Marginalised communities continue to languish in poverty
By Arun Kumar Shrivastav
On Saturday, NITI Aayog released Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) 2021 that loudly claimed that Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh are the poorest among all Indian states. Bihar, in particular, topped most of the indices that represent the state in a negative light such as malnourishment.
As per the MPI data released by NITI Aayog, the number of poor in the three states constituted 51.91 percent, 42.16 percent, and 37.79 percent respectively of the total population in these states. Among the states that stood on the other end of the spectrum are Kerala (0.71) Goa (3.76) and Sikkim (3.82), where poverty rates, to the surprise of everyone, were very low.
However, what this report does not tell us is that the number of poor is alarmingly high in ethnic, racial, and low-caste communities.
The reference period of the index is 2015-16 and the data has been collated and analyzed in 2020-21.
As usual, politics has begun on these issues in Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh where the opposition parties have blamed the ruling dispensations for the sorry state of affairs in the respective states. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has claimed that he hasn't seen the reports so he would not comment while his party men have maintained that the data is old and doesn't reflect the changes their government in Bihar has brought about in the last five years.
However, what MPI data and news reports haven't revealed in greater detail is the constitution of the poor – who these poor people are, finally. The answer comes in the UNDP report on MPI released in September 2021.
According to this report, disparities in multidimensional poverty are higher in ethnic groups, with the top nine ethnic groups under this chart registering a poverty rate of over 90 percent. This trend is prevalent among the poorest in India, too. Five out of six multidimensionally poor in India are from lower tribes and castes. The percentage of multidimensional poor among Scheduled Tribe, Scheduled Caste, and Other Backward Class is 9.4 percent, 33.3 percent, and 27.2 percent respectively. So, it's the SC, ST, and OBC communities where the number of poor is highest.
Multidimensional Poverty Index is a measure to record and understand poverty on the basis of daily deprivations in three key dimensions – health, education, and standard of living. These areas are further divided into 12 indicators.
The UNDP 2021 report maps multidimensional poverty in 109 countries covering 5.9 billion people. It notes that multidimensional poverty can vary significantly among different ethnic and racial groups within the same country.
For example, multidimensional poverty in Gabon and Nigeria is 70 percentage points more in some ethnic groups than in some others. Similarly, the indigenous communities in Bolivia represent 75 percent of the multidimensional poor even as they constitute 44 percent of the country's population. As per the UNDP 2021 report, lower castes and tribes account for 83.3 percent of the multidimensional poor.
A further classification of multidimensional poverty presents an extremely grim picture of how the world has failed in its fight against poverty. Of the 5.9 billion people in 109 countries that the UNDP report covers, 1.3 billion people are victims of multidimensional poverty. Over 644 million multidimensionally poor are children below 18 years. And, of all multidimensionally poor people across the world, 85% live either in Sub Saharan Africa or South Asia.
Returning to the Indian narrative, Bihar (12.7 crores) Jharkhand (3.7 crores) and Uttar Pradesh (24.7 crores) constitute 30% of India's 1.39 billion population. The multidimensional poverty index is a clear indicator that India has not been able to address the issue of poverty, particularly among marginalised SC, ST, and OBC communities. Incidentally, the central government runs a slew of poverty alleviation programs targeted at the poor people in rural areas. The lack of development and the failure to remove vulnerable classes out of poverty speaks of the inaction and inefficacy of whatever has been done on this front. The only solace that can be derived from the MPI is the fact that the data represent 2015-16, of a period about 5 years ago.
Both Narendra Modi (2014) as the prime minister and Nitish Kumar (2015) as the Bihar CM were barely 1-2 years old in their respective offices. They can brush aside allegations that they had been responsible to some extent for the highly-depressing poverty data released by NITI Aayog.
But has the situation changed at all over the past 5-6 years when these two seasoned politicians known for their administrative qualities are at the helm? We may have to wait for the new data to come but what doesn't seem to have changed over the period is the level of poverty prevalent among the marginalized SC, ST, and OBC communities. This aspect of poverty has been missing from the NITI Aayog data on multidimensional poverty in the county but was highlighted by the UNDP Multidimensional Poverty Report 2021. (IPA Service)
