Indexing inhumanity, Indian style
It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action when the Sensex fell by several hundred points. But no Minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit the 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index, writes P Sainath.
It all happened around the same time. The day the Sensex crossed 19,000, India clocked in 94th in the Global Hunger Index - behind Ethiopia. Both stories did make it to the front page (in one daily at least). But, of course, the GHI ranking was mostly buried inside or not carried at all that day. The joy over the stunning rise of the media’s most loved index held on for a bit the next day. The same day, India clocked in as the leading nation in the number of women dying in childbirth. In this list, the second, third and fourth worst countries put together just about matched India’s 1.17 lakh deaths of women in childbirth. This story appeared in single column just beneath the Sensex surge.
Next came the fall of several hundred points in the Sensex. That is, barely a couple of days later. It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action. Fingers were in every dyke. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram lost no time in reassuring worried investors via the media. Other top officials were all over television, doing the same. FM soothes the Market’s nerves ran the ticker. The barrage - both media and official - kept up through the day. The panels of experts convened to celebrate the 19K summit were reconvened to explain why they’d tripped off the cliff. They then droned on about the merits of P-Notes, regulation and the future. What stood out, of course, was the swiftness of both government and media response to each twitch in the index.
No minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index. That’s out of 118 countries. The daily, DNA, though, did capture the essence of the story with its report: Ethiopians manage hunger better than us. For indeed, they do these days. At least in their score on the GHI Progress Indicator of the International Food Policy Research Institute. Ethiopia worked better at reducing hunger than we did even though worse off in overall ranking. Zimbabwe, facing hyperinflation and worse, still ranks ahead of us at slot 93 in the GHI itself. Gabon, Honduras and Bolivia are also all ahead of us in that list. Pakistan too, is ahead of us in the GHI, at 88. China logs in at 47. All our south asian neighbours do better than us on this index, except Bangladesh. And who knows when they’ll overtake us? Even Nepal, one of the poorest countries in Asia, outranks us. None of them boasts an economy growing at 9 per cent a year.
You’d think it was an issue worth some attention. But it was hard to find panels debating this on television. Or any editorials in the newspapers doing the same. No Ministers or top babus soothing the nerves of the hungry. No experts with furrowed brows warning that the trends could continue, even worsen.
The GHI is by no means the only measure of what’s happening. The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organisation put it simply in 2006. Its State of Food Insecurity in the World report confirmed yet again that we have the largest number of undernourished people in the globe. The 2004 edition of the report had shown that India had added more people to the ‘newly hungry’ in the planet than the rest of the world together. There, too, nations much worse off had done far better. Between the years 1995-97 and 2000-02, hunger grew in India at a time when it fell in Ethiopia.
There was also another link begging to be made. Not just between the Sensex and hunger stories. Let’s revert to the latest maternal mortality figures released by the WHO and others. Some 536,000 women died in childbirth in 2005. Of these, every fifth one of them, at least, was an Indian. That is, 117,000 of them. A total that could only be matched by Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo together. Almost 99 per cent of all these deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries. Much of this, again, is amongst the poorer sections of the population.
If we were to look at specific groups or communities, this would be even clearer. Let alone on the hunger index, India’s rank in the U.N.’s Human Development Index is anyway dismal. There, at 126, we are below Bolivia, Guatemala and Gabon. Yet even that rank does not tell the full story. If we were to isolate the rich and the better off as a group, they might enter the top 10 nations. Efforts last year to look at adivasis as a group led pretty much in the reverse direction. One study found that if we were to derive the HDI for our tribes only, they would rank in the worst off 25 nations of the world.
That’s quite easy to believe. Canada has always been among the top 10 nations of the world in HDI rankings. In fact, it occupied the top slot for some years. Yet, a survey of its native or indigenous people towards the end of the last decade placed them at rank 63. That is, all those natives living on ‘reservations’. Across the world, tribal people mostly have a poor HDI profile.
All our South Asian neighbours do better than us on the hunger index, except Bangladesh. And who knows when it will overtake us?
