'Roti, Kapda aur Makan' has been a motif of bare necessities a citizen need to lead a dignified life. While the country may have food forward in several areas, the access to basic facilities is still a challenge. The government claims that compared to 2012, access to “the bare necessities” has improved across all states in the country in 2018 and improvements were widespread in providing access to water, housing, sanitation and micro-environment.
In order to map the access to bare necessities, the Economic Survey 2021-22 released on Friday has proposed to set up Bare Necessities Index (BNI). The index will measure progress in the delivery of “the bare necessities” which has been the Narendran Modi government's main political pitch of 'acche din.'
The BNI measures access to “the bare necessities” for households in rural areas, urban areas and at the all India level. These necessities are measured using 26 comparable indicators on five dimensions: water, sanitation, housing, micro-environment, and other facilities. The indicators used to capture the availability and quality of housing, access to bathroom, kitchen, toilet, drinking water, waste discharge facilities, clean cooking fuel and disease free environment. The composite index for the States and UTs for 2012 and 2018 has been created using data mainly from two NSO rounds: 69th (2012) and 76th (2018), on drinking water, sanitation, hygiene, and housing condition in India, the survey said.
According to the survey, the Inter-State disparities in the access to “the bare necessities” have declined in 2018 compared to 2012 across rural and urban areas. This is because the States where the level of access to “the bare necessities” was low in 2012 have gained relatively more between 2012 and 2018.
“Access to the bare necessities has improved disproportionately more for the poorest households when compared to the richest households across rural and urban areas. The improvement in equity is particularly noteworthy because while the rich can seek private alternatives, lobby for better services, or if need be, move to areas where public goods are better provided for, the poor rarely have such choices. It was also found that the improved access to the bare necessities has led to improvements in health indicators and in education indicators,” the survey added.
There may be some improvements, but the disparities in access to bare necessities continue to exist between rural-urban, among income groups and also across states. The survey suggested that the government schemes, such as the Jal Jeevan Mission, SBM-G, PMAY-G, may design appropriate strategy to address these gaps.
The survey talks about the bare necessities drawing examples from the popular medium, the cinema literature. “No wonder Bollywood’s rhetoric, which often mirrors socio-economic issues in the country has zoomed in on “the bare necessities” in movies such as Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan (1974). A pointed question by the angry young man Amitabh Bachchan in the 1989 movie Main Azaad Hoon 'if you cannot provide a glass of water to a person, in 40 years, then what else can you do' highlights the importance of “the bare necessities” to the common man. The song “the bare necessities” in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book captures their importance too.”
The key findings listed by the survey includes:
- Access to drinking water to households in most of the States has improved in 2018 compared to 2012 in rural as well as urban areas.
- Sanitation access has improved for all States in rural areas and for most of the States in urban areas in 2018 compared to 2012.
- Survey observes improvement in Housing Index also indicating improvement in access to housing and reduction in inter-States disparities with disproportionate benefits for the lowest income group in 2018 vis-à-vis 2012.
- The economic Survey also notes improvement in micro environment for all states in 2018 except for Assam in rural and Odisha and Assam in urban areas as compared to 2012. Here also the improvement is especially in the lowest income quintile.
- Similarly, the Survey has observed improvement in access to other facilities which capture the availability of kitchen, kitchen with a water tap, good ventilation in house, access to bathroom, electricity use and type of fuel used for cooking.
- The survey also points to a positive correlation between access to bare necessities and better health and education outcome; it observes improvement in child survival, decline in still births, malnutrition, and infant mortality with improved access to sanitation and clean drinking water.
