The interim budget session of Parliament has just concluded. Nine days of the Union government using a deluge of several self-aggrandising adjectives — some romantic, others poetic and almost all unsubstantiated by fact. Intellectual dishonesty about data is endemic. This columnist delves into the lives behind the numbers. The people who aggregate into government “data” and find out how India really lives. This is the story of Rekha, Kavita and Mohan.

Health: “The Ayushman Bharat scheme has greatly helped the poor.”

Scenario A: Rekha visits a government hospital and waits in a long queue. She desperately needs medical assistance. She knows the treatment she will get here is of poor quality, but this is all her pocket allows. Not just the quality of the treatment, but the process of accessing it is also difficult. Data stored with government hospitals under the Ayushman Bharat scheme is riddled with errors. This pushes Rekha, and citizens like her, further away from timely healthcare. The numbers either misidentify the dead, incorrectly record surgery details or entirely leave out beneficiaries from the list. If Rekha is lucky enough to not get entangled in all the red tape, she would be treated at a government facility, where resources are limited and facilities often sub-par. What more can one expect from a government that invests a mere 2.1 per cent of GDP in healthcare? Endless out-of-pocket expenditure coupled with insufficient government support impoverishes 55 million Indians every year.

Scenario B: Rekha attempts self-medication to save money. This severely jeopardises her health. According to the recent NFHS report, the proportion of households that typically avoided utilising government health facilities between 2019 and 2021 was a staggering 49.9 per cent. This means that half the country does not turn to government facilities in their time of need. Reality gets worse for Indian women like Rekha. Six out of 10 women from the general category, and seven out of 10 women from the tribal community have reported at least one concern in accessing healthcare. P.S: The International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) Director and Senior Professor K S James, who was behind this year’s NFHS data, was suspended by the Union government shortly after the release of the report.

Food security: “India’s food diversity is a dividend for global investors.”

Scenario A: Kavita decides to buy her family’s monthly ration from the government-subsidised ration shop. The prices are low but so is the nutritional value. Kavita’s is not a one-off case. Her reality confirms what various independent surveys say, like the Global Hunger Index where India ranked 111 out of 125 countries. Kavita’s reliance on subsidised options amplifies the struggles faced by countless low-income Indian families whose nutritional needs remain unfulfilled.

Scenario B: Kavita opts to buy groceries from the supermarket close by. It gives her more options, and better quality, albeit at a higher cost. Kavita reduces the number of meals she has in order to afford the quality. Her predicament supplements the report recently published by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP, and WHO which finds that three out of four Indians (a staggering one billion people) cannot afford a healthy diet.

Employment: “Today, every youth believes that they can cement their job position with hard work and skills”

Scenario A: Mohan decides to participate in a recruitment drive organised at the local school. Like the five thousand others from his state, he joins the queue for a job in war-torn Israel. Mohan fears for his life but the prospect of earning over one lakh rupees per month is tempting. That is ten times more than what he is earning now. Twenty-four year-old Mohan knows that there would be a grave threat to his life in a country where 30,000 people have been killed since October of last year. However, in the grocery store in his locality, a packet of rice costs 56 per cent more while dal costs 120 per cent more than it did earlier. If he wants to provide for his family, then a job in a war zone is his only option.

Scenario B: Mohan is considering taking up a job as a delivery agent for a food services company. He has a graduate degree in economics from a reputed central university. Sadly, much like the other 42 per cent graduates under 25 years of age, he has not found employment. It has now been 11 months. Every morning he finds himself as one of those 10 per cent who the newspapers report to be unemployed at a two-year record high. Mohan has to provide for his ageing parents. He understands that as a gig worker, no law protects him from losing his job or working unfixed strenuous hours. So he tells himself, “let me board that plane to Israel.”

The voices of Kavita, Rekha and Mohan did not find a place in the Prime Minister’s marathon monologue in Parliament.

[This article was also published in The Indian Express | Friday, February 16, 2024]