The poverty ratio in the country has declined sharply by 15.3 per cent in 2011-12 from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05, the year in which the UPA came to power at Centre after defeating the BJP-led NDA.
The poverty data, which was release by the Planning Commission on Tuesday, incidentally used the same Tendulkar method, which the government, in March last year, had decided to junk following a huge controversy and in its place constituted a committee headed by PMEAC chairman C. Rangarajan to come up with a fresh methodology keeping in view the ground realities.
As per the current estimate on poverty on the basis of Tendulkar methodology, a person spending less than `33.30 in urban and `27.20 in rural areas are considered to be poor.
In its official release, the Plan panel has said that for a family of five, the all-India poverty line in terms of consumption expenditure would be `4,080 per month in rural areas and `5,000 per month in urban areas. The poverty line however will vary from state to state. The percentage of persons below poverty line in 2011-12 has been estimated at 25.7 per cent in rural areas, 13.7 per cent in urban areas and 21.9 per cent for the country as a whole, the release said. This means that in absolute number terms there were 26.93 crore people below poverty line in 2011-12 as compared to 40.71 crore in 2004-05.
Incidentally, a controversy broke out in March last year after an affidavit was filed by the Plan panel in the Supreme court giving the cut-off figure for determining poverty line in the country. As per the affidavit, a family of five spending less than `4,824 in urban areas and less than `3,905 in rural areas would fall under the BPL category. This meant that a person consuming items worth more than `32 in a day in urban areas and `26 in rural areas was not poor.
Following the controversy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had intervened and asked the Plan panel to constitute a committee to review the existing methodology of determining poor in the country.
Announcing the government’s decision the then minister of state for planning Ashwani Kumar had said, “The technical group headed by Dr Rangarajan has been constituted to revisit the methodology.” He said the panel would take to submit its report in another seven to nine months. Outlining the need for such a move, Mr Kumar had said, “People’s perspective about poverty has changed. Therefore, we need to take a fresh look into the matter.”
However, the current Plan panel release noted that the Dr Rangarajan committee is expected to submit its report only by the mid of 2014, which means that the new methodology would be known only after Lok Sabha elections.
State-wise details of poverty, according to the Plan panel, reveal that Chhattisgarh tops the list with 39.93 per cent followed by Jharkhand (36.96%), Manipur (36.89%), Arunachal Pradesh (34.67%) and Bihar (33.47%).