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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Postpone poverty survey

Postpone poverty survey

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published Published on Jan 11, 2010   modified Modified on Jan 11, 2010


What sets poverty in India apart is the effort that has gone into defining, measuring, recalibrating, contesting, recounting, refining and disputing its magnitude, nature and, at least, in the case of one protagonist, existence.

This exegesis on poverty has been captured in a World Bank volume, The Great Indian Poverty Debate, published before the latest estimates by Prof Suresh Tendulkar kicked off yet another round of heated discussion on the subject. The last major round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) measuring consumption was done in 2004-05, when growth was just taking off, after a five-year hiatus inaugurated by the Asian Crisis of 1997.

The most recent poverty measurements are based on its findings. The substantive question is whether reforms and economic growth have dented poverty or not. So, the real test would come from the results of the next detailed survey by the NSSO, which began in July 2009 and is slated to be completed in June 2010. Now, this survey comes after a five-year period of record growth. If poverty in 2009-10 turns out to have come down sharply, that would vindicate those who cite growth as the primary poverty-killer.

If, on the other hand, poverty refuses to fall, the critics of reform would smirk all the way to an empty moral victory. Right now, the deck is stacked in favour of the naysayers, thanks to the truant monsoon and a global spike in food prices. Since poverty is heavily influenced by food prices, an aberrant spike in food prices over the survey period is more likely than not to bring out a poverty figure that is misleadingly high.

This would not be a major disaster — the strategy for removing poverty would hardly shift to something other than what has been dubbed ‘inclusive growth’. However, a misleading result could lead to waste of intellectual and administrative energy on pointless policy quarrels. This is avoidable.

A simple solution would be to extend the survey for at least six months. Of course, there is the risk of a double-dip in global growth and serial drought at home, nullifying any benefit from postponing the survey. That, perhaps, is lower than the risk of adding yet more data to dogma, to produce a sequel to The Great Indian Poverty Debate. 


The Economic Times, 11 January, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/Postpone-poverty-survey/articleshow/5431762.cms
 

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