Emerging India, Stunted Bharat: The diving poverty line

The intellectual acumen of our world-renowned policy-makers and economists setting a poverty line at  25(app. € 0,40 ) in village and 32(app. € 0,50)  in the city is remarkable. This makes 400 million Indians in a population of 1.3 billion, living below the poverty line. These are the official Indian estimates. According to estimates by Asian Development Bank, 651 million Indian are living below the poverty line. If the level is set at $2(or 90 ) a day, 800 million Indian are living below the poverty line. That makes over 80% of India. Seeing so much of poverty around and yet making a miser estimate officially, one wonders if we are getting immune to the concept of poverty, the poor and the down-trodden. And what is the State doing? Setting levels at lower and lower levels, so that we can pretend to have more in the middle class bracket. Perhaps a stratagem to indicate more inclusive growth!

All this makes one think, for whom is India developing. Are we on the desired path to growth. When we adopted our modern day Constitution on 26^th January 1950, the vision of the then founding Fathers was to have a State that was ‘Socialist’ in outlook. Accordingly Directive Principles of State Policy were adopted in the Constitution. They were given the stature of Directive Principles at that time because the Nation did not have the resources to make them enforceable rights. Thus, instead of being made Fundamental Rights; they were made the Directive Principles. It was believed that these Principles will be the guiding beacon of light for the incumbent governments. But even sixty-two years after the adoption of the Constitution, not much seems to have changed; atleast for those in the myriad of poverty.

The sad state of affairs and the charlatan representation of growth, leaves one wondering, if there are two Indias’ within one, divided by an economic line of poverty: one the Emerging India and the other a Stunted uncared for Bharat.