India Protection Index : An Objective Measurement of the Economic and Social Well-Being of the Indian Population

The success and failure of any democratic government is gauged in terms of how effectively it has fulfilled its constitutional obligation of enhancing social and economic well-being, particularly the common man. While developed economies use a set of indices to measure well-being, a systematic and comprehensive empirical assessment of well-being is found wanting in the most developing countries, including India. This paper discusses the status of social and economic well-being of Indian families as measured by a primary survey-based composite index, the India Protection Index (IPI), which is an integration of the important dimensions of well-being. It finds that nearly 65 per cent of households and people in India have a reasonable degree of protection (i.e., the power of well-being) and that most of the less- and under-protected are daily wage earners, without any village-urban divide. The western states are better protected, as Maharashtra has the largest number of well-protected households (16 per cent), followed by Kartnataka and Kerala each accounting for 10 per cent. In terms of concentration, Kerala with 70,735 well-protected households per million is at the top, followed by Karnataka with 44,949 households — Uttar Pradesh and Bihar being at the bottom, with 14,621 and 26,908 households, respectively. The results show that the IPI can effectively be used to identify the status of households in terms of social and economic protection