The paper is authored by Surjit S Bhalla, International Monetary Fund Executive Director for India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, Arvind Virmani, former chief economic adviser to the Government of India and New York-based economist Karan Bhasin. But it is a working paper, which means it has not been peer reviewed and the International Monetary Fund has emphasised that views expressed in the paper “do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its executive board, or IMF management”.
Economist and Political Analyst Ajit Ranade, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, raised several questions on the viability of this finding. “If poverty is so low, and inequality is declining, why then is the government persisting with the free food scheme?... Why is there a flurry of welfare spending on free cooking gas cylinders, to cash transfer to farmer households and now free electricity in states like Punjab? Why has India’s hunger index worsened in 2021? It ranks 101 out of 116 countries. Can poverty decline to nearly zero and yet hunger and malnutrition increase? Why does an advertisement for a mere hundred government ‘secure’ jobs attract millions of overqualified applicants?,” Ranade wrote in
The Times of India.
Please see further,
Economists are sceptical of the claim that the country’s food security scheme helped avert a rise in extreme poverty. Here’s why.
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It is well-known that Surjit Valla at IMF as well as Chief Economist Gita Gopinath are all very cozy with Modi and his team - she and Surjit would accede to what Modi wants as far as positive opinions for political purposes in India. She (and IMF) would not dare to anger Modi.
en.wikipedia.org
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Here is Gopinath with Kristalina Georgieva who is MD of IMF and Modi, its clear to see who is in Modi's payroll
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