Expert group says every third Indian under poverty line

More than 37 per cent of Indians live below poverty line, says a report by the expert group chaired by professor Suresh D Tendulkar, former chairman of the National Statistical Commission.

The report released by the Planning Commission has used money spent by a person on specific household goods and services including total expenditure required on clothes, housing, health, education and conveyance apart from adequate food to define the poor.

In the earlier formula, the sole criterion for determining poverty was based on adequate food.

The expert group has recommended that the new method be adopted for arriving at fresh estimates of poverty keeping in mind that the rural poor need more than food alone to sustain a decent livelihood.

Estimates, for the year 2003-04, using the new method show that 41.8 per cent of the country's rural population, or four out of 10 people in rural areas in India survive on a per capita expenditure of Rs447 every month, spending on bare essentials like food, fuel, clothing and footwear.

This marks a huge difference from the earlier estimate for the year, based only on the food intake criterion that 28.3 per cent of the rural population lived below the poverty line.