A masterpiece film, Roti, Kapada Aur Makaan (translated as Food, Cloth and Shelter), produced and directed by Manoj Kumar in 1974, depicted the severe deprivation and devastation of a man for whom living honestly became a will-o’-the wisp. Deprivation sometimes exacts an exorbitant price that is borne over a lifetime. Undernourished children, for example, are more likely to be stunted. Stunting has long-term effects on individuals, including poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, lost productivity and, when accompanied by excessive weight gain later in childhood, a higher risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases in adult life (the World Health Organization, 2015).
The objective in this article, therefore, is to examine whether some of these deprivations, especially a lack of food and shelter, rose or diminished during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime. As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen emphasised in his classic study of famines (1981), starvation is caused not so much by a shortage of food supply as by a lack of entitlements/real income to buy food. Similarly, a lack of shelter is not due to an inadequate supply of houses but stems from a lack of real income to rent or buy a house. The Gallup World Poll Survey for India/GWP focuses on a lack of money to buy food, and rent or buy a house. The period covered in our study is 2018 to 2021.
Exaggerated claims versus deprivation
As India aspires to be the fastest-growing economy among the seven largest emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), tall claims are made about growing affluence and, more worryingly, about an astonishing reduction in the Multidimensional Poverty Index of nine percentage points between 2015-2019-21. In sharp contrast to these exaggerated claims, we draw attention to pervasive and growing deprivation of access to food and shelter.
About 40.2% of respondents reported not having enough money for food, while 34.7% of respondents reported not having enough money for shelter in 2018. The former rose to 48%, and the latter to 44.3% in 2021. It may seem obvious but raises a concern that the highest proportion of those without enough money to buy food is among the first per capita income quintile/the poorest and lowest among the fifth quintile/the richest throughout the period. To illustrate, while nearly 22% of the poorest lacked enough money to buy food, barely 14% of the richest experienced this deprivation in 2021.
A similar picture emerges of the lack of money for shelter. The highest proportion of those lacking money for shelter is found among the poorest and the lowest among the richest during the period 2018-21. To illustrate, over 20% of those who lacked money for shelter were among the poorest, while the corresponding share among the richest was over 15% in 2021.
Although income growth has been sluggish, it has barely trickled down to the poorest. The extraordinary push to highly visible infrastructural projects such as bullet trains, international airports, highways, and the consequent neglect of agriculture and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and the weakening of social safety nets are key contributory factors.
The caste factor
That the recent brouhaha about a caste census and in particular, deprivation of Other Backward Classes (OBC) is not mere political propaganda in the run-up to State and national elections in 2023-24 but entrenched in persistent economic and social deprivation is corroborated by our analysis. Using the GWP caste classification, we find that among those lacking money for food, the highest proportion was of OBCs (34.2%) in 2018, followed by Scheduled Castes, or SCs (32.3%), and then Unreserved (23.6%). Scheduled Tribes (ST) have the lowest share as a large segment is confined to remote forest and mountainous habitations and consume local foods. Between 2018 and 2021, the OBC share declined (31.5%) but remained highest, followed by SCs also witnessing a reduction (29.9%) while that of Unreserved rose sharply (30.8%). While political lobbyists played a role in diminishing the deprivation of OBCs and SCs, the unreserved largely fended for themselves.
Deprivation of shelter is not dissimilar. While SCs displayed the highest share of those lacking money for shelter (32.5%) in 2018, closely followed by OBCs (31.6%) and the lowest by Unreserved (23.9 %), excluding STs. The share of SCs fell but that of OBCs rose slightly; further, that of Unreserved surged. Perhaps the lobbyists paid greater attention to deprivation of food among OBCs, and less so to their deprivation of shelter.
Among those lacking money for food and shelter, the highest share (about 50% or more in both cases) was among those between 25 to 45 years old in 2021. We surmise that low wages/salaries constrain expenditure on food and shelter.
The rural-urban contrast
Among those lacking money for food, a vast majority is concentrated in the rural areas, i.e., well over 80%, with a low fraction in the urban (under 20%). While the rural share has fallen, the urban has risen. The urban in fact has doubled. A similar rural-urban contrast is observed in the deprivation of shelter. A vast majority of those lacking money for shelter are in rural areas, and this share reduced while the corresponding urban share rose. After COVID-19, it is not unlikely that resumption of rural-urban migration in search of better employment and growth of slums is key to greater urban deprivations.
Stark failure in promoting industrial and agricultural growth and in employment was sought to be mitigated by half-hearted and weak support for the Public Distribution System. Unsurprisingly, it does not have a significant effect on access to food. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, on the other hand, reduced by a significant extent deprivation of shelter but the economic magnitude was small.
Trust in the NDA remained high, driven as it was by Hindutva, excess centralisation, and a massive personality cult. In fact, going by our analysis, extremely high trust in the NDA has aggravated the deprivations of food and shelter. Reversal to protectionist policies, announcement of job fairs/rozgar mela with perverse incentives for the labour market (for example, discouraging job search), politically determined location of mega projects and granting of lucrative contracts to a few “loyal” investors are major policy aberrations. Together with consequent neglect of employment generating activities and weakening of social safety nets stark irregularities in their funding may well be disastrous for the polity and the economy.
Aashi Gupta is a doctoral candidate in Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Vani S. Kulkarni is Research Affiliate, Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania, U.S. Raghav Gaiha is Research Affiliate, Population Studies Centre, University of Pennsylvania, U.S. The views expressed are personal
