How India Earns, Spends and Saves:Unmasking the Real India

Income distribution patterns effects economic activity, factors’ returns and hence organizational skills of the households devours paramount relevance to the policymakers in identifying target general actions for different socio-economic clusters in a country. Shukla authored his pioneering research, under the aegis of the NCAER-CMCR, encompassing 2004-05 National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure. In the study, the current status of the 440 thousand households has been assessed through probability sample of 63,016 across 1976 villages and 2,255 urban wards of 342 citiesin 64 NSS regions. In 2005, NCAER redesigned the MISHconcept of perceived monetary income as NSHIE by dovetailing (a) NSSO surveys on farmers’ situation, integrated households and employment and unemployment;(b) NCAER’s surveys on all-India savings of rural households, income and investment (1962) and market information on households (1985-2001); (c) ì-impact of macro and adjustment policies, rural economic and demographic surveys; (d) UNSC expert group (Canberra City) on household income; (e) ILO’s income and expenditure statistics; (f) 1995 China’s household income project; and (g) Sri Lanka’s household income and expenditure survey. NSHIE survey, therefore, generated the vigorous and unbiased estimates of household income for the reference period of one year. In this study, the recommended practical definition of income has been used by including income from salary and wages, self-employment in non-agriculture occupations as also in the agricultural operations like crop production, forestry and livestock and fisheries and income from other sources such as rent, interest dividends and employer-based pensions.