-The India Forum The government's lack of respect for national surveys on consumption has meant that the door has been opened to preparation of unofficial estimates on poverty made on questionable assumptions. Two such recent estimates highlight the need to resume collection of data to get a true picture of poverty The government of India does not seem to be interested in knowing how many poor there are in the country. The missing...

-The Hindu The delay in household consumption expenditure survey leaves us unsure of the studies A noticeable absence in the blitzkrieg of information on the economy periodically unleashed by the Union government over the past few years has been estimates of poverty. A measure of the progress made with respect to the reduction of poverty in India is crucial to an assessment of the state of the economy of India, known to...

-Newsclick.in This is in contrast to estimated 84% of Indian families reporting decline in their earnings due to pandemic related lockdowns and restrictions. The trend was visible from last year but the scale of profits reported by listed companies after the last financial year ended in March this year is nothing short of mind-boggling. According to latest data by CMIE or Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, companies listed at the BSE (formerly...

-Deccan Herald Dodgy data Surjit Bhalla, India’s Executive Director (IMF), Arvind Virmani, former Chief Economic Advisor under UPA, and K Bhasin, in an IMF Working Paper, state that to estimate poverty, when no survey has been undertaken, is to take the most recent survey (2011-12) data and update individual consumption (or personal) income by the corresponding growth rate observed in the national accounts (NAS). However, there are problems with estimating poverty based on...

-The Tribune The prices of essential food items have increased by 50% in seven years, whereas the real wage rate has risen by 22%. These figures show that inflation has outsmarted the real income of the poor, making their lives miserable as the food basket constitutes a substantial proportion of the total expenditure on the poor. The net effect is that the poor earn less and take loans to maintain the...