The Government’s inclusive growth story has benefited urban India more than rural India years in the last five years – indicating that economic divide between the richest and the poorest in the country has widened.
The Government’s inclusive growth story has benefited urban India more than rural India years in the last five years – indicating that economic divide between the richest and the poorest in the country has widened.
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The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), the government’s data collecting wing, on Friday released its 66th round of quinquennial survey for monthly household expenditure for the year 2009-10, having average rural spending at Rs 1,053 and urban spending at Rs 1984.
The new survey when compared with a similar survey in 2004-05 showed that the average monthly expenditure in urban India increased by Rs 832 as compared to just Rs 492 in rural India. It resulted in rural urban difference in monthly per capita expenditure being 88 % in 2009-10.
“The lesser increase in expenditure in rural India was because of the worst drought in 30 years during the survey period,” said Pranob Sen, former chief statistician of India and principal advisor in Planning Commission. “Drought’s impact in urban India was on prices resulting in higher expenditure”.
The survey, however, shows that income in urban India increased much more than in rural India despite the Government introducing Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Programme aimed at improving incomes and providing social security.
Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University blamed the failure of the government schemes to improve quality of life of the lowest on the poverty ladder. Her view has been collaborated in the survey, which shows that monthly expenditure of the poorest 10 % has increased by only Rs 200 in the last five years.
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“There is a need to start targeted programmes for the poorest,” a planning commission official said.
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“There is a need to start targeted programmes for the poorest,” a planning commission official said.
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The survey’s finding of widened expenditure disparity between the richest and the poorest, especially in rural India, has surprised the economists as it indicates the economic benefits of the UPA’s growth story not spreading equally.
In urban areas, the difference in monthly expenditure between the richest 10 % and the poorest 10 % increased from 4.8 times in 2005-04 to 9.8 times in 2009-10. Rural India witnessed a lesser hike in this expenditure difference with 3.2 times in 2004-05 to 5.6 times in 2009-10.
Sen said disparity in rich-poor expenditure in rural India was a reason of worry as expenditure levels in villages across different income groups were considered to be stable.
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.
