Urban Indians spend nearly one-and-a-half times what their rural counterparts shell out on food every month. But as far as the spending on staples go, there isn’t a sizeable difference between the budgets of the townfolk and the less affluent villagers. Data from recent NSSO surveys show that urban India’s purchasing power comes to the fore when it comes to milk and milk products, at over one-and-a-half times what a rural Indian would spend. A similar story plays out in protein-rich eggs, meat and fish, where spending in cities and towns is 40 per cent higher per capita than those in villages.
The gap is not so vast in condiments such as sugar, salt and spices. But rural Indians spend less than half what their urban peers spend on stocking up on fruit, at ₹41 versus ₹90. The biggest difference, of course, is seen in beverages, refreshments and processed food, where villagers incur less than half the expenditure than cityfolks every month.
On non-food items, urban Indians’ per capita spending is more than double what a rural person manages. Indeed, monthly per capita spending on miscellaneous goods and entertainment by India’s villagers is just half of the city slicker’s ₹152 outgo. What’s more, with food making up almost half the household budget, rural India spends less on durable goods, fuel and light, clothing and footwear and conveyance than their well-heeled urban brethren.
That said, there’s one item on the list on which the rural outspends the urban —
The higher expenditure on such extras is made possible by lower rent in the villages: as per the data, the average rent paid by a person living in a village is ₹7 per month, compared to ₹164 in urban areas. Education in the villages costs less than a third of what it does in cities, but the spend on medical necessities is about two-thirds of what it would cost in urban India.
An interesting finding in the data was that total monthly per capita expenditure in villages works out to ₹1,430, compared to ₹2,630 in urban parts of the country. But taxes and cess amount to just ₹4 per villager, compared to ₹22 per the urban-dweller, an indicator that the taxman doesn’t hold too much sway in the hinterlands.