• Incredible India, right here
And so it is in India, too, where they are pretty much at the bottom. The study that found their HDI to rank amongst the bottom 25 nations of the world, also found things to be worse by the region. The tribes of Orissa, it reports, fall below even the low end of the HDI of sub-Saharan African nations. This is by no means the only study to tell us how India’s tribes are doing. There are tons of official data to show us that in great detail. But there’s no rush to debate their survival in expert panels. They mostly get covered when they resist displacement. Often with loss of life. They make up just eight per cent of the population. But account for over 45 per cent of those losing their lands to projects.
The furore now on the import of wheat is welcome. At least the media have begun to look at the issue. But surely, it is also worth discussing how we came to import wheat in the first place. And how a nation with so many in hunger ended up exporting millions of tonnes of grain this decade. That too, at prices lower than those we offer to millions of poor people in this country.
New heights of misery
And no matter how the Sensex is doing, the misery index for the poor scales new heights in one sector after another. Health costs still mount. They push people into debt even faster than before. A study done for the WHO in six Indian States found that 16 per cent of households it looked at were pushed below the poverty line by heavy medical costs. Nearly 10,000 families from lower income groups were covered by the survey for the years 2002-05. Some 12 per cent had to sell their assets to meet health expenses. Over 43 per cent had to resort to loans for the same reasons.
Our answer to this has been: more of the same. More privatisation. Less and less of a public health system. In Mumbai, extortion by hospitals has become so frequent as to actually find mention in the media. But journalists do not get to make the link between the gutting of public services and the public’s misery. Much less can they track this in terms of private profiteering. That would go against the publication or channel’s stand of privatisation as a cure for all ills.
More than once this year, the Bombay High Court has warned hospitals against the cruel practice of holding back the body of a patient - demanding lakhs of rupees from the family before returning it. It still happens, though. Now even at government hospitals leased out to private managements. So a low income family is suddenly told it owes the hospital a huge sum of money. And that the body of its five-year-old girl will be released only when that sum is paid. A fine example of public-private partnership as it works today.
In fact, it would be good to devise a health index spanning the reform years. One that looks at how both rich and poor have done health-wise. How many years of life, for instance, are taken away from you by ill-health if you are one of India’s less well off citizens? In the world of the media, though, only one index matters: the Sensex. Watching which has spawned a whole little industry in itself. The numbers who pronounce on and debate it (in the media, anyway) are impressive. The oracles reading equity’s entrails for omens. Maybe we need a media relevance index. An MRI scan of mass-produced mediocrity.
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P Sainath (2007) ‘Indexing inhumanity, Indian style’, India Together, 2 November 2007. https://indiatogether.org/index-op-ed/
11 reader responses
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Shripad Dharmadhikary · 2 November 2007
Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar has remarked: "When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of the princes." How true it is of India even today. The beggars or the workers, the farmers, the dalits have to die, or live a death-like existence in silence. The whole world tom-toms when the 'princes' have even a small belly discomfort.
Jagan Mantha · 3 November 2007
Excellent article indeed. The closing statement talking of a media relevance index sums up argument about how skewed the main stream media's coverage is. This article had stirred me into forwarding the same to scores of friends and coleagues for not only thinking about the debate raised but also consider the larger aspect of supporting efforts of site of indiatogether.
Krishna · 4 November 2007
sad to find even a single comment on this topic. Even the cricket topic will get 10 comments. Sad to see india in this position even after 50 years of independence. One will surprise to find that we are not better than Ethipoia. The people who boast India's development should take back their assertions. The governments atleast take this fact in to making of the policies. Future will remember more the silence of good people than the evil of bad people" -Martin Luther King.
Shivakumar Jolad · 9 November 2007
Sainaths splendid writing style strikes the reader to look at other side of the Nation. But in doing so, he fails to provide an objective assessment of the issue. Incomplete sets of facts are provided to suit the arguments. The above article quotes maternal mortality of India (with about 1/6 of world population) in numbers as 1.17 lack per year and is compared with countries of much smaller population. In fact the scientific measure of mortality: Maternal Mortality Rate, actually declined from 407 per lakh women in 1997 to 301 per lakh in 2003- about 25% decline. Similar improvements have been shown in infant mortality too, which dropped from 80 per lakh in 1991 to 58 per lakh in 2003. These rates are still high compared to developed countries- but there is significant improvement. Our human development surely hasnt grown in commensurate with the economic growth, but if we compare to the past (0.51 in 1991 to 0.623 now) we are definitely better off. Sainath deliberately fails to acknowledge these changes, and sticks to the absolute terms. Saintah has rightly addressed the need to shift focus from GDP growth and stock markets to social and human development. In doing so, we should not lose objectivity and academic probity and acknowledge the changes taken place in these sectors. To an uninformed reader Sainths writing style (in its current form) conveys a feeling of despair and hopelessness and subsequently fails to recognize that change is possible in India.
