By IANS,
New Delhi : Planning Commission Principal Advisor Pronab Sen Monday said there was no need to re-define the poverty line as it would bring more people under the deprived category and make it difficult to implement welfare schemes.
“Raising the poverty line will include the lower middle class,” said Sen, who was formerly the chief statistician of the country, indicating that it will dilute its purpose.
The government had appointed a committee headed by former head of the prime minister’s economic council, Suresh Tendulkar, in March last year to re-evaluate the poverty calculating methodology following widespread criticism of the planning commission for producing unrealistically low poverty estimates.
“The higher you raise the poverty line, the chances of helping those at the bottom become less,” Sen said at the sidelines of a function here, bringing out the differences between government establishments on the recommendations of the report.
“Until the report from the Tendulkar committee came, no one was questioning the poverty line. The committee changed the rural poverty line, now people say the urban poverty level should also be raised. Is it a competition?” asked Sen.
The committee, which was largely focused on the rural areas, raised the rural poverty line from a person spending Rs.12 per day to Rs.13.8 per day while the definition of an urban poverty line of Rs.18 per day was retained.
These poverty lines are defined on the basis of the money required to maintain the prescribed daily nutrition intake which is 2400 calories in rural areas and 1200 calories in urban areas.
The Tendulkar committee report pegs the percentage of people below poverty line in urban areas at 25.7 percent and at 41.8 percent in rural areas.
This makes the ‘national poverty head count’ at 37.2 percent.
“China kept its poverty line stagnant for decades till it managed to lower it below 10 percent of the total population. It was raised after that,” Sen said, adding that India must reduce the existing number before it raises the bar.