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Fudging parameter to reduce number of poor by Nitin Sethi
How does the government manage to keep the poverty line so low? Rather simple for the statisticians — they simply bring down the key parameter — amount of food one should have to stay alive. Earlier, the Planning Commission stipulated 2,100kilo calories per day per person in the cities and 2,400 kcalories per day per person was the minimum required to survive. Now consuming 1,800 kcalories per day is enough, according to the Tendulkar report.

Is there a reason to reduce the measure? Economists say UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) suggests so. FAO does but, for those living a sedentary lifestyle with little Tendulkar report says now consuming 1800 kcalories per day is enough or no physical work. Hardly what one would think is the life of a poor person either in the cities or in rural India, but the Tendulkar committee has used this criteria for the entire poor working population in urban and rural India.

Contrary to Tendulkar’s reduced calorie intake criteria, the National Institute of Nutrition, in its new report has prescribed 2,320-3,490 kcalories per day per person for good health. The Tendulkar committee had, in fact, stepped away from any nutrition-based poverty line. It instead took the earlier urban poverty line and used it as the basis claiming it was “generally accepted as being less controversial than its rural counterpart”.

This urban poverty line was based on how much people spent in a month on their necessities and then deciding how much monthly expenditure would be adequate for nutrition, education and health.

Once they had chosen this cut off monthly expenditure they checked to see if it allowed people to get enough food. But here, instead of checking it against the earlier norms they instead checked the expenditure against the lower FAO level of 1,800 kcalories per day. They found it adequate. So now, if anyone buys vegetables worth more than Rs 36.5 per month, or cereals worth Rs 96.5 per month or pulses worth Rs 19.2 and milk worth more than Rs 43.6 per month, he or she is not poor anymore.