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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Food inflation hit war on poverty by Chetan Chauhan

Rising food prices and economic crisis have eaten into the gains made by India and the world in reducing poverty during the first half of this decade, a United Nations report released on Wednesday said.

"Newly updated estimates from the World Bank suggest the crisis will heave an some 64 million into extreme poverty by end of 2010, principally in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia," the Millennium Development Goals, 2010 report said.

In South Asia, including India, 21 per cent of the population is poor in 2008, one percentage point less than 2000-02 and same as in 1990. 

"The report shows that India's quota-based poverty eradication policies have failed," said CPIM leader Brinda Karat. She also claimed that poverty estimation was a jugglery of figures in India and the actual number of poor was much more in India than estimated by the Planning Commission.

"Government has come out with three different poverty figures. No one knows which one is true," Karat said.

Arjun Sengupta committee has said 70 per cent of India's population was poor, N.C Saxena committee said 50 per cent were poor whereas Suresh Tendulkar committee said 37.5 per cent of Indians were poor. The government has accepted Tendulkar's estimation. "It is statistical manipulation of official records to show less poverty,” she said.

The report also highlighted that the number of hungry especially in poverty struck regions such as South Asia had increased, with 830 million people in 2009 being malnourished as compared with 817 million in 1992.

The number may cross one billion in 2010, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations had estimated.

"Prices of staple foods remained high in 2009. The incomes of poor households diminished because of higher unemployment following economic downturn. Both crises contributed to a considerable reduction in effective purchasing power of poor consumers, who spend a substantial share of their income on basic food stuffs," the report said, while explaining the cause for increase in hunger.

Economist Jayati Ghosh said with just 30 per cent of India’s poor with BPL ration cards, which authorised them to buy subsidised food grains, the present policies would not suffice to eradicate poverty.