Professor R. Radhakrishna and his Work—A Monumental Contribution to Understanding Poverty, Inequality and Well-being

The converging focus of almost all the writings of Professor R. Radhakrishna was poverty, inequality and well-being. Starting with his basic econometric work of joint estimation of the complete demand system, Radhakrishna went on to study the differences in rural-urban consumer behavior, the effect of food grain price rise, sectoral biases in wage goods inflation, etc. Post-green revolution commercialization of agriculture led to reduced availability of self-produced grain and decline in serial consumption of the poor. The burden of price fell more heavily on the poor. Urban poor suffered more. The problem of poverty could not be solved within agriculture. Agricultural growth itself could not improve income distribution. Poverty alleviation programs should go beyond providing necessary food. Investment in education and skilling would produce more sustainable results. Malnutrition was even a bigger problem. Half of the pre-school children and close to half of adults suffered from chronic energy deficiency (malnutrition). The Planning Commission supply model failed to improve the income distribution. The higher growth in the post-reform period further aggravated interstate, inter rural-urban and also intra-urban and intra-rural disparity. India fared badly among the countries in respect of well-being index.