Less than 5% of Indians are now expected to be below the poverty line, and extreme destitution has almost gone away, a top government official asserted on February 25, citing the findings of the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) for 2022-23. Retail inflation has also likely been overstated in recent years, he added.
Dismissing the narrative that the rural economy is weak and India’s growth story is ‘restricted to a few people’, B.V.R. Subrahmanyam, the chief executive officer of the Centre’s think tank Niti Aayog, averred that growth is “broad-based” with rural Indians’ incomes and spends rising faster than their urban peers.
The urban-rural consumption divide has narrowed to 71% in 2022-23 from a peak of 91% in 2004-05, so inequality is declining, he said, even as rural households’ spending on food has dropped below 50% of their total expenditure for the first time ever.
