Between poverty lines

The latest set of data released by the Planning Commission on Monday,based on the National Sample Survey household consumer expenditure survey for 2009-10 and arrived at by updating the Tendulkar poverty line for 2004-05 to 2009-10,shows the task is cut out. Between 2004-05 and 2009-10,India’s poverty numbers reduced from 37.2 per cent to 29.8 per cent,or 1.5 percentage points a year on an annualised basis. This pales in comparison with the 2 percentage points a year reduction target set by the Eleventh Plan. But criticising the poverty line and ignoring emerging trends stand in the way of analysing the disaggregated data and drawing the right lessons.

Higher growth rate during the period has certainly helped,but factors such as the job guarantee scheme,a revamped public distribution system and mid-day meal scheme too have enabled low-income states to do extremely well. For instance,the percentage of people below poverty line in Orissa has dropped sharply from 57.2 in 2004-05 to 37 in 2009-10. Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have also seen large drops but these are high-income states that posted decent growth rates. Bihar witnessed high growth,but surprisingly its BPL percentage has reduced by just one percentage point to 53.5 in 2009-10; inequality has surged between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent of Indians; poverty is dropping faster in villages than in cities. Understanding these to push initiatives — like Aadhaar — to better target the bottom of the pyramid is the real governance challenge. The debate over poverty lines should not drown out what lies between.