A masterpiece film, Roti, Kapada Aur Makaan (translated as Food, Cloth and Shelter), produced and directed by Manoj Kumar in 1974, depicted the severe deprivation and devastation of a man for whom living honestly became a will-o’-the wisp. Deprivation sometimes exacts an exorbitant price that is borne over a lifetime. Undernourished children, for example, are more likely to be stunted. Stunting has long-term effects on individuals, including poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages, lost productivity and, when accompanied by excessive weight gain later in childhood, a higher risk of nutrition-related chronic diseases in adult life (the World Health Organization, 2015).
The objective in this article, therefore, is to examine whether some of these deprivations, especially a lack of food and shelter, rose or diminished during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime. As Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen emphasised in his classic study of famines (1981), starvation is caused not so much by a shortage of food supply as by a lack of entitlements/real income to buy food. Similarly, a lack of shelter is not due to an inadequate supply of houses but stems from a lack of real income to rent or buy a house. The Gallup World Poll Survey for India/GWP focuses on a lack of money to buy food, and rent or buy a house. The period covered in our study is 2018 to 2021.
