Are Raj Babbar and Professor Tendulkar really wrong?

Everyone seems to have discovered the poverty line in India. And everyone has an opinion on it—especially along the lines that the poverty line makes fun of the poor. These opinions are expressed via Facebook, Twitter and Blogs with complete abandon and often with rabid satire and smug self-validation of superior intellect, attracting mutual “likes” and comments. Defunct economists and politicians add to the confusion, creating sharp ideological divides rather than promoting rational arguments. So, what’s the reality?

First, talk to your maid

My maid and her husband together earn nearly Rs. 10,000 per month. They are a family of 6—4 kids and 2 adults. All the kids, except the eldest daughter, go to school. The family doesn’t have to spend anything on their education. They get monetary assistance through the school for buying books etc.

They spend Rs. 3000 on rent and Rs. 1000 on electricity. That leaves them with roughly Rs. 6000 to spend on food and non-food essentials. With Rs. 6000, they manage to cook two vegetables per meal, dal and roti, and include chicken often. They consume 1.5 litres of milk everyday and 30 kgs of atta (wheat flour) and 6 kgs of rice every month (Rice is consumed only on special occasions, like when there are guests). Any extra expenses, like medical bills or even new clothes, need additional income or borrowing, but they manage their food and other essentials within Rs. 6000.

Now, do the math. With 6 people, Rs. 6000 translates into a spending of Rs. 1000 per capita per month—or Rs. 33.33 per capita per day—on food. This definitely doesn’t seem like much, but if we take the family as a whole, it means spending Rs. 200 per day on food, and that should give us pause, long enough to delve deeper into the feelings of outrage and bring to light some very obvious flaws in current popular opinion.

Eating out vs. home food

The TV news reporters have been taking us into town, showing us price lists at local dhabas, and asking us “how can anyone survive on Rs. 30 a day?” And we have been exclaiming with them: How can anyone!

In the heat of the moment, we forget the overheads and profits built into that price list. We forget that home food does not have those margins built into them. And we forget that we do not eat at dhabas and restaurants everyday.

Conflicting logic

By the public outcry I’ve been witnessing recently, I’d believe that more than 1/5^th of India’s population is starving to death. I’d believe that extreme hunger is a reality for a much larger proportion than 2% of the population. I’d believe that my maid and her family are at the point of starvation deaths! And so would be yours!

If that’s the reality, then why are there equally vehement outcries against the Food Security Bill? We may need the Bill at a much larger scale than currently envisaged.

The only possible conclusion!

As we are not staring at the horrendous scenario of the imminent deaths of nearly 270 million persons and we are shouting ourselves hoarse against the Food Security Bill, what we are really saying amid all our name-calling and mud-slinging is this—the poor are actually earning and spending more, but report wrong consumption patterns, maybe to receive government aid! And if that’s what we are saying, our outrage is misdirected at Raj Babbar and Professor Tendulkar.

Coming soon: What exactly is the poverty line?