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NITI Aayog taskforce might not opt for SECC for poverty line
-Business Standard

While the task force did not categorically say which methodology should be adopted, it said it would make its recommendation within six months after consulting all stakeholders including states

Keeping the issue of poverty line open, a task force of NITI Aayog has questioned the possibility of substituting the line with the data on deprivation given by the socio economic and caste census (SECC). While the task force did not categorically say which methodology should be adopted, it said it would make its recommendation within six months after consulting all stakeholders including states.

"It is tempting to think that the census contains all the relevant information for tracking poverty and could serve as a substitute for poverty line-based assessment of poverty. But, there are problems with this conclusion," said a paper released by the task force, headed by NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya.

For one, the SECC does not collect information on the overall income or expenditure of the household, the paper said. "Even if we started collecting such information, overtime, there is high risk of household responses getting biased since they know that their responses determine whether or not they would receive benefits under various social schemes," it said.

The government has so far released only rural part of the census and that too economic one. The caste part is yet to be released.

This was also a point that did not go down well with the task force, if SECC was to be really made a substitute for the poverty line.

"Also important is the fact that after nearly five years, we still have only the rural SECC results with its urban counterpart still to become available," it said. SECC 2011 was released in July 2015.

Many had argued that the number of poor as calculated by the SECC would give a rough idea of the poverty line.

The economic caste census for the rural areas based its results on various kinds of deprivation that households face. These deprivation criteria include landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual labour, households with only one room, kuccha walls and kuccha roof, no adult member in household between age 18 and 59, etc. Based on these deprivations, almost half the total rural households were counted as deprived. Precisely, 87 million households constituting 48 per cent of total rural households at 179 million had one of these deprivations in 2011.

If the poverty line is drawn somewhere near that, the resultant poverty rate would be higher than measured by either Suresh Tendulkar or C Rangarajan methods. According to the Tendulkar method, 26 per cent of the rural population was poor in 2011-12 against 31 per cent measured by Rangarajan. The Rangarajan committee had drawn poverty line at Rs 4,760 a month in rural areas and the Tendulkar committee at Rs 4,080 for 2011-12.

Under Tendulkar method, the poverty line was only Rs 27 a day per person. Because of this, the issue turned controversial and the Rangarajan committee was set up. Under the Rangarajan committee, the poverty line was Rs 32 a person a day in 2011-12.

The task force kept the issue of basing poverty line on the Tendulkar panel, or Rangarajan panel or some other new method open. However, it stressed the need for a poverty line to track the number of poor over a period of time.

So far as entitlement schemes of the government are concerned, they can be distributed on the basis of SECC or some other method.