Sudhanshu Ranade

Chennai , May 4

PER capita consumption of footwear hardly increased at all between 1987 and 2000. Both village and city folk still bought about 0.12 pairs of shoes or boots per capita per year. For leather slippers/chappals, the position was somewhat better.

While villagers stayed put at 0.12 pairs a year, city dwellers bought twice as many per capita per year - as, indeed, they had even in 1987. The most dramatic improvement in quantitative terms was in respect of hosiery/undergarments.

In 1987-88, as also in 1993-94 the number of these consumed per capita per year was 0.36 in rural areas. By 2000, consumption had shot up to 1.32. May not seem like much, but with a rural population of 700 million it adds up to almost one billion pieces each year. The corresponding consumption in urban India was 1.80 numbers per capita per year, up from 0.48 in 1987-88. Quantitative figures are not available for many interesting items. We have only expenditure in rupees for them, and it is hard to make sense of such figures unless you use different price indices for, say, a haircut and a bar of toilet soap.

Still the figures in the accompanying may not be entirely devoid of interest, even though, because of this, they will convey different impressions to different people.

There is, however, the consolation that anecdotal evidence, however, authoritative, is simply not in the same league as the data made available by national sample surveys.

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