Shivakumar Jolad · 10 November 2007
My above comments had a type. Infant mortality has been quoted per lakh. Actually it has to be per thousand. So the statement should be: ...infant mortality too, which dropped from 80 per thousand in 1991 to 58 per thousand in 2003.
Gaurav Singhal · 13 November 2007
True Shivkumar, you have truly expressed my views after reading this and many other such articles. I also caught these mistakes in this article, and would I be allowed to speak the truth... I find so much lack of objectivity and mistakes in many of such articles, many times written by eminent persons, that I completely get frustrated by this all. When I come to look what media is reporting for poverty reduction, at one place is the 'mainstream' media which has its aim to serve its viewers only what they like and want, and at the other place I find most of the socially responsible media though high on morality and sympathy towards poor, dismally weak on an understanding of economics of poverty reduction, information correctness and the vision to the future. Emotionally charged articles with no consideration to the real causes of the problem sets the background of efforts directed towards making the problem even more complex. When a piece of land is acquired by the government to facilitate a car factory, they will, with all sympathy and pain for the poor, say that 'I need my land, not money'. No consideration how devastating such a thought can be to future poverty reduction efforts for millions of rest of the poor. No consideration of what thinkers from Nehru's time to Supreme Court debates to present day successful poverty elimination examples have shown. No respect for the common right of the community over use of land for the development and jobs of people at large. Failure to identify the absence of right and just compensation for land in most cases as the most vital and central cause of the problem. Similar the case with establishment of steel factories. No where an analysis that such a factory and steel production when added to the economy may provide lakhs of jobs to the poor jobless, many of whom will be on the verge of death from starvation. Those lakhs of invisible poor are simply not seen. Instead of identifying the solution that a price equal or even greater than market price should be paid so that a similar land can actually be bought elsewhere, solution to the problem is suggested by mere application of short sight and emotion. And in the process, many a times, losing objectivity. The author of the present article mentions that tribal people have lost more of the land but at the same time fails to identify that many projects are intentionally established in tribal and under-developed areas. Also, many of the tribal areas are highly rich in natural resources, which leaves us with no other option. GHI represents the present status of Hunger while GHI-P represents progress made in reducing the hunger. When comparing Ethiopia author considers its GHI-P figure (0.498) that is ignorably better than India (0.496). But no mention that Ethiopia has dismal status on two of the three critical parameters of GHI (also included in the millennium development goals), namely undernourished population and under-five year mortality rate. Ethiopia relatively has 130% more undernourished population and 95% more child mortality rate compared to India from the same report. And now coming to Zimbabwe, no mention of GHI-P figure here. (It is negative, -0.319). Here the author selectively chooses to compare on the GHI front to prove that Zimbabwe performed better, whereas it is going into a trouble as shown by GHI-P index. Similarly, no mention that we have actually performed better in hunger reduction in last 17 years than Gabon and Honduras. What can be done if these nations start with a very low level of hunger, we are doing better than them to eliminate hunger from our nation at present, and it's our base value of hungry people that was larger than them at the start (See 1990 data in the report) But this is not in any way to say that we are better than Ethiopia or Zimbabwe so we should rejoice. This is just to demonstrate how data is presented to suit the arguments in articles. India has a long way to improve on human development, our performance is lower than many countries, but at the same time meaningful comparison shows we have done reasonably well than many others. Presenting facts and arguments just to suit a particular view point mars the objectivity media should have. The author chooses to inform that our South Asian neighbors like Pakistan and Nepal are ahead of us on GHI. But from the same report he doesn't present the fact that we have actually progressed to eradicate hunger almost 100% more compared to them in last 17 years by comparing GHI-P. The author cites another report to say that between 1995-97 to 2000-02, hunger grew in India. But he doesn't cite various survey reports published for Indias poverty reduction which suggest that overall poverty actually continued to be reduced during the same period, and especially rural poverty (Sundaram, Himanshu, Dev and Ravi etc.). He also doesnt tell that the Global Hunger Index report, which he has