Thankfully politicians and bureaucrats were kept out of NSSO, and as a consequence Mahalanobis’s dream of an independent data collection entity within the government has been met. Of course, the energy that had characterised it may have waned, but it has been replaced by a highly structured process. Every five years the NSSO conducts the best sampled survey on expenditure and employment in the public domain. However, it releases the results with considerable delay and therefore reduces its own potential to determine the path of policy. Be that as it may, the latest results are out on employment and expenditure. While others debate on employment and poverty figures extracted from this database, let me look at something less contentious but perhaps as fascinating.

First, the percentage improvement in real per capita consumption between 1972-73 and 2004-05 has been the same in rural and urban areas. Second, the percentage growth in per capita monthly expenditures has been higher in rural areas than in urban areas. This is also reflected to some extent in the more rapid growth in durables consumption in rural areas than in urban ones. What is more, in 2004-05 prices, the monthly per capita consumption expenditure has increased by about Rs 20, whereas that for urban areas has been stagnant. But that is all in the aggregate.

Two thoughts come to mind. Neither can be proved or disproved by the data, but the NSSO might just be revealing what we have been hoping for so many years. That is, is the impact of reforms finally trickling down to rural areas? This possibility needs to be investigated much more before definite conclusions can be drawn. But what is perhaps even more interesting is this. Per capita expenditure has grown more among the poorest and richest sections than the middle segments when we compare data for 2004-05 with 1999-2000. Is this part of an overall pattern? Rural areas do better than urban areas and the poorest do better than the middle classes? Is this why the BJP could not get the middle class and urban residents’ backing in the last elections?

... contd.