India’s consumption numbers fit into our big picture of progress
₹1 apiece at Jan Aushadhi Kendras imply a significant rise in real living standards at relatively low household spending levels. Similarly, the impact of prominent schemes such as the Swachh Bharat Mission, Ayushman Bharat and PM-Awas Yojana in directly improving the living standards of Indian households could be interpreted as a (notional) rise in consumption expenditure, especially for the lower fractiles.
This is well brought out in a 2022 research paper by Sridhar Kundu and Maynor Cabrera that used 2011-12 survey data (shorturl.at/EMVW0). The value imputations of education and health schemes alone showed a decline in the Gini Coefficient for 2011-12 by 0.08 percentage points.
Looking forward, the HCES release offers an opportunity to update the consumer basket for the construction of our price indices and also revise the poverty line, given the changing aspirations of citizens. Future surveys could be designed for wider coverage of support received from government schemes.
The HCES 2022-23 has made a good start on that. Above all, the survey’s results are a vindication of the government’s ‘growth through infrastructure and inclusion through empowerment’ approach to India’s socioeconomic priorities.
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