Articles by M H Suryanarayana

Given the contemporary public concern about the worsening relative deprivation of the masses and the need for appropriate policies to address the social cost of the reform programme, the Government of India has declared its commitment to the aam aadmi and the poorest of the poor. This paper examines how far the government has been successful in realising its objective of inclusive growth. As evidence of outcomes, it examines the National Sample Survey data on household consumption distribution in terms of relative distributional measures across social groups at different levels of regional aggregation by rural and urban sector. The estimates from four different NSS rounds for the agricultural years 1993-94, 2004-05, 2009-10 and 2011-12 throw up a profile of exclusion of the poor involving exclusionary growth of the better-off in the economy as a whole. At the national level, disparities across social groups have increased involving a widening of the average consumption shortfall of the scheduled tribes, a decline for the scheduled castes, marginal decline for the Other Backward Classes and an increase in the excess of average consumption of Other Social Groups with respect to the overall median. Similar analyses at the level of major states, by sector, corroborate in general the findings at the national level of an era of exclusionary growth confined to the better-off sections.

This study addresses issues related to definition, dimension, and measure of economic disparities from the perspective of the finance commission. It illustrates concepts and measures within the Kuznets framework for Karnataka and Maharashtra. Though the two states are better off than the nation as a whole in terms of mean-based estimates of average income, they have pronounced inter-regional disparities, interpersonal inequalities and intra-regional deprivations. Broad-based and inclusion measures are generally higher in poor backward regions and vice versa, implying broad-based backwardness and inclusion in deprivation. Such a scenario sets limits on the potential for resource mobilisation and makes a case for investment strategies that promote broad-based inclusive growth across all regions at the state level.

The demand for "universalisation" of the public distribution system during a period of rising prices is not relevant since, more than four-fifths of households in rural areas and two-thirds in urban centres are already covered by it. Yet, a very small proportion of rural/urban households actually make purchases of either rice or wheat from the PDS; an insignificant amount of consumption is met by ration shop purchases. The pattern is somewhat better for below the poverty line households with ration cards. What all this shows is that the issue is not universalisation but improved functioning, greater efficiency and BPL-friendliness of the PDS.

There is a consensus that poverty in India has declined since the mid-1970s. This study contests this view by examining the suitability of the database and its implications for the observed trends in poverty estimates in the context of structural changes in the rural economy. It contends that the statistical estimates do not show a real reduction in poverty but only a reduction in overestimation of poverty for the initial years followed by its underestimation for the later years.

M H Suryanarayana The article deals with the salient features of the Uruguay Round of GATT and their implications for global food security. The various provisions and exemptions provided for in the Uruguay Round leave enough scope for distorted markets to persist and hence the expected macro gains may not materialise. The article argues, with reference to empirical studies on Asia and Africa, that questions relating to food insecurity can be dealt by effective targeted efforts ensuring food security at the regional as well as household levels.