Rangarajan heads new panel to review poverty estimates
24 May 2012
The government has set up an expert group under C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC), to review the poverty estimates and the methodology used by the Planning Commission.
The move is in response to the views and perspectives expressed by experts in the public domain on the need to revisit poverty estimates and related methodologies, minister of state for planning Ashwani Kumar said in New Delhi today.
The Planning Commission's estimates, based on the Tendulkar Committee's methodology, that people with consumption expenditure of more than Rs28.65 per day in cities and Rs22.42 in rural areas are not poor, had triggered a controversy.
The Planning Commission's estimates on poverty levels in the country, released through a press note on 19 March 2012, indicated that the poverty ratio in the country has come down from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10. As a result, the number of poor persons in the country has also come down from 407 million in 2004-05 to 355 million in 2009-10, according to the Planning Commission.
The expert group will comprehensively review the existing methodology of estimation of poverty and examine whether the poverty line should be fixed solely in terms of a consumption basket or whether other criteria are also relevant, and if so, whether the two can be effectively combined to evolve a basis for estimation of poverty in rural and urban areas.
The group will examine the issue of divergence between consumption estimates based on the NSSO methodology and those emerging from the National Accounts aggregates; and suggest a methodology for updating consumption poverty lines using the new consumer price indices launched by the CSO for rural and urban areas state-wise.
