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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Starvation line? Govt firm on poverty limit by Basant Kumar Mohanty

Starvation line? Govt firm on poverty limit by Basant Kumar Mohanty

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published Published on May 30, 2011   modified Modified on May 30, 2011

Renu Devi is scared. The Planning Commission’s new definition of poverty will eject her from the set of below-poverty-line households, and her family will lose the right to 25kg rice and wheat a month at Rs 5 per kilo.

The plan panel has fixed a cut-off of Rs 675 and Rs 870 as the monthly per head expenditure, in rural and urban areas respectively, for a family to qualify as poor. (The panel actually fixed Rs 450 and Rs 579 as the cutoffs, but this was based on 2004 prices. The actual figures are reached taking into account the inflation since then.)

Renu, a housemaid in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, will lose out because her family of six spends about Rs 10,000 a month — Rs 1,667 per head, which is almost double the urban cut-off. “I’m worried,” she said.

Durgesh, a young driver from Bihar, too is gutted. “The new poverty line is virtually a starvation line. It’s too low and will push many poor people out of the below-poverty-line (BPL) category. It should be changed,” he said.

Members of the Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC), such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander and Jean Dreze, protested against the new definition last week.

“This cut-off figure is clearly arbitrary and much too low. With this consumption threshold, many deserving people will be excluded, which is unconscionable given that Indian malnutrition levels are below those in sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan and Bangladesh,” Aruna Roy told The Telegraph.

The CPM has described the revised poverty line as “a mockery and fraud” in an editorial in mouthpiece People’s Democracy.

But the plan panel is unlikely to budge. “At the moment, there is (going to be) no re-look at the new poverty definition,” Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen told this newspaper.

The traditional method of defining poverty was based on how many calories people consumed. Going by the new definition, the commission has estimated that nearly 37 per cent of the country’s people — 26 per cent of the urban population and 42 per cent in rural areas — fall into the BPL category.

The ministries of rural development and housing and urban poverty alleviation, and the Registrar General of India are set to launch a survey to identify this 37 per cent. The last BPL survey was carried out in 2002.

Since it is difficult to find out through a survey exactly how much families are spending per head, the rural development ministry has devised a method for identifying the target 42 per cent rural population. (See chart)

The housing and urban poverty alleviation ministry has not yet prepared the criteria to identify the urban poor, but they are likely to be based on residential, occupational and social vulnerabilities.

Sen said the states were free to increase the BPL numbers but must foot the bill for the welfare benefits extended to them.

“The BPL benefits under central welfare schemes will be confined to 37 per cent people as estimated by the Planning Commission. The states are free to increase the number of the BPL people above our estimate. For the additional BPL card holders, the state concerned will provide whatever assistance it wants,” he said.

Most ‘rational’

According to the plan panel, the new definition of poverty, based on the recommendations of the Suresh Tendulkar committee, is the most “rational” one.

“If a family of five members spends over Rs 4,350 per month in an urban area, it should not come under the BPL category,” Sen said.

“I want to ask (critics) how much they are paying their domestic servants every month. I think their servants should not get less than this.”

The previous definition was based on the work of a 1973 committee that suggested that people consuming less than 2,400 calories in rural areas, and 2,100 in urban areas, should be included in the BPL category.

Sen said: “The estimate (based on) the old method was absurd. Under that method, poverty in urban areas was coming out to be higher than that in rural areas.”

The Tendulkar committee took into account criteria such as per head expenditure on food, health and education, as well as calorie consumption. According to it, the correct calorie cutoffs should be 1,950 and 1,800 in rural and urban areas, respectively.

Another committee, headed by N.C. Saxena, had said in 2009 that about half of all Indians are poor, while a similar committee under Arjun Sengupta had in 2007 estimated that poor and vulnerable people made up 77 per cent of the population.

The World Bank has prescribed norms under which those living on less than $1.25 a day (Rs 56 a day or Rs 1,680 a month) should be considered poor.

Hearing a petition on the new definition, the Supreme Court recently asked the Planning Commission to explain the basis for capping the proportion of the rural poor at 42 per cent and the urban poor at 26 per cent.

The Telegraph, 30 May, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110530/jsp/nation/story_14047300.jsp


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