M. H. Suryanarayana

Is Targeting the Poor a Penalty on the Food Insecure? Poverty and Food Insecurity in India

This paper seeks to verify the hypothesis that the set of food insecure is larger than the set of poor in India. Any attempt to reform safety nets like a food distribution programme by targeting it only to the latter would penalize those who are non‐poor but food insecure. Towards this end, the paper attempts to: exemplify the issue with reference to measures and criteria for identifying the poor and food insecure; to estimate the incidence of poverty and food insecurity at the national and state levels; and to examine how far their magnitudes tally across states. This limited exercise shows that aggregate estimates of poverty and food insecurity broadly tally at the national level and for several states. The targeted public distribution system covers the majority of the food insecure who are poor, but excludes those sections/regions whose consumption patterns have changed by choice. This calls not for any income transfer but, if at all, for nutrition education programmes to influence consumer choice.

PDS: beyond implicit subsidy and urban bias — the Indian experience

Abstract Much of the current debate on revamping the public distribution system so as to provide safety nets to the poor without exacerbating the Government deficit during the Structural Adjustment Programme in India has taken place within a limited perspective. While assessing the effectiveness and hence scope for reform, these studies have not taken into account the institutional context, development strategies and objectives of the public distribution system. This paper attempts to set out a broader perspective in which public distribution system is to be evaluated. The paper shows that revamping the public distribution system, as currently understood, would not be feasible since it would run counter to the very spirit of the reform programme; there is the need for a search for cost effective options to ensure food security.

Food Security in India: Measures, Norms and Issues

Although assessments by conventional macro measures show considerable improvement in food security in India, the levels of cereal consumption and calorie intake of even the general population are still below the normative threshold limits. This article brings out the dynamics of changes in institutional and production conditions and their implications for consumption patterns and food security at the micro level. The article uses empirical evidence to raise a number of issues, and calls for emphasis on investment in human capital by way of improvements in food and calorie intake for efficiency and economic growth.

Economic Development and Inequalities

The extent of economic inequality in its different dimensions is one parameter that has an effective bearing on (1) the choice of policies and strategies; and (2) the very development process, both form and spread, in a democratic society. Some pertinent questions from an economic perspective would be: What is the nature and extent of economic inequality? What are its policy imperatives in a welfare state?

Public distribution of food in India: A clarification

Abstract In a recent note in this journal on the public distribution of food in India, Howes and Jha disputed a view earlier advanced by us that there ‘is no evidence of any serious urban bias’ in the system. This note recapitulates the rationale for the measure used by us to evaluate the system and clarifies why we believe the issue of rural-urban bias is somewhat redundant, and what kind of policy mix is needed to address the objectives served by the public distribution system.

Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index: States in India:

The UNDP Human Development Report (HDR) for 2010 introduced a new index, the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI), to capture the distributional dimensions of human development. The indicators used for the three dimensions of the HDI, namely, income, education and health, are adjusted for inequalities in attainments across persons. In the light of growing concern with inequalities in India and the focus of the Government of India on inclusive growth, this article adopts the methodology proposed in the HDR 2010 to compute the HDI and the IHDI for states in India. This is done largely using the available information from different National Sample Survey (NSS) rounds on appropriate variables. To facilitate cross-country comparison, the indices are normalized with reference to the goalposts mentioned in the HDR 2010. The findings of this study provide useful policy insights for a strategy to promote human development by addressing inequalities across dimensions in different states in the country. The potential lost due to inequalities is the highest in education among the three dimensions. Similarly, the inequalities are staggering in the case of health. Given the spectacular growth that the country has witnessed in the last decade, the policies promoting economic growth needs to be integrated with the distributional dimensions of education and health.

Pursuing inclusion in India: a story of specification errors

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Indias five year plan strategies for including the deprived in the development process since Independence. Design/methodology/approach - This is a policy review paper based on past studies. Findings - The paper argues that effective policy formulation for inclusion and its evaluation is conditioned by the available institutional capacity to generate and effectively utilize a sound information base. Using empirical illustrations based on past studies, this paper shows that Indias pursuit of inclusion has been hampered because of the limited appreciation of design as well as limitations in available information. This has led to a mechanical pursuit of sophistication in policy formulation, which has rendered both the implementation and an honest evaluation of the policy process difficult. Originality/value - This paper has relevance for inclusive policy reforms and will open up a debate, as well as future research, on the issues raised.

Livestock service sector reform in India: efficiency versus equity

This paper examines the potential scope for efficiency and equity with reference to the recent public policy decision to commercialize the livestock service sector in India. The livestock service is provided free by the veterinary clinic in the public sector which operates virtually as a monopolist in Indian villages. The paper, using the discriminatory monopoly framework, shows that the government would succeed in its efforts to recover the cost of livestock service; the burden of cost recovery would fall on both the poor and rich beneficiary farm households. As regards to the effective cost of utilization of livestock service, the poor would end up bearing proportionately less than the rich. In the process, the market size for livestock service would decline in the short run but not output from animal husbandry. In the long run, there will be both growth and equity in the livestock sector.