MJ Akbar
FOR seven decades since 1947, poverty has been demarcated by statistics. Economists found it useful in policy formulation and the management of monies for economic upliftment; bureaucrats pretending to be economists measured decisions through politically illiterate numeracy; there was generous selfcongratulation and much clamour for Padma Shri awards when any statistic showed that the poverty line had shifted from 35 per cent to 30 per cent.
No one ever had a human face in focus in the safe sanctuaries of Government Bhavans. No one understood that 30 per cent of a billion Indians meant 300 million human beings trapped in uncertainty over their next meal, counting the days of life as nothing more than moments of survival, dying early of disease and malnourishment. Their political masters never devised a separate language that might better reflect the cruelty and impossible pain of hunger that had emaciated a child, killed the child. It took a Prime Minister who had suffered hunger to understand the true meaning of hunger.
Finance-neutral concept
MUDRA, launched on April 8, 2015, was never a rash handout. It was an affordable means of economic empowerment in which the responsibility for success lay with the recipient, not any Government agency. It was in concept finance-neutral since those who received the loans had to repay them. Collateral-free financial support went to the poor, not to fat cats or the middle class; it went to women selling vegetables on a mat outside a market, to a man with a cart.
Sixty eight per cent of the beneficiaries were women; and this more than anything else in my view was a primary reason for its astonishing success for women are more industrious, more responsible and more fiscally honest than men. It gave women the dignity and selfrespect of economic advantage. In 10 years, 520 million loans were given, so that on a rough count, this means that 300 million women have achieved greater financial independence. Half the loans went to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes; 11 per cent of the beneficiaries were from the minorities: if this is not financial inclusion, I would like to know what else is. One state which used MUDRA to splendid effect was Jammu & Kashmir. This surely contributed significantly to the economic upsurge we have seen in J&K in the last decade.
Zero-hunger scheme
And much to the shock and horror of those who live and die by statistics, the economy of India did not collapse because the banks of India were forced, by diktat, to pay attention to the poor rather than to fattening themselves by fattening the rich. I recall the cries of shock and horror led by Congress that echoed through the media when such schemes for the disadvantaged were unveiled in early 2015. Notice the complete silence about MUDRA from those who thought MUDRA was an obituary notice of the Indian economy.
One of the privileges of a democracy is a fundamental right to dislike any Prime Minister. If that is your preference, please do so. But this does not give you any right to challenge a policy that has used the banking system so creatively to challenge what I continue to describe as our historic curse, for no other phrase can begin to delineate the harsh, extreme poverty of an empty stomach.
The PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana was a logical bookend to this objective. The cries were a trifle more muted when the Budget of 2022-23 allotted Rs 2 lakh crore for the allotment of five kilograms of rice or wheat and one kilogram of lentil to the Garib mentioned in the nomenclature. This Zero Hunger Programme now reaches over 800 million Indians. It has rescued India from the stain of food anxiety. In all probably no statistician was asked about viability, or it might never have happened. Economists told a previous government that all it required to solve the problem was to enable the poor to earn Rs 32 a day. Congress, which obeyed such statistics, crashed to such an abysmal defeat in the consequent elections that it has not yet recovered.
Tribute to Tamil Nadu
We must pay tribute to Tamil Nadu, where a limited midday meal for the malnourished was started in 1925, but became a substantive reality only through the efforts of Kamaraj in 1962, and then the phenomenal MG Ramachandran in 1982. They knew the meaning of hunger. No one had even conceived that a partial alleviation could be converted into a national fact until the Modi Budget of 2022-23.
The Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana was a revolution because it empowered those who were not considered worthy of being included in the banking system. The media went hysterical with jeers when it was announced. Check the audio-visual record. It is all there, lying in now some conveniently forgotten corner. The Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana will place Modi on a pedestal of history.
No Chief Minister, however hostile to the Prime Minister, can dare challenge the distribution of food for the poor, although some try to obfuscate the accompanying message. Guess the names of the states where MUDRA fared worst: Bihar and Bengal. There is little more to be said.