The household consumption survey results raise some important question

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₹87 per capita in rural areas and ₹62 per head in urban zones. For the country as whole, it is ₹129,910 crore in current prices, with a large part of the total accounted for by a cereal subsidy, at ₹122,772 crore. Even this food subsidy figure is low compared to the reported expenditure on free foodgrain provision under the PMGKAY at more than ₹250,000 crore.

Less than half of this sum appears to be reaching actual beneficiaries. The figure for non-food subsidies on items like free uniforms, bicycles and other durables is only ₹7,138 crore. Since it includes subsidies given by state governments, the amount reported by households is barely a fraction of what governments report.

It is likely that only a small part of the reported subsidies reach their intended beneficiaries because of leakages and corruption, which raises fresh questions of distributive efficiency under the country’s ‘freebies’ debate. Lastly, state-level patterns from the fact sheet suggest relatively uneven progress across states as far as changes in consumption expenditure are concerned. While Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Odisha report the highest rate of growth in rural and urban areas, richer states such as Kerala, Punjab and Haryana report the lowest growth among major states.

The varying performance of states needs careful examination of underlying changes in consumption patterns and also the nature of governance in these states. While the information available from the HCES fact sheet is unlikely to resolve the contentious issue of what happened to poverty reduction after 2011-12, it does point to changes in consumption patterns that require detailed analysis. Since this exercise calls for unit-level data, we need the full report.