Bihar, which long remained the symbol of Dark India, appeared to rise from slumber a couple of years ago, making news for its galloping growth. But the euphoria was popped recently when Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said in a signed article that in the five years to 2009-10, Bihar?s incidence of poverty had in fact grown, albeit marginally.
Stung by this, the state government wrote to the commission, expressing its disgreement with the figures and methodology relied on by Ahluwalia. Besides, the state ? headed by Nitish Kumar, arguably one of the best chief ministers in the country ? pitched for a system of dynamic revision of poverty estimates by a competent body.
In his article, Ahluwalia referred to a comparative analysis of the poverty figures of major states according to the Suresh Tendulkar methodology, which showed that poverty in Bihar for 2009-10 remained stable at 54.8%, which is 0.4% more than that in 2004-05. This is at odds with the state?s development story, which the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) boasts of. Figures quoted by Ahluwalia show that between 1993-94 and 2004-05, the state saw poverty levels (percentage of people below the poverty line) coming down from 60.5% to 54%. Curiously, during this time, Lalu Prasad Yadav?s RJD was ruling Bihar, a period when all other development indicators were down. No wonder the functionaries of Nitish Kumar government believe that Tendulkar?s poverty figures are exaggerated.
Deputy chief minister and finance minister Sushil Modi told FE that he had a bone to pick with the findings. ?We are not in agreement with these findings. The state planning commission has already written to Ahluwalia stating our disagreement with the figures and the methodology behind them. The whole idea of capping poverty figures and static numbers from census to census is ridiculous,? he said.
The state demanded that an independent body like the Election Commission should measure poverty. ?And just like inclusion and exclusion of voters are done on an ongoing basis by the Election Commission, so should the poor be included and excluded on a dynamic basis,? said Modi. To drive home its point, Bihar also points to its high scores on reduction in child malnutrition (down from 44.1% in 1992-93 to 35.8% in 2005-06) and plunging infant and maternal mortality.
Of course, the state still continues to have a patchy record when it comes to full vaccination which showed reduced coverage from 72.3% in 2005 to 68.0% in 2009. To be fair, Ahluwalia, despite the figures he quoted in the article, lends an olive branch to the state. He says: ?How far they (the figures) reflect differences in the implementation of anti-poverty schemes, is a subject that needs further investigation based on final official estimates of poverty obtained from unit-level data.?