Does poverty data paint a true picture?

The Planning Commission’s data on poverty figures this week has unleashed a debate on numbers. It shows a dramatic drop in the total number of people living below the poverty line. So if in 2004-5, 37.2% of India’s population was poor for 2011-12 that figure has fallen to 21.9%.

[caption id=“attachment_988077” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Does the drop in poverty numbers signal a change? AFP. [/caption]

And yet that’s not necessarily good news. Anuradha SenGupta gets Govindraj Ethiraj of India Spend to look at the details in the data.