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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | House panel frowns on poverty trackers

House panel frowns on poverty trackers

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published Published on Aug 8, 2013   modified Modified on Aug 8, 2013
-The Telegraph


New Delhi: A parliamentary panel has disapproved of the process the Planning Commission and the Centre follow to identify below poverty line (BPL) people, adding to the recent controversy over a 15 per cent reduction in poverty.

The standing committee on finance, headed by the BJP's Yashwant Sinha, has outlined flaws in the methodology followed by the Planning Commission and the government to identify the poor. The measure is key to welfare schemes.

In its report titled "Appraisal of BPL Criteria" submitted today, the committee said the plan panel as the nodal agency for identifying the poor should only formulate indicative criteria. A joint group involving the plan panel, central ministries concerned and state governments should then be formed for a poverty survey based on the criteria.

The suggested procedure is different from the practice so far under which the Planning Commission sets up a committee of experts. It has in the past decade set up four such committees, which have submitted varying poverty estimates.

One committee headed by C. Rangarajan, chairman of Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, is yet to submit its report.

The Planning Commission had in 2009 accepted the recommendations of a committee headed by economist Suresh Tendulkar that 37 per cent of the people were poor. It had used household expenditure on food, medicine, education and other basics as criteria. At 2011 price levels, it determined that those spending above Rs 33.33 in cities and Rs 27.20 in villages were not poor.

Based on the Tendulkar formula and consumption expenditure data from the National Sample Survey Organisation, the Planning Commission said the BPL percentage dropped from 37 per cent in 2004-05 to 22 per cent in 2011-12.

The poverty line based on the formula and the claim about the 15 per cent drop have evoked widespread scepticism. The new committee under Rangarajan has been asked to broadbase the calculation by including more parameters such as purchasing power, access to safe drinking water and healthcare.

But not all agencies use such expenditure criteria. The rural development and urban ministries, the Registrar General of India and states are now conducting a socio-economic caste census based on inclusion and exclusion norms, such as availability of pucca house, vehicles, telephones and PCs to figure out who are poor.

The Sinha-headed House panel frowned on the multiple committees. "The constitution of one expert group after another may not resolve the problems." It said their estimates didn't reflect the ground reality and stressed the need for the plan panel to only set indicative criteria.


The Telegraph, 7 August, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130808/jsp/nation/story_17208987.jsp#.UgNVLqzcjco


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