and the middle class has not slowed down wealth accumulation by the richest. The latest Global Wealth Report published by Credit Suisse bank reveals that India has 343 dollar-millionaires, whose annual income is more than Rs 7 crore ($1 million). The report also claims that 52 per cent of the total wealth of the country is controlled by the top 1 per cent of the population and 48 per cent is shared by the remaining 99 per cent of the population. This almost reverses the situation in 2014, when according to Credit Suisse 49 per cent of wealth was controlled by the top 1 per cent and 51 per cent by the remaining 99 per cent. Clearly inequalities in wealth have worsened since 2014.

The World Inequality Database reinforces evidence for economic inequality reporting that the income of the top one percent was Rs 33 lakh per year against just Rs 45,000 per year (adjusted to inflation) for the bottom 50 per cent of the Indian population. Research also shows that India’s share in the world's extreme poor (20.17 per cent in 2017) is higher than its share (17.18 per cent) in world population.

The moot question is whether a growing crisis of survival for a majority of the Indian population will be reflected in its political choices. Will economic distress affect how people perceive the role of the incumbent government and the political class as a whole, and judge how they responded to their suffering?

Regime change is unlikely if the incumbent government is able to create a credible story that it is itself a victim of the crisis and not contributing to it.  Whether people buy the narrative or not will also be determined by their ideological commitments. If India has indeed moved towards majoritarian Hindutva then people’s political assessments are less likely to be made by economic concerns alone.

The social and economically significant elite in India have by and large seen it beneficial to side with authoritarian politics. Fearful of any left-of-Centre ideology they have tended to tolerate or support Hindu majoritarianism. India’s economic elite has in fact actively financed and encouraged this political shift.

That majority of Indians have to decide whether to demand more from the political state or whether they are satisfied with the ideological guff they are fed.