All the politically biased committees have come out with all sorts of figures about the population below poverty line (BPL) varying from as low as 30% to as high as 80%. Politicians get cooked the high figures to get the allocation of a huge government fund for the people of BPL category in name of a mission of inclusive growth. It is, however, just for feeding themselves and their men with 85% of the benefits coming to them instead of reaching the rightful beneficiaries. Can someone tell me where should these politicians with tons of unaccounted wealth be placed?
But, for me, the more exciting was a recently reported NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) estimate. According to the estimate, the number of high-income households should have reached 46.7 million by March 2010, exceeding the 41 million households counted as low-incomes.
A decade ago, just 13.8 million households were described as high-income that meant with ‘earning more than Rs 1.8 lakh per annum at 2001-02 prices’. 65.2 million households were classified as low-income or earning less than Rs 45,000 per year that are now 41 million households in number.
Interestingly, the middle-income households, or those earning between Rs 45,000 and Rs 1.8 lakh per annum, have rose sharply from 109.2 million to 140.7 million in the decade.
Left to the politicians, they will see the whole population as destitute and dependent on them for getting everything in doles without doing anything. This is the policy vision of this democracy dependent on the population that votes, called popularly as vote bank.
To give one example, the government spends Rs 1, 00,000 crore on subsidy for the rural India, but has kept the most of the country’s farming on the mercy of monsoon with hardly a significant enough effort to arrange irrigation facilities in last sixty years.
I wish it puts a year’s total subsidy on the irrigation projects. But who will ensure the effectiveness of the investment even if it takes such decisions? Most of the money will go to the middle men that are the minor partners of politicians in the game of implementing the government projects.
Many a times, after going through the reports such as one above I wonder how it is happening in spite of such poor governance. Is it because of some institutions and individuals that are hardly known to the masses but keep on doing their work with focused missions?
PS: How do we reach at the correct figure? Do ‘only 45 per cent of the population earns less than Rs 20 a day’ or 80 per cent of the population lives below Rs20 per day?
दृष्टिकोण - Indra's Viewpoint 