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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Plan panel's new poverty line definition puts India in a spot

Plan panel's new poverty line definition puts India in a spot

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published Published on Sep 26, 2011   modified Modified on Sep 26, 2011

-The Business Standard

 

After generating much controversy back home on the Planning Commission's “unrealistic definition” of poverty line, India had to field some tough queries in Washington over the matter.

Chief Economic Advisor Kaushik Basu said the government was looking at various parameters of poverty estimates to provide better coverage to the vulnerable section through a proposed food law.

"...now we are going to go into a new food security programme, where we would reach out to a very substantial portion of the poorer population. We are playing around with new definitions so that we can do that job better," Basu said at a press briefing of G-24 countries.

He said poverty has declined significantly from 2005 to 2009, irrespective of the definition of poverty line. He said there are three competing definitions of poverty that are used in India.

"...when we switch over from one to the other, we do not make the mistake of using one definition for the previous years and then switch over to the new one, and do it for now because then we could have poverty going down just by changing the definition. Of course, we don't want to do that," he said, according to a transcript posted on the site of International Monetary Fund.

Explaining the three definition of poverty, N C Saxena, member of Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council, told Business Standard that one of them is based on the Oxford multi-dimensional category. This analyses poverty on the basis of access of population to basic services like housing, water, education and health. According to this definition, 55 per cent of India's population is poor.

The other definition is based on calorie consumption, according to which 77 per cent of the population is below calorie norm.

The other is based on the hunger index, which is calculated on the basis of calorie consumption, child malnutrition, and child mortality.

According to this, India is in the category of alarming hunger. This is the second worst category in the index. The five categories in this index are extremely alarming hunger, alarming hunger, serious hunger, mild hunger and no hunger.

Saxena said states like Madhya Pradesh fall under extremely alarming hunger and is on par with sub-Sharan African countries.

Earlier this week, the Planning Commission has stirred a controversy when it, in an affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court, said that based on 2010-11 prices, Rs 25 is enough for a person in rural areas and Rs 31 in urban areas to take care of his daily expenses on food, medicine and education.

The questioner at the press conference had observed that the new definition of the poverty line in India was far lower than the way the World Bank defines it and is something that has a knock-on effect on the availability of subsidised food.

The Business Standard, 25 September, 2011, http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/plan-panels-new-poverty-line-definition-puts-india-inspot/450355/


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