SUFFiciENcy EcONOMy ANd GRASSROOtS DEvElOPMENt

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The Meaning of Sufficiency Economy
International Conference
ineffective, the appalling conditions in which the bulk of the population continued to
live and the necessity to address their problems seriously came into sharp relief. The
late Ram Manohar Lohia dramatized it by calling attention of parliament to the fact
that more than half the population subsisted on less than 6 annas per head per day.
In 1962, an unofficial seminar,’ in which several leading economists, political
figures and social activists participated, gave a fresh impetus to the idea that
planning should aim at ensuring a minimum standard of living to every one within a
reasonable period. They suggested that the national minimum should include a timebound
target of minimum income (Rs.20 per capita per month in rural areas and
about Rs.25 in urban areas); expenditure on education and health to be provided by
the state according to the Constitution2 transfers and social welfare expenditure to
ensure minimum for the poorest 20 per cent of the population who are not likely, for
various reasons, to benefit ^automatically from growth.
Soon thereafter the implications of planning for this minimum living were
worked out in a paper prepared by the perspective planning division of the Planning
Commission and further elaborated entitled “Notes on Perspectives of Development
India’s 1960-61 to 1975-76” [GOl, PC, 1964]. The latter was considered but not
formally approved by the Planning Commission. In the event, for a variety of
reasons (including Nehru’s death, the aftermath of military engagements with China
and Pakistan, and the droughts) it was shelved. The Fourth Five-Year Plan did not
even mentioned minimum living standards or basic needs.
Rural Poverty and Development Policy
The late 1960s witnessed a spurt of interest among economists in the study of
poverty both at the conceptual and empirical levels. At the conceptual level,
questions began to be raised about the validity of using per capita GDP or per capita
consumption as a satisfactory measure of well-being. A strong case was made for a
much broader concept of ‘quality of life’ which would include nutritional status
agency and literacy. Attention was also focused on the possibility - h on the example
of Kerala in India and Sri Lanka - that the quality of IT in the broader sense is not
necessarily contingent on high level income. The factors - largely social and
political - which made the’ possible have attracted much attention and discussion
[United Nations 1975; Sen 1981; Bhalla 1988; Streeten and Burki 1978].
The findings of the Mahalanobis Committee [Gol, PC 1964, 19591 and
Hazari’s study (1967), as is well known, found no reduction in inequalities in
consumption, incomes or in concentration of economic power. A number of
researchers took up empirical and theoretical studies focused on absolute poverty
and strategies to eradicate it. Dandekar and Rath’s (1974) well known monograph
‘Poverty in India’ argued for defining the poverty line on the basis of the minimum
income required for nutritional diet and other essentials, provided estimates of the
number of people who fell below this line, and outlined a strategy (based on a