New math: 37% Indians live below poverty line

Every third Indian is living below poverty line, says an expert group, putting the incidence of poverty in india at a high 37 % of

population, 10 percentage points more than estimated earlier. Among the states, Orissa and Bihar are at the bottom, while Nagaland, Delhi and J&K have the least number of poor, says a report by the expert group headed by Suresh Tendulkar, former chairman of PM’s Economic Advisory Council. As much as 41.8 per cent of the rural population survives on a monthly per-capita consumption expenditure of Rs 447, spending only so much on bare necessities such as food, fuel, light, clothing and footwear. Among urban population, 25.7 per cent are poor, who spend only Rs 578.8 on essential needs. The group submitted the report earlier this week. The expert group was set up following criticism of the existing official estimates of poverty released by the Planning Commission in 2007. According to the panel’s recent estimates, poverty in India came down from 35.97 per cent in 1993-94 to 27.54 per cent in 2004-05. Although the Tendulkar report has estimated incidence of poverty at 37.2 per cent against the commission’s estimate of 27.5 per cent, it did say the estimates are “not comparable” as the former is based on a new basket of goods. In a written reply to a query in the Rajya Sabha, minister of state for planning V Narayansamy said almost half of Orissa’s population is poor with 46.37 per cent of the people living below poverty line. On the other hand, insurgency-hit J&K is the richest where only five out of every 100 are officially poor. The assessments, based on daily calorie intake, found that people in Orissa were most deprived followed by Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, with the below poverty line population hovering over 40 per cent in each of these states. Chandigarh and Punjab were among the better performers with only 7.07 per cent and 8.41 per cent living below poverty line. “According to the latest available estimates based on large sample survey data on household consumer expenditure, 27.5 per cent people were living below the poverty line. In rural areas the poverty ratio was estimated as 28.3 per cent whereas in urban areas it was 25.7 per cent,” Mr Narayansamy said.