By Virendra Kapoor on
If the ruling party finds the latest poverty numbers credible, it should be anxious to advance the general election to time it with the Assembly polls due later this year in key northern States. After all, lifting tens of millions out of poverty in double-quick time is no mean achievement. It must encash it at the earliest.
But it is equally certain that, if it can help, the Congress would not curtail its five-year term even by a day. Because, like the rest of the political class, it too does not trust the poverty numbers. Credit the Congress leadership with some intelligence. It knows the popular mood is so hostile that no secularist red herrings will induce mass amnesia on the voting day about its dreadful record in power.
The voter can no longer be taken for granted. The five-yearly poverty survey was advanced by at least by a year. The objective was to dazzle the electorate with the impressive advances made in poverty alleviation. Unsurprisingly, now that Nitish Kumar has most opportunistically broken with the BJP, since he was sure of retaining the Chief Ministerial gaddi, Bihar seemed to have left other States far behind in poverty removal.
Raj Babbar eats crow on meal-at-Rs-12 remark
Poverty levels, says the survey, dropped by a whopping 21 per cent in the period virtually coterminous with the emergence of Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister. Data released for the five-year period ending in 2009-10 had found that poverty levels were static in Bihar. But at that time Kumar was still in bed with the ‘communal’ BJP. The latest survey has painted a completely rosy picture. Kumar should be grateful to the UPA leadership because actual conditions in Bihar do not warrant the latest poverty data.
However, instead of a pat for the UPA, the survey has elicited near-universal condemnation. Even the Congress’s allies, such as the NCP, have reacted with open disdain. The BJP dubbed it a joke on the poor. It was reprehensible to claim that the poor can survive on Rs 33.33 per day in urban areas and Rs 27.20 in rural areas. How many members of the Planning Commission would volunteer to live on that piddly little sum just for a day outside the gilded environs of Lutyens’s Delhi?
How ridiculous the survey is can be illustrated by citing just one claim. It says that only six per cent of the people in Mumbai and ten per cent in Delhi live below the poverty line. Anyone familiar with the two metros would dismiss that claim with contempt. Nearly half the populations in those two cities live in slums. And they are not poor, says the Government of India. Maybe the Government will launch a media blitz to drum into the ears of the shanty-dwellers that they are no longer poor. Goebbels’s rule was simple: Repeat a lie a thousand times for it to become true.
Cheap comments on cheap meals not enough? Now a Congress U-turn on poverty report
However, if the number of poor is less than 22 per cent, does it make sense to waste tens of thousands of crores on cheap cereals for more than two-thirds of the population? Quite clearly, the Government itself does not trust the numbers. Was it meant to be Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s contribution to the Congress’s propaganda spiel? If yes, it has recoiled pretty badly on the Congress alright. Anything else in your quiver, Mr Ahluwalia?
Meanwhile, television anchors have provoked an acrimonious debate between two eminent economists, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, but the way it is framed leaves no one in doubt that Bhagwati is the winner. For there can be no development without growth. Sen might be wrong in stressing development over growth, though after criticism he too has come round to acknowledge that growth is the key. For widening the entitlement net evermore you need money in the public kitty. And for that, growth is crucial, isn’t it? Sen seems to be losing the argument due to his penchant for making unsubstantiated claims. For instance, he said that each week the Food Security Bill remained unimplemented it claimed a thousand lives. Multiply the number of weeks a thousand times since independence, and you get a sense of Sennomics!
Source: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/07/28/congresss-record-on-poverty-is-a-joke-110623.html
If the ruling party finds the latest poverty numbers credible, it should be anxious to advance the general election to time it with the Assembly polls due later this year in key northern States. After all, lifting tens of millions out of poverty in double-quick time is no mean achievement. It must encash it at the earliest.
But it is equally certain that, if it can help, the Congress would not curtail its five-year term even by a day. Because, like the rest of the political class, it too does not trust the poverty numbers. Credit the Congress leadership with some intelligence. It knows the popular mood is so hostile that no secularist red herrings will induce mass amnesia on the voting day about its dreadful record in power.
The voter can no longer be taken for granted. The five-yearly poverty survey was advanced by at least by a year. The objective was to dazzle the electorate with the impressive advances made in poverty alleviation. Unsurprisingly, now that Nitish Kumar has most opportunistically broken with the BJP, since he was sure of retaining the Chief Ministerial gaddi, Bihar seemed to have left other States far behind in poverty removal.
Raj Babbar eats crow on meal-at-Rs-12 remark
Poverty levels, says the survey, dropped by a whopping 21 per cent in the period virtually coterminous with the emergence of Nitish Kumar as Chief Minister. Data released for the five-year period ending in 2009-10 had found that poverty levels were static in Bihar. But at that time Kumar was still in bed with the ‘communal’ BJP. The latest survey has painted a completely rosy picture. Kumar should be grateful to the UPA leadership because actual conditions in Bihar do not warrant the latest poverty data.
However, instead of a pat for the UPA, the survey has elicited near-universal condemnation. Even the Congress’s allies, such as the NCP, have reacted with open disdain. The BJP dubbed it a joke on the poor. It was reprehensible to claim that the poor can survive on Rs 33.33 per day in urban areas and Rs 27.20 in rural areas. How many members of the Planning Commission would volunteer to live on that piddly little sum just for a day outside the gilded environs of Lutyens’s Delhi?
Bihar midday meal tragedy: Now Nitish blames Opposition
How ridiculous the survey is can be illustrated by citing just one claim. It says that only six per cent of the people in Mumbai and ten per cent in Delhi live below the poverty line. Anyone familiar with the two metros would dismiss that claim with contempt. Nearly half the populations in those two cities live in slums. And they are not poor, says the Government of India. Maybe the Government will launch a media blitz to drum into the ears of the shanty-dwellers that they are no longer poor. Goebbels’s rule was simple: Repeat a lie a thousand times for it to become true.
Cheap comments on cheap meals not enough? Now a Congress U-turn on poverty report
However, if the number of poor is less than 22 per cent, does it make sense to waste tens of thousands of crores on cheap cereals for more than two-thirds of the population? Quite clearly, the Government itself does not trust the numbers. Was it meant to be Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s contribution to the Congress’s propaganda spiel? If yes, it has recoiled pretty badly on the Congress alright. Anything else in your quiver, Mr Ahluwalia?
Meanwhile, television anchors have provoked an acrimonious debate between two eminent economists, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, but the way it is framed leaves no one in doubt that Bhagwati is the winner. For there can be no development without growth. Sen might be wrong in stressing development over growth, though after criticism he too has come round to acknowledge that growth is the key. For widening the entitlement net evermore you need money in the public kitty. And for that, growth is crucial, isn’t it? Sen seems to be losing the argument due to his penchant for making unsubstantiated claims. For instance, he said that each week the Food Security Bill remained unimplemented it claimed a thousand lives. Multiply the number of weeks a thousand times since independence, and you get a sense of Sennomics!
Source: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/07/28/congresss-record-on-poverty-is-a-joke-110623.html
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