Continuing the debate on the Deaton and Dreze analysis of food and nutrition in India, it is argued that the latter’s analysis is defective because (i) it does not look at direct and indirect cereal consumption when examining the relationship between cereal intake and income, and (ii) it is fallacious to reason that the declining cereal consumption reflects a diversification of diets. It is also pointed out that the Deaton-Dreze critical response to the use of “direct poverty lines” is misplaced.
Urban poverty, when directly measured by counting the persons unable to access the official nutrition norm of 2,100 calories through their total monthly spending on all goods and services, declined between 1983 and 1993-94, but rose substantially between 1993-94 and 2004-05 while poverty depth has increased.
Depression in agriculture and farmer suicides continue, thanks to the misguided actions of Indian policymakers.
AS the outstanding Marxist economist Paul Baran had pointed out in The Political Economy of Growth, what is cooked in the kitchen is not decided in the kitchen. Similarly, what happens to agricultural producers is decided outside agriculture by public policy.
The judgment one reaches on what the current year's Budget will do for farmers will vary depending on whether its provisions are seen as a sui generis exercise or are viewed within a longer term per
