On the eve of General Elections scheduled in 2014, the Planning Commission is set to release actual data claiming a sharper dip in poverty. For, it believes that poverty reduction programmes have worked effectively.
“We will have the actual numbers for 2011-12 in 2013 and there the rate of reduction (of poverty) would be better,” Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, said. He was addressing newspersons to clarify certain issues related to the poverty numbers released on Monday.
According to the figures, poverty declined to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05. The Plan panel estimated the total number of poor in the country at 34.47 crore in 2009-10, against 40.72 crore in 2004-05. Poverty declined at a faster pace in rural India between 2004-05 and 2009-10, they explained.
However, the real issue is about reducing the poverty line to Rs 28.65 per capita daily consumption in cities and Rs 22.42 in rural areas. An individual above a monthly consumption of Rs 859.6 in urban and Rs 672.8 in rural areas is not considered poor, as per the Tendulkar formulae.
These numbers are much lower than what the Plan Panel said in its affidavit to the Supreme Court. There it said, “The poverty line at June 2011 price level can be placed provisionally at Rs 965 (32 per day) per capita per month in urban areas and Rs 781 (26 per day) in rural areas.”
However, Mr Ahluwalia explained that the official consumption poverty line was not defined on a daily basis. It may be noted that the practice around the world is to define poverty lines in terms of year or month. The National Sample Survey, which is the basis of measuring consumption poverty, collects household consumption expenditure data on monthly basis.
Mr Ahluwalia clarified that benefits under various anti-poverty schemes would not be linked to the number of persons below the official poverty line. These numbers are there to show that anti-poverty programmes have definitely worked, he added.