New Delhi: The poorest 5% of India spend merely an average of Rs 46 daily in rural areas and Rs 67 in urban areas, as against the richest 5% whose daily consumption is Rs 350 in rural areas and Rs 700 in urban parts, indicating a huge inequality in incomes, the All India Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2022-23 that the Union government released after a gap of 11 years revealed.
“The bottom 5% of India’s rural population, ranked by MPCE (monthly per capita consumption expenditure), has an average MPCE of ₹1,373 while it is ₹2,001 for the same category of population in the urban areas. The top 5% of India’s rural and urban population, ranked by MPCE, has an average MPCE of ₹10,501 and ₹20,824, respectively,” a factsheet on the findings of the survey, released by the the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry on February 24, said.
The Union government released the broad findings of the survey carried out between August 2022 and July 2023. The survey is usually conducted by the National Statistical Office every five years but the last report based on the survey in 2017-18 after demonetisation and implementation of the the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was not released. The government cited “data quality” issues to stop its release. The Narendra Modi government has been criticised for not collecting and sharing proper data on the economy.
The latest report showed that although the average MPCE in urban households rose to Rs 3,510 – an increase by 33.5% since 2011-12 – and rural households to Rs 2008 that is a 40-42% uptick, the jump is more owing to steep inflationary trends than any real rise in incomes.
The trend is proven by the fact that the survey also revealed that the proportion of spending on food slid to 46.4% from 52.9% in 2011-12 in rural households, while it dropped from 42.6% to 39.2% in the corresponding period for urban households. The figure could imply that people may be cutting down on spending on food because of high retail inflation, or have been relieved by the government’s free ration scheme to 80 crore Indians.
The MPCE figures are based on data collected from 2,61,746 households, of which 1,55,014 were in rural areas, spread over all States and Union Territories.
“The MPCE numbers cited above do not take into account the imputed values of items received free of cost by individuals through various social welfare programmes such as the PM Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PMGKAY) or State-run schemes, which were calculated separately, while including a few non-food items received through such schemes, including computers, mobile phones, bicycles, and clothing,” The Hindu reported.
“The average MPCE, at 2011-12 prices, was a tad higher when these items were included while excluding free education and healthcare sops — at ₹2,054 for rural households, and ₹3,544 for urban homes,” it added.
Sikkim’s MPCE is the highest among Indian states at Rs 7,731 in rural and Rs 12, 105 in urban households. Chhattisgarh was at the bottom of the ladder where the MPCE is Rs 2,466 for rural and Rs 4,483 for urban households.
