By Amarendu Nandy & Abhishek Tripathy
The Economic Survey 2020-21 has constructed a composite index referred to as the Bare Necessities Index (BNI) to examine the progress created in supplying access to bare necessities that are sine qua non for a decent living (Chapter 10, Volume 1). Using state-level information from two NSO rounds, the 69th (2012) and the 76th (2018), the BNI integrates 26 indicators across 5 dimensions—water, sanitation, housing, micro-atmosphere, and other facilities to assess the inter-state disparity in the access of bare necessities. The consolidated and dimension-smart index values are constructed and compared for rural, urban, and combined (rural plus urban) for all states across India.
The BNI seems to have taken inspiration from the design and style of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), created by researchers at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). The MPI is a worldwide measure of multi-dimensional poverty that complements regular monetary poverty measures by capturing the intensity of acute deprivations across dimensions like well being, education, and living requirements. In September 2020, NITI Aayog was entrusted with the duty to measure and monitor the state-smart overall performance of the Global MPI as element of GoI’s Global Indices to Drive Reforms and Growth (GIRG) exercising. The improvement of the BNI seems to be a step towards aligning monitoring mechanisms at the domestic level with extensively-adopted worldwide benchmarks like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Human Development Index (HDI).
The improvement of BNI signals the government’s willingness to adopt a new and more relevant multi-dimensional lens, to objectively monitor policy implementation of central schemes. Over the years, the government has launched a slew of schemes like Swacch Bharat Mission, PMAY, JJM, PMUY, Saubhagya, and so on, which address different dimensions of well-being. It enables the government to take a systemic view of the progress created in the implementation of these programmes, and how they can serve the frequent purpose of enhancing the living requirements of the society as a entire. The BNI, hence, conflates financial improvement with human improvement by adopting an objective measure across several (otherwise) subjective dimensions.
The BNI also presents an chance to discover inter-departmental synergies, which could reflect a corporate-style problem-solving method.
Coordination amongst different departments accountable for implementing the distinctive flagship schemes can lead to greater allocation and utilisation of public funds by curbing redundancies. Further, as BNI compares inter-state progress, its adoption could potentially unlock a competitive spirit amongst states, thereby, enabling greater accountability and resource utilisation.
One big point of departure with the MPI is associated to the concern of directionality. While MPI measures deprivations, BNI endeavours to measure access to bare necessities and services. Deprivation indices might be more valuable in identifying inequalities compared to access-based measures as the latter might endure from troubles of misestimation, specifically when the unit of evaluation is significantly less disaggregated. Access to necessities might not necessarily imply realised access at the household or person level as different social, political, and spatial variables might influence this.
Inter-state comparisons of BNI implicitly assume that each and every scheme (that captures the distinctive dimensions) has been uniformly provisioned across states in the initial spot. This might not be necessarily correct as Centre-state relations, and other political-economy variables can substantially influence the adoption and implementation of the central flagship schemes (which includes the ones taken in BNI), as evidenced by situations in states like West Bengal, Delhi, Telangana and other people.
While it is tempting to discover the inter-state disparities with the BNI, geographic, socioeconomic and demographic heterogeneity tends to make salient the need to have for disaggregating information down to a district or block level. This can aid policymakers fine-tune the intra-state implementation of flagship schemes and direct public sources to exactly where it matters, thereby, also enhancing the dynamics of Centre-state coordination. This can be complemented by periodic surveys to paint a continuous image of progress.
The BNI seems to make an assumption about a uniform set of bare necessities for all citizens. For instance, the sub-indices associated to micro-atmosphere and sanitation have more relevance for rural households than urban, as the latter arguably knowledge greater waste management and hygiene practices. Therefore, BNI can be greater understood if a bottom-up method could be adopted, so that bare necessities reflect some of this diversity. Customisation of the BNI might be necessary to reflect progress across varied earnings, occupational, gender, and other demographic categories.
Lastly, maintaining in thoughts the existing and future orientation of government initiatives (specifically relating to elements of ‘Digital India’ and ‘Ease of Living’), it would aid to discover strategies in which the existing BNI can be extended to maintain pace with the fluid definition of ‘bare’ necessities in a rapidly-altering economy. Indicators associated to main education, healthcare, access to info and communication technologies, and access to simple economic services, warrant integration with the current definition in order to paint a more holistic image of human welfare.
The adoption of BNI does represent a mindset alter to make public policy formulation, implementation and evaluation more proof-based—as in vogue across the globe. Though the BNI goes one step beyond the philosophy that underpinned our method to improvement in the post-independence era (roti, kapda, makaan), there exists additional scope of redefining the ‘B’ as ‘basic’ rather than ‘bare’, generating the method more forward-hunting.
Nandy is assistant professor at IIM, Ranchi and Tripathy is a PhD candidate at IIM, Ahmedabad. Views are private