Poverty line figures: Statistical jugglery or just bad parameters?

Is the Planning Commission claim that poverty has reduced to only 22 percent of the Indian population nothing more than a piece of statistical jugglery that hides the more unfavourable truths behind it? “The Planning Commission’s claim that 20 million people were lifted out of poverty from 2004-05 onwards in nothing but statistical jugglery and people have become smarter not to believe in it, said Biraj Patnaik, who is the principal advisor to the Supreme Court Commissioners on the Right to Food. Speaking to Sagarika Ghose on State of the Nation aired on CNN-IBN, he said, “There is no doubt that there has been a secular decline in poverty. But ever since the Planning Commission pushed the development paradigm of this country from self reliance to Reliance we have actually seen ’that’ decline.” [caption id=“attachment_1029275” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] ![Is it time to discard the old poverty line? Seen here are homeless people at a feeding programme for the poor in Hyderabad. AFP. ](https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/poverty2_afp.jpg) Is it time to discard the old poverty line? Seen here are homeless people at a feeding programme for the poor in Hyderabad. AFP.[/caption] According to him, even a poorer country like Bangladesh has done better than India to improve its social indicators. “In terms of immunisation - in 1990, on DPT 59% of Indian children were being immunised. Today it is 66 percent. In Bangladesh in 1990, 64 percent were being immunised. Today it is 94%. On every social indicator Bangladesh has progressed whereas India has faltered - this has been the central thesis of Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen.” However, Santosh Mehrotra, Member of the Planning Commission, did not agree that the poverty figures had no element of truth in it. Mehrotra, who is the Director General of Institute of Applied Manpower Research, the only autonomous research wing of the Planning Commission, said, “We cannot compare Bangladesh to India because the absolute population numbers are different. Uttar Pradesh alone has a higher population than Bangladesh.” According to him, consumption expenditure has increased in peripheral goods like shoes and consumer durables which indicated a relative rise in wages. He said, “The number of jobs outside agriculture has increased significantly in the period from 2011 to 2012 - specially in construction but not just there.” The investment in infrastructure in the 11th five year plan coupled with the MNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) resulted in higher wages. This in turn resulted in jobs that were largely unskilled in nature.” Biraj Patnaik pointed out that the poverty debate should not be limited to determining consumption expenditure. He said, “If we lower the poverty line further then we are going to see larger number of people being lifted out of poverty. But are we going to measure our progress against a destitution line? Are we happy with the 0.8 percent reduction in poverty in years of growth? Why are we limiting the poverty debate to consumption expenditure?” Santosh Mehrotra agreed with Biraj Patnaik that the poverty line should be revised and that the poverty debate cannot be restricted to just provision of adequate nutrition and nourishment. There have been failures of the state in several areas including health and education. “A large percentage of the expenditure is going towards providing education because the state fails to provide for requisite quality education. Parents are spending more by opting out of the government institutions which is a failure of the state.” The solution lies in formulating a poverty line that looks at poverty in a multi-dimensional nature. Mehrotra said, “We need to devise another poverty line that takes into account all these social indicators. The present poverty line is an ’extreme poverty’ line. We can’t keep changing ’this’ because we need to check trends over a period of time.”

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Poverty line figures: Statistical jugglery or just bad parameters?

Is it time to discard the ‘absolute poverty’ line of the Planning Commission and devise a new one based on social indicators?

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