Poverty

Conceptual and operational issues for constructing multidimensional poverty indices in India are discussed and the possibilities of its application for strategic interventions are examined in this article. It argues that questions concerning the selection of indicators, data sources, weightages, threshold limits, etc, have to be addressed through a consultative process, keeping it above the short-term politics of the regime.

The core objective of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is to promote rural development and reduce poverty by supplementing private employment in the rural Indian economy with public employment. This paper is an attempt to verify the performance of MGNREGA by studying four sample villages from West Bengal. The study has built a social accounting matrix from which the output and employment multipliers for each village are computed. However, it shows the demand-side impact, whereas the realisation of MGNREGA’s potential positive multiplier effect depends on supply-side support, which is lacking in the villages. The paper, therefore, suggests supply-side initiatives in MGNREGA through a focus on productivity enhancement measures.

It has been acknowledged that the disparities in the development indicators between north and south Kerala have been reduced significantly post independence. This reduction is typically attributed to developments in the social sector. However, there is considerable difference existing between Malabar and Travancore–Cochin in terms of living standards and key infrastructural facilities. The multidimensional poverty index has also revealed that the incidence of poverty is high in northern Kerala compared to southern Kerala. People-centric policies coupled with decentralisation have effectively reduced the outcome disparity, while the Malabar region still lags behind the Travancore–Cochin region in some key aspects.

Making India Great Again: Learning from Our History by Meeta and Rajivlochan, New Delhi: Manohar, 2020; pp 299, `1,495 (hardcover).

The latest round of the Situation Ass­essment Survey of Agricultural Households is used to calculate income poverty instead of commenting on consumption poverty across non-comparable data sets. Using three different poverty lines, it is demonstrated that at least 21.1% of agricultural households are extremely income poor. Though the so-called “Great Indian Poverty Debate 2.0,” with statistical assu­mptions on consumption distribution or relative prices, may provide certain estimates of poverty, those seem to be disproportionate to the actualities of the extremely poor in recent times.