The Planning Commission’s announcement that it is changing the definition of poverty from the current criterion, based predominantly on the daily calorific intake, to a much broader concept of “deprivation” is to be welcomed. For several years now, the persistence of such a minimalist criterion for poverty has flown in the face of the widely-held view that “development” is a multi-dimensional process, and that its success or failure can simply not be judged by changes in a particular indicator. The usual counter to this is that the ‘roti-kapda-makaan’ hierarchy of needs must be recognised. With such a large proportion of the population vulnerable to nutritional deficiency, it would be presumptuous on the part of policy-makers to focus on other needs when survival itself is threatened by inadequate food intake. Even if this argument had validity to begin with, it has weakened considerably with the decline of the poverty rate to a bit over 20 per cent, going by the most recent estimates. The fact that a large number of people have been able to rise above calorie-based poverty clearly raises the question as to the fate that awaits them next. The answer is hardly re-assuring; having taken care of food needs, their existence is likely to be a debilitating grind with no, or minimal, access to several essential needs — both to bring them everyday comfort and to allow them to shape a better future for themselves. The government may pat itself on the back for having brought down poverty as so far defined, but this is cold comfort if the quality of life of a substantial proportion of the non-poor is actually deteriorating as a result of its own failures in the areas of infrastructure, health and education, not to mention pollution and even law and order.
Moving to a benchmark that encompasses all these factors will achieve a much-needed broadening the real priorities of development policy. Measures such as the Outcomes Budget may have helped focus attention on the abysmal quality of public services and the overall inefficiency of the government’s delivery mechanisms. But, clearly, that is not enough. The true cost of poor quality and inefficiency can only be measured by its impact on the lives of people, particularly those who cannot afford private alternatives. This is what a deprivation index of the type proposed will achieve. It will serve as a continuous reminder to the government (and to the larger public) that the fight against poverty does not stop at 2,400 calories a day per person. In fact, the challenge only gets bigger as people turn their attention to other needs, which are provided mostly by the state. Using the index as a public measure of the performance of the government on a variety of fronts will significantly increase the visibility and, consequently, the penalty for failure.
There are, of course, serious constraints to effective operationalisation of this index. Consistent and comparable data have to be gathered for a much larger variety of indicators. Further, if it is to be a basis for evaluating the performance of the government, the data-generating process must achieve higher frequency and shorter lags. This is not infeasible, but it will require systemic changes in the data gathering and analytical process. Regardless of the stumbling blocks, the eventual utility of such an index is simply too great to ignore. The sooner it is implemented, the better.
