To get the Below Poverty Line figures in perspective, we need to closely monitor the numbers driving the Corporate Plunder Line. One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar's methodology, it declares that there's been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (“more dramatic in the rural areas”). “Record Fall in Poverty” reads one headline. The record...

-IANS Debunking the government's claim that the number of poor  in India has come down, a top adviser has claimed that around 70 % of the country's 1.2 billion population is poor, and stressed the need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty.  "The government claim that poverty has come down is not valid... there is a need for a multi-dimensional assessment of poverty as around 70% of the population is poor," National Advisory...

But will it reflect true level of poverty in the country? India's poverty line has hit the headlines again. In the past six months this is for the second time that the government has tried to bring out a poverty line. Like the poverty line in September last year, the new poverty line has also triggered widespread dissent and debate. In an action replay, this time also the government almost junked...

-The Business Standard Terming the debate over poverty numbers of a poor quality, chief economic advisor in the finance ministry Kaushik Basu today said even if different yardsticks were adopted, roughly the same conclusions would be drawn on decline in the number of people below the poverty line, between 2004-05 and 2009-10, as was estimated by the Planning Commission. The decline in the number during the period was the sharpest in any...

-The Pioneer The Planning Commission will constitute an expert group in three months to revisit the methodology for estimating poverty amid demand for removal of its Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia for pegging the poverty line at Rs 28.65 daily per capita consumption for cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas. “The Government had taken a decision to set up a technical group to revisit the methodology for estimating poverty in a...