Syllabus Connect :- General Studies -Paper II (Issues relating to poverty and hunger)
Mains Connect:-
- Discuss the status of hunger and malnutrition post-COVID 19 in India and the suggest measures to improve it.
Much attention paid to the pandemic’s harm may have been focused on economic growth, but a far more serious challenge that India is likely to face relates to hunger and malnutrition. While concrete nationally-representative data is unlikely to be available soon, several privately-conducted surveys after covid suggest that the situation is far worse than thought.
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Data on consumption expenditure and malnutrition also point to a reversal of earlier gains made against malnutrition and hunger. Unlike economic growth, which is likely to rebound to a respectable annual rate of 6-7%, the long-term impact of India’s retrogression on those two indicators can prove severe enough to affect other human development outcomes.
Data from the 5th round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) under the aegis of the ministry of health and family welfare are now available for 17 states and five union territories (UTs). The NFHS-5 for 2019-20 shows a deterioration on several indicators of child malnutrition over the NFHS-4 for 2015-16 .
In states where there has been progress, its rate has been slower than between 2004-2016. Of 22 states/Union territories (UTs), 13 have seen an increase in childhood stunting between NFHS-4 and NFHS-5. Wasting has increased in 12 of those 22, and the count of those underweight has gone up in 16 of them.
Except for Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim, all states have seen at least one indicator of child malnutrition worsen between 2015-16 and 2019-20. The phase 1 fact sheets are mainly for UTs, northeastern states and some major states, with data for states with a high prevalence of malnutrition yet to be reported. It will be important to watch out for states such as Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, where malnutrition rates are quite high.
These data-sets are a cause for alarm, even though there are improvements in institutional delivery, immunization and other indicators. That they pertain to the period before the pandemic are another reason for worry. It’s evident that the economy’s slowdown and income decline among low earners had contributed to the worsening of these indicators.
The pandemic has made matters worse, with a further hit to the economy and a decline in wages and incomes. As recent data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) confirms the trend of rising unemployment and declining incomes, India’s already-fragile nutritional situation is expected to worsen further. Mid-day meals in primary and upper primary schools, along with anganwadis, have played an important role in monitoring and supplementing efforts to reduce malnutrition through free food for children (and pregnant as well as lactating women). This programme has been suspended for almost a year now, depriving the most vulnerable of access to food.
Several surveys after the lockdown have confirmed an increase in hunger and decline in food intake. Almost two-thirds of all respondent households of The Hunger Watch survey by the Right to Food campaign across 11 Indian states reported declines in the quality and quantity of food consumed.
About 45% of households reported an increase in the need to borrow for food and one-third reported skipping meals or going hungry. These estimates are similar to the results of a livelihood survey by Azim Premji University, which reported 77% of respondents having suffered a decline in food consumption. Other surveys also confirm a rise in job losses, decline in incomes, and reduced food consumption after the covid pandemic struck the country.
Over the past two years, the Union government has had foodgrain stocks far higher than the levels mandated by India’s buffer norms. As on 1 January, its foodgrain pile was at 80 million tonnes, as against our buffer norm of 21.4 million tonnes. Holding excess food stocks in spite of rising hunger and malnutrition is not just a waste of national resources, it is tragic. To offer the vulnerable succour, India should extend its scheme of additional foodgrain hand-outs and make it universally accessible. With no sign of a rural recovery visible yet in wage or income data, hunger and malnutrition are set to worsen in the absence of state support. Economic growth will revive sooner rather than later. But the scars of hunger and malnutrition could last much longer.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.