32 Rs (0.5 dollars) a day : Not sufficient enough to survive

32 Rupees (0.5 dollars) a day per person, that’s India’s poverty line benchmark for Urban areas. Yes, you heard it right, that’s the value which is used by the govt. of India to determine and decide who is poor in India and who is not. The benchmark reduces even further to 28 Rupees a day per person for the people living in rural areas. These are the figures and benchmarks released by the planning commission of India, which consists of highly educated scholars and experts, after considerable deliberations and discussions. But even despite the sound professional dexterity and knowledge of the members of planning commission of India, these poverty line benchmarks don’t look plausible in reality.



The poverty line benchmarks released by the planning commission of India for urban and rural areas seem to be long drawn away from the existing reality on grounds. While these nonsensical and irrational benchmarks don’t mean anything to poor people who are constantly suffering being deprived of the basic necessities of life, the appalling ignorance of the existing realities by the govt. adds to the travesties and sufferings of the poor. These figures are plain numbers, even going to an extent of mocking their penurious state of conditions. The govt. might pat its back for reducing poverty to 21.46% of the population in 2012-13 from 37.47% in 2004-05 but the real picture is completely opposite of what is being portrayed and shown. Constant depreciation of rupee and high inflation have led to the decline of the purchasing power of rupee in the domestic market. Purchasing power of any currency tells us about how much more money does a consumer need to spend to buy a particular product in the market as compared to the purchase of the same product in the previous years. With considerable decline in the purchasing power of rupee in the last 20 years, people are forced to shed out more money to purchase products of basic needs like food grains, water, electricity. The planning commission of India should have raised poverty line benchmark considering these factors to provide a proper reflection of the effects of inflation but that didn’t happen.


Also, 28 or 32 Rs aren’t even enough to purchase food for a person, so what about the health, education and other basic needs. Planning commission should also consider providing these necessary basic services to people while calculating poverty line benchmarks. India's poverty line benchmark is around 0.5 dollars which is 2/3 rd less than the international poverty line benchmark of 1.5 dollars a day per person. Hence, it is necessary and incumbent upon the govt. and planning commission to reconsider their process and method used in calculating these benchmarks to help poor get the benefits of being below the poverty line. The concept of giving benefits to the people lying below the poverty line came into picture to help the extremely backward and poor section of the society. Right now, with India’s absurd poverty line benchmarks, many needy poor people are missing out on these benefits, thereby making it difficult for them to survive. We hope that govt. wakes up from its slumber and some sanity prevails.

“Half of the homes in world’s largest democracy have cellphones, but no toilets”

India, which boosts to be the world’s largest democracy, has a pitiable record when it comes to providing basic amenities to its people to let them live a respectful life. Half of the country’s population is devoid of the basic necessities of life like good quality food, clean drinkable water, electricity, proper medical and sanitation facilities, and competent education system. Numbers are staggering and highly shocking when it comes to the availability of the sanitary facilities for the people living in the country.


 Half of the homes in the country don’t have toilets as people are forced to defecate outside in the open, leading to some serious health issues. This open defecation of human excreta not only leads to the generation of harmful bacteria and germs, which further result in serious health problems among people but also degrades the quality of the soil and pollutes the environment. According to a recent UN report, India constitutes more than 60% of the world’s population who defecate in the open. It boggles our mind beyond a permissible limit when we consider that most of these toilet deprived homes have access to cellphones. What’s the use of these cellphones when people are forced to excrete in the open, violating the sanctity of women and letting people especially children die because of the infection induced from open defecation.


The situation becomes more and more grim as you go into the interior regions of the country. These open defecations give birth to manual scavenging, which is considered as the worst form of punishment. Despite the stringent anti- manual scavenging act passed by the govt. of India, manual scavenging is still very much persistent in certain parts of the country. Ineffective implementation of the anti-manual scavenging act and the absence of the comprehensive policies from the govt. for providing free sanitary services to the poor have been cited as the main reasons for the inability in putting an end to manual scavenging.


In the last two years, things have started to improve as ministry of rural development has become more proactive in handling issues related with sanitation. A campaign “no toilets, no bride” was started last year by the minister of rural development, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, where he exhorted women living in rural areas not to marry in families where there were no toilets. More emphasis is now being given to the issues related with sanitation and the need for toilet equipped homes. Bringing in Ms. Vidya Balan as the brand ambassador for the rural development has helped in promoting the cause further.


This changed attitude on the part of our govt. augurs well for India, who for long has suffered with sanitation related issues. India’s sanitation and toilets statistics will continue to raise stinks unless some drastic measures are taken up. In this 21^st century, India continues to lag behind in 17^th century when it comes to providing sanitation facilities for the people. We all hope that these statistics change soon.

Hunger Kills : Don't we know it !!

One day, sitting idle on my couch, I was going through a magazine. As I was flipping the pages of the magazine, I saw an article with a headline "WHAT'S THERE IN NUMBERS".


Instantly, I replied to myself, we need NUMBERS to measure the value of anything in this world, be it weight, height, temperature, price etc. Numbers form the basis of measurement. Without Numbers, we wouldn't be able to scale anything. A common answer to a common question. But I still wasn't able to decipher why the author has used such a common title for an article. With that, I decided not to waste my time reading that article. I didn't know at that time that these three words will change my thinking forever.



A few days back, I saw the Global Hunger Index Report 2012 released by International Food Policy Research Institute. I was completely shocked and bed stricken to see India lagging behind at 65th spot out of 79 countries in global hunger index, even behind our neighbours Pakistan, Srilanka, Myanmar, Nepal. I wouldn't count China here because it would be a foolishness on my part to even compare 2nd ranked China with lowly 65th ranked India. India and China aren't comparable in any sense. But, people still compare them, don't know why ?


Leaving this China topic behind, let's move forward. I was not only shocked by the number but it was bewildering for me. After reading the report, the only sentence which came to my mind was "what's there in numbers". For the past decade or so, we Indians have clamored about our growth story. We have taken pride in being one of  the top five fastest growing nations of the last decade. An average growth of about 8% p.a. may have been impressive but what's the point of achieving such high numbers when the growth is not inclusive. The needy, poor in our country are feeling left out because they haven't been benefited by this illusionary growth story. We have been so mesmerized by these growth numbers that we  have overlooked the plight of poor in this country. We haven't even dared to look whether the benefits of this growth are reaching the desired people or not. Poor people, especially children are dying because of hunger. According to a data, in India, around 6 million people have died out of hunger in the last decade or so. These are staggering numbers. Don't we Humans know, Hunger is the worst method to die from. Let all of us come forward and make efforts for a better, hunger free India. Hope never dies.!!!