Surjit S Bhalla: It just doesn't matter

Old left intellectual proverb: Lies done in the name of the poor become truth

It pains me just a little bit to change the name of this column. Indian policy debates have never been dull, a major reason being that "we are that way only". So the first series was called "Looking for Logic". Then came "Beyond Logic", then "Calling the Bluff". My attempt in most of my articles has been to look at data seriously, and respectfully.

The analysts hurt by this exercise have predictably responded with "Lies, damn lies and statistics". This is how the great con game, also known as steep intellectual dishonesty, is played. The tendency of most Indian intellectuals is to believe that things have not really got better for the average Indian, let alone the poor Indian. So facts are deliberately transformed into lies. Strong words, but proof is there.

When I first read P Sainath's article on per capita foodgrain consumption in India being lower in 2002-03 than in famine year 1941, I was reminded of novelist Arundhati Roy claiming that the people displaced by the construction of dams in post-independence India numbered more than 50 million; as an aside, she also added that the tribals displaced by the dams lived in conditions worse than the victims of the Nazi holocaust.

There was no way to test the veracity of her second statement, but the first was contested, and on a "new" look at the data, I arrived at a displaced-by-dams figure less than one-tenth of that offered by the novelist, i.e. not 50 million but less than 5 million.

This estimate was met with derision, but soon the novelist's estimate was seen for what it was""fiction. Sainath's conclusions are equally fictitious. In a letter to the editor ("The grain and the chaff", October 27, 2005), he responds to my earlier article "Less than a grain of truth," October 15/16) by stating that I "shamelessly cook the data in two ways.

He excludes pulses from foodgrain in his numbers ... His second fiddle is to hide sharp yearly drops by taking a decadal average. Nothing works. Whichever way you cut it, hunger grew disastrously in the reform [post 1991] years".

Sainath uses the data used by me to make his case! Annual data from 1951 to 2003 is plotted in the graph separately for cereals, pulses and the total. Decadal averages for total foodgrains are also documented. Now all the data is there for all to see and for all to determine who is not speaking the naked truth! Two points to note.

First, pulses are only a small fraction of the total, about 10 per cent, and most of the pulse availability decline since independence occurred a full decade before the reforms.

Second, the total (cereals+pulses) availability""the number Sainath prefers to use""actually records its peak consumption in the post-reform era, 469 gm per capita per day. Ah, but this includes the peak consumption year of 510 gm a day of 1991-92. So let us exclude that year""the average availability drops to 466 gm a day, still the highest on record. The fiddles of the intellectual left, I hope, are totally exposed.

Not yet. There is the question of hunger raised by Sainath. Again, for the left, arguing for the cause of the poor (how saying the earth is flat helps the poor is something I have never understood) means a licence to deeply discount the truth.

The National Sample Survey Organisation of India, in its comprehensive consumption surveys of 1983, 1993-1994 and 1999-00, asked the following question of each household: "Do all members of your household get two square meals (enough food a day)".

Three answers are possible: (a) throughout the year; (b) some months of the year; and (c) no month of the year. The last two categories reveal some hunger, and chronic hunger. In 1983, 14.6 per cent of all households reported "hunger" (12.9 per cent some hunger and 1.7 per cent chronic hunger). In 1999-00, after the reforms, the percentages were 2 per cent (some hunger) and 0.6 per cent (chronic hunger).

These numbers have been pointed out by many scholars, of most ideological persuasions. Yet, in 2005, we still have a left scholar pointing out how hunger has gone up considerably in the era of reforms, and foodgrain availability has declined. Both these propositions have been proven to be not just wrong but, off the charts, dishonest.

Why do scholars do it? One possible reason is that in the "fight for numbers" (not unlike the fight for eyeballs), the belief is "dish out whatever suits your ideology", because the public is simply incapable of determining right from wrong; especially if 10 fictitious numbers are thrown up.

Then it is logical for the laywoman to say, I just don't know who is right and who is wrong. What chance is there of solitary truth to survive if there are 9 bad apples? This is what Arundhati Roy thought; this is what Sainath thinks; and this is what populist governments, and their chamchas, believe.

In their honour, and in my own defeat, the name of this column is henceforth changed from "Jadu Economics" to "It doesn't matter". It really does not, not among intellectual, populist, and popular(?) Indians.

ssbhalla@gmail.com