One of the headline findings of the recently-released Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 was that monthly per capita consumption “more than doubled” in the 11 years to 2022-23—it grew by roughly 1.5 times from 2011-12. During the period, the urban-rural gap continued to narrow, and food’s share in the consumption basket continued to drop (although a bigger decline was expected). A sharp fall in cereals’ share in the consumption basket in rural India was also highlighted by the ministry of statistics. Within the food segment, the rising share of items like egg, fish, meat, milk and fruits indicates, to an extent, a conscious shift to more nutritious diet among larger sections. The Niti Aayog cited the HCES 2022-23 results to contend that “poverty level has fallen below 5%.” The think tank had in January this year stated that poverty might have fallen to 11.3% by 2022-23 from around 25% in 2015-16 and that the country might have already achieved the Sustainable Development Goal to halve poverty by 2030.

Consumption is indeed a proxy of poverty, but the latter has many facets including deprivation in education, health etc., and on the socioeconomic front, which are captured in the current multidimensional poverty index. The Niti Aayog would likely throw more light on all these aspects, as it makes a more definitive assessment of the poverty headcount ratio in due course. That said, the HCES 2022-23 indeed shows an incremental momentum in monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) in the last decade, over the previous one. However, nominal GDP expanded much faster in the period– it was 3.1 times the FY12 level in FY23. In real terms, the MPCE growth between 2011-12 and 2022-23—annual averages of 3.6% for rural and 3% for urban—have been lower than between 2009-10 and 2011-12 (7.8% and 5.8% respectively). The extended consumption stimulus after the global financial crisis could be one........

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