written his article based upon, tells percentage of undernourished saw a reduction by 20%, percentage of underweight children by 27% and under-five child mortality saw a reduction by 31% during 1990 to 2005 in India. Instead of presenting the numbers relative to population, he chooses to unscientifically present absolute numbers to an uninformed reader. It is not to say that alls well in India and we are on a right track. If we study the GHI report, we get many facts which suggest that things are not that good as they might have been, especially comparing to some best performing nations. But still, we have to present the other side also, that the same report expresses satisfaction that India nearly achieved its mid point expected GHI in 2007 (Page 14). The report also suggested that a positive development by China and India is caused by their high economic growth, though the hunger reduction is not that much proportional at present as the economic boom (Page 45). May be, keeping in mind the time lag between industrial growth and trickle down, the coming time shows enhanced eradication in poverty and hunger, provided the government keeps in its focus investment in physical and social infrastructure. We still lack sufficient investments in healthcare and education. We still need to maintain the PDS. We still have a large number of our people under poverty and hunger. The efforts of the people who raise and debate these matters should be always supported and respected. But the need is to analyse and present the picture in the most correct and objective way.
Arun Talwar · 18 November 2007
A very good article. I often wonders why so much importance is given to sensex alone. I think, along with the sensex, we should also publish a daily human index.
Rammohan C B · 18 November 2007
I think the above comment by Shivkumar Jolad atleast warrants a clarification by Sainath here.
S.V.Anbazhagan · 20 November 2007
Development is an ongoing effort and in a democracy an organised effort involving many people covering large area and a 5-year period at a time.There are designated persons to plan, there are designated persons to execute the plans, there are persons with assignment for Checking whether execution is going on as per plan and there designated people to correct the gaps found as a result of the checking done. Sainath is a person with concern. He checks the Indian situation and reports the gap and while so doing describes it in such a way that one has to sit up and after reading it, think about it too. How much we have achieved is not his cup of tea. He is worried about the pace of filling the cup and the gap still remaining and especially after such a long time of effort. If his writing is read in this perspective it does not create any despair in the minds rather it inspires us to do something. It is not known unfortunately as to what must be done. The suggestion of introducing Daily Human Index appears good idea so that it gives in indication that the development we brag about is worthy of bragging or to be ashamed of because of its social cost.
Gaurav Singhal · 3 December 2007
"The newspapers should be read for the study of facts. They should not be allowed to kill the habit of independent thinking. " -Mahatma Gandhi. After reading the above article and founding grave mistakes in it, I read in detail the Global Hunger Index Report for two days. I found that the author had suppressed 90% of relevant facts mentioned in the report. What made me sorrowful was that the author had no clue about the concepts of GHI. Searching the internet, all other journalists were also in the same boat. I will write a detailed article if I get some time in future about it. But even then, even if the understanding of the concepts is not that deep, at-least the facts should not have been suppressed. Concepts can be debated (as even the concept that GHI report mentions that India 'failed' to achieve targets even as India achieved 99.2% of its targets up-to 2007. It tags a 'Pass' to those who scored 100%, but 99% is a fail! ), but not the facts. Looking at the Gandhi's quote again, this particular article grossly suppressed the facts and forcefully made the thinking of the reader to go in predetermined direction rather than allowing him to think independently. This article doesn't match the highly excellent standards Sainath maintains while writing to the lakhs of his readers.
Gaurav Singhal · 17 May 2011
"In 2007, the National Sample Survey ( NSS )) found that nearly 11% of families in Bengal faced starvation during several months of the year, the highest among any state in India. Orissa was a distant second, with less than 5% of families in such dire straits." -'Left rules West Bengal for 34 years and ruins the state', Economic Times, 17th May 2011. The government and the media should look in detail this survey, as it will give further insights into the regions of India where governance has totally failed to cause hunger and starvations. 11% ans 5% of the whole families of any states facing starvation is a horrible state!! Media needs to cover these issues more vigorously to sensitize the people and the government. Thanks Indiatogether for your reporting in this regard!