It's not just the calories, stupid

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar's article in the Economic Times makes a good point, but not, I argue, in the manner which he intended.

The article critiques the work by Utsa Patnaik (see this work for the upgraded version of her work), as methodologically wrong. I note here a number of weak points in his argument.

a) The article only takes into account the issue ratio of people below the "poverty line". However, Utsa Patnaik's article makes the case for the poverty figures by giving many interrelated and important statistics, including debt figures, decreasing rural credit, decreasing rural development spending, falling output and many others. Those are not addressed, a typical case of dismissing other people's critique as unidimensional.

b) The example which he gave (of Burger King etc.) is totally misleading. Those don't correspond to anywhere near the average dietary figures for Americans, or even the recommended ones. Also, again, he uni-dimensionalizes obesity. Obesity is not just caused by over-eating. I suggest Aiyar try out that diet sometime.

c) The main point of Patnaik's work is not that 1800 calories or 2400 calories is the "correct" poverty line, but that the line has been "clandestinely" decreased over the years. With that, the poverty figures don't make any sense. That hasn't been addressed.

d) There are hypotheses for explaining the fall in calorie requirements. How accurate are they? No discussion.

e) The article actually uses circular reasoning. There's rising income and falling poverty, so calories have fallen, therefore there's falling poverty.

f) Relying one just work which seems contrary to someone else's doesn't make for good argument. A variety of different issues/measures/theories have to be considered.

This, to me is not acceptable. We should have more debate on these issues. Some may not apportion blame to neoliberal reforms, but honest scholars should confront the issues nonetheless.