New Delhi: Access to amenities such as electricity, toilets, piped water supply, bank accounts and mobile phones have been widespread across religions and social groups, with there being no evidence that the Modi government catered only to the Hindu majority or discriminated across households based on districts where one religious community was dominant, according to a study by the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to the Prime Minister.
The study conducted by EAC-PM member Shamika Ravi, in fact, found that in some instances, minorities have gained more than the majority.
However, the study also states that the government must do more to uplift the poorest 20 per cent of households across religions and social groups by focusing on amenities like LPG and piped water on premises.
Titled ‘A Secular Democracy in Practice: Objective Assessment of Amenities Programs in India’, the study is based on a nationally representative sample of more than 1.2 million households collected across 2015–16 and 2019–21.
Ravi writes in the EAC-PM paper that the primary objective of her exercise is to scrutinise whether there is any discernible bias in favour of, or against any particular population within the country. “We compare data from 2015-16 when the Modi government was one year into power with its performance five years thereafter in 2019-21,” she writes.
The result of the study, Ravi adds, indicates that the government is responsive to the needs of the marginalised section of society irrespective of religion, caste, or place of residence, which is an alternative and more robust indicator of strengthening democracy in India.
The study used data from two rounds of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) — rounds 4 and 5 — and focussed on the provision of amenities such as electricity, access to toilets, access to a bank account, clean cooking gas, mobile phones, and piped water on-premises to the poorest 20 per cent of households across religion, social groups and geographies.
A total of 6,36,699 households were surveyed in NFHS Round 5 (2019–21) as against 6,01,509 households surveyed in NFHS Round 4 (2015–16).
For this analysis, the EAC-PM constructed a variable, ‘Target Achievement’, which it defined as the “ratio of increase in the proportion of households that got access to the amenity in 2019–21 as compared to the proportion of households that had the amenity in 2015–16, to the proportion of households that did not have access to the amenity in 2015–16”.
‘Govt responsive to needs of marginalised irrespective of religion’
Overall, 53 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent of the households had access to electricity in 2015–16, which increased to 85 per cent in 2019–21, the study found.
In terms of target achievement, which was defined as the proportion of households that did not have access to electricity in 2015–16 but had access to electricity in 2019–21, it was 68 per cent overall.
“Even though we observe significant gains across all religious groups, the most considerable improvement in target achievement was for the poorest 20 per cent of the Muslim households at 71 per cent,” Ravi writes in the EAC-PM paper.
When it comes to access to bank accounts, the study found that an overall 74 per cent among the poorest 20 per cent of the households had bank accounts in 2015–16, which increased to 93 per cent in 2019–21.
The target achievement was an impressive 73 per cent overall.
Again, across religions, the biggest gain was for the Muslim community, with a target achievement of approximately 77 per cent. For different social groups, the target achievement was highest among the OBCs at 75 per cent and above 70 per cent for the SCs and STs.
The survey also found that while only 12 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent of households had access to a toilet in 2015–16, this increased to 48 per cent in 2019–21, with a target achievement of 41 per cent.
Among the religious groups, the most significant target achievement was for the Sikhs and the Muslims at more than 50 per cent.
For LPG connections, the study found that there has been a marginal improvement for the poorest 20 per cent of households since 2015–16. While only 1 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent of the households used LPG as cooking fuel in 2015–16, it went up to only 8 per cent in 2019–21; the target achievement was approximately 7 per cent.
Other than the Sikh community, the target achievement was less than 10 per cent for Hindus, Christians, and Muslims. Across the social groups, the target achievement was above 10 per cent for the General category and the OBCs; however, it was merely 1 per cent for the STs.
The study states that by quantifying changes in the provision of amenities across religions, social groups, and geographies based on faith, it challenges a popular perception-based narrative that democracy has been declining in India since 2014. “In sharp contrast, our results indicate that the government is responsive to the needs of the marginalised section of society irrespective of religion, caste, or place of residence, which is an alternative and more robust indicator of strengthening democracy in India,” it reads